Master of 500 Hats

SlideShare Kicks Ass, Picks Up $3M From Venrock & Friends (+ me!)

Congrats to Rashmi, Jon, Amit & team... SlideShare just raised $3M from Venrock :)

I can't begin to say how proud i am of the SlideShare team, and what an honor it is to be an advisor & small angel investor in their venture.   it's also a terrific product that i was fan of long before i became an advisor or investor.  but most of all, it's just been a real pleasure to get to know Rashmi & Jon as friends & fellow geeks over the past year (in fact i just got back from dinner with them in SF, and we had a blast :).

I first came across the company in fall 2006 by reading a SlideShare review on TechCrunch, and later started using it to host some of the early presentations on startup metrics i created last summer.  I became so enamored of the service that i wanted to meet the folks behind it, and lo & behold i discovered the company was right in my own backyard!  i had even met one of the founders a few times, and she was a regular at Dana Street Coffee in Mountain View, right around the corner from Mint, another startup i had been working with. (btw, Dana Street has great karma... it was a popular hangout back when i was at PayPal and we were briefly in Mt View in 2002-3.  Jim & James from HotorNot also used to hang out there before they moved to the city, as well as a bunch of the ex-PayPal engineering braintrust who went on to help create YouTube)

I really got to know SlideShare better when i ran the first Graphing Social Patterns 2007 conference last fall in San Jose, and used it to host / post most of the GSP slides.  I think it was soon after Charlene Li had posted her presentation on "Big Brands & Facebook", and got over 10,000 views in less than one week that i woke up and smelled more than just the Dana Street coffee!  At first i thought all those views were because Charlene was hosting the preso on her blog, or that Forrester was pointing to it, or other notable bloggers.  But the interesting thing i found out is that more than 80% of the total views came from the slideshare community, not from the widget embed (currently that presentation has over 35K views, with only 5-6K coming from the original embed). 

This was rather astonishing. SlideShare wasn't just a productivity tool.

SlideShare was a resource for driving traffic!

At that point, i got reeeeeeeeal interested.  I was a viewer, i was a publisher.  I was a conference organizer.  I was an evangelist.  I was a fan.  Then i became an advisor, to help them work on product & marketing startegy, and of course metrics.  Lastly i became an investor, because i really believed in the product, the customer need, and the team :)

Congrats again to the team... and i want to apologize profusely for the ugly mug they chose to use in their recent investor announcement presentation, posted below:

| View | Upload your own

While we're at it, here are the profile thumbnails on SlideShare, from Crunchbase and Tradevibes respectively:

CrunchBase Information

SlideShare

Information provided by CrunchBase

Happy 5th Anniversary LinkedIn (& congrats Reid, Dan & team :)

  LinkedIn 1.0, May 2003 
  Originally uploaded by Chris

Congrats to Reid, Dan & the entire LinkedIn team (past & present)

You've come a long way baby.

(& you look like a billion bucks :)

ps - for those who may not be aware, LinkedIn celebrated profitability about a year ago (after being profitable since early 2006)

MicroHooFreude! (Memo to Jerry: Prepare to be Sued)

"I still believe even today that our offer remains the only alternative put forward that provides your stockholders full and fair value for their shares. By failing to reach an agreement with us, you and your stockholders have left significant value on the table."
- Steve Ballmer

(from MSFT press release where Steve says his boots are made for walking)

Jerry, time to find a good lawyer... cuz your shareholders are gonna
sue your ass six ways to sunday.

(srlsly: where was all this chutzpah when your company needed it?  absolutely mind-bottling)

for the record -- i still think this deal will happen, but now it might be at $27 instead of $37-38 Yahoo was asking for.

only one thing is certain: Steve Jobs & Eric Schmidt exult in geek ecstasy / drunken stupor, singing: MicroHooFreude Uber Alles!

Q: How in Holy Hell are Facebook, Slide, Ning, & "Toy Apps" worth Billions? A: Social Commerce.

hey Kara: want to know why Facebook, Slide, RockYou, Ning, & all those other Facebook toy apps (& MySpace, etc) are worth $15B or $500M +?

well if they're worth anywhere near that much, it's not obvious 100M+ widgets, walls, & installs are what generates revenue... however, it MAY be because of the social graph data-mined from those users & apps & widgets, and what that means for the future of Social Commerce.

besides Kara, you've said it yourself...

VentureBeat Digital Media Party - Hot Hot HOT!

  VentureBeat Digital Media Party 
  Originally uploaded by b_d_solis

I had a great time at the VentureBeat party up in SF last night (and from the looks of this picture, the VentureBeat team did too ;)

congrats on the launch of VentureBeat DigitalMedia Matt & team!

more party pix by Brian Solis & Renee Blodgett.

Web 2.0 Product Management: Optimizing Metrics & Viral Growth (Dan Olsen)

My friend Dan Olsen is an awesome dude, and one of the valley's most talented geeks when it comes to product management, particularly for consumer internet websites & viral marketing. 

Dan recently did a terrific presentation on Web 2.0 Product Management: Optimizing Metrics & Viral Growth at Web 2.0 Expo SF that was given rave reviews by attendees. 

I've re-posted the slides from his talk below (hosted on SlideShare, of course):

| View | Upload your own

Dan is also working a new startup called YourVersion.com, still in private beta at the moment.

Bernard Lunn: Microsoft=Ali, Google=Foreman, & "Web 3.0" = "Rumble in the Jungle" (i'll let him explain)

Bernard Lunn has just finished writing a pretty amazing 3-part tour-de-force on the coming Internet "post-recession phase transition". and guess what -- the resulting big winner is probably NOT Microsoft, NOT Google, but rather The Little Guy!

(yay! that's me :)

Bernard's 3-part set of posts are here:

1. The Whatchamacallit, Post Recession Phase Transition
2. The Emerging Main Street Web
3. Dancing With Gorillas: The New Web Era

The articles are long, but they're good... they also reference several other amazing posts too.  well ok, several amazing posts, and my amazingly insane Google vs Microsoft rant about Web 3.0 = Hailstorm 2.0 (only amazing thing in my post was the choice of font sizes & colors... yes, i know... i'm working on a custom font called "Kidnap Ransom Note Helvetica", coming real soon).  along with my tinfoil helmet piece, he references another truly amazing look-forward post by Paul Ford (written back in 2002, altho presented as future history in 2009) called How Google beat Amazon and Ebay to the Semantic Web. 

i remember reading that humdinger back during the recession, and just being floored by the vision.  there was also a followup animation called Epic 2014 that chronicles the rise of "GoogleZon" (= Google + Amazon), similarly visionary.  after reading Bernard's articles, i'm realizing again how incredible those 2 pieces were, especially since they were written 4 & 6 years ago.  the Epic 2014 flash animation is re-posted below... it's almost comedically conspiracy-minded, but if you take a step back you have to be impressed with how close to on-target the vision is... in fact, it's not even out of bounds to say the prediction of a Google-Amazon merger could conceivably still happen (or Microsoft-Amazon, or Microsoft-Ebay, or Google-eBay, etc etc).

anyway, i think Bernard's overall summary blog trilogy is a relatively good & mostly sane analysis of where we're headed in the next 2-3 years, and it's probably less crazy than my own version. 

again, i highly recommend checking his stuff out... it's excellent.

btw, just have to give extra props to Bernard for the visual imagery re: Microsoft = aging champion boxer Muhammad Ali duking it out with Google = young George Foreman, aka the Rumble in the Jungle -- classic Ali-Foreman fight in Zaire, basis for the documentary When We Were Kings.  that is SO on target.

the analogy fits perfectly... except that Ali won that fight, and i'm not sure whether Microsoft will win this one. regardless, as Bernard points out, the real winner is you & me, Joe Six-Pack Web Consumer. 

that's right... you read it here first.

Web 3.0 = great taste AND less filling.

Iron Mike Tells Stan Lee to Fuck Off... Marvel Lawyers either Stupid or Brilliant. (or Mike = Super Genius)

Un. Be. lievable.

Act I: "Iron Mike" Arrington rents out SF Metreon AMC Theater for private TechCrunch screening of Iron Man for ~500-600 geek / comic fanboys, subsidizes costs so it's only $1 for the Tony Stark faithful to attend (fyi, TC works with AMC & Paramount to buy the tickets legit, so all on the up & up).

Act II: yours truly & others buy up tickets in a matter of hours. w00t ^2!  'nuff said.

Act III: the suits get wind of it, Marvel attorneys -- as in "it's a marvel you're actually an attorney" -- send Iron Mike a Cease & Desist letter.  Mike and the rest of us can't believe how fucking stupid these idiots are.  he checks with AMC/Metreon, and they're standing firm behind Techcrunch (for the moment, anyway).  as of now, the show is still going on.

Act IV: waiting for tomorrow to see WTF happens here... i'm double-booked anyway, but i wouldn't miss this comicbook geekfest shitstorm for all the rice in china.

Iron Man Exclusive Trailer

interpretation #1 via Occam's Razor: these guys are incredibly stupid, and just crapped the bed all over the best possible fan marketing you can get -- that is, user-generated buzz @ full retail markup (albeit subsidized by TechCrunch, but box office still gets paid regardless).  now awaiting most negative fanboy reaction if they continue to send in the clowns (= attorneys).  death by a thousand paper cuts / long tail blog posts awaits ye, Stan Lee!

interpretation #2 via Conspiracy Theory A: these guys are incredibly smart, and are stirring up shit with Arrington knowing full well they'll get massive geekster backlash, which will create even MORE fan buzz / press awareness, which will drive even more sales.  sounds like a truly ingenious & great negative-spin-equals-positive-ROI PR story, but i just don't buy Teh Sharks in Teh Suits are that smart.  if so, then i'm really impressed.  we have all been played, and i mean like a friggin' Stradivarius by Itzhak Perlman.

interpretation #3 via Conspiracy Theory B: the double conspiracy -- a riddle, wrapped in a mystery,  inside an enigma -- this entire charade is being manufactured by Arrington to drive even more attention to TechCrunch.  let's see here: find geek movie, discover legal loophole, rent out movie theater, let slip to Marvel attorneys there's some unauthorized use of movie & see if they take the bait... BINGO! dem Sharks, dey Bite!  now wait for C&D, re-publish on TC as soon as it's received,  and BLAMMO! 

instant BitchMeme-bait.  absolute genius. 

& in this case i DO think Mike could be this smart... still, sounds a bit complicated even for Mr. Arrington. 

but then again: is he Iron Mike, or Mike Hulk?

don't make Mike angry.  you wouldn't like him when he's angry. 

TechCrunch SMASH!

Startup Metrics 101: a Product & Marketing Workshop (@ Web 2.0 Expo SF 2008)

Here's the Startup Metrics 101 presentation Hiten Shah & I are giving at our Startup Metrics 101 workshop  at Web 2.0 Expo SF this afternoon:

| View | Upload your own

UPDATE: some terrific followup commentary on Startup Metrics from Andrew Chen, who is a bonafide Wile E Coyote SUPER GENIUS, and who came up with a lot of ideas Hiten & I stole from liberally for our presentation ;)

Note: we appreciate any comments or suggestions you have, and in particular please feel free to make comments below about any additional tools & resources of note we should include for Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral, and Revenue.  AARRR!

Web 2.0 Expo SF: Series of Tubes + Startup Metrics 101

Starting tomorrow, i'm helping organize the biggest geekapalooza north of SXSW: Web 2.0 Expo runs all week in San Francisco. 

along with Brady Forrest & Jen Pahlka, i'm co-chairing the largest gathering of nerds in the free world (disneyland for nerds, some might even say :)

For the past six months, we've been working hard to put together over 100+ sessions and 200+ speakers on topics such as:

• Strategy & Business Models
• Marketing & Community
• Design & User Experience
• Web 2.0 Fundamentals
• Web 2.0 Development
• The Mobile Web
• Web Operations
• Social Networks & Platforms

If you're in town this week, i hope you'll stop by & check it out.

I'll also be giving a Startup Metrics 101 workshop tomorrow with Hiten Shah & Vanessa Fox.  If you're trying to figure out what your startup should be focused on & how to measure it, drop by and find out.  At the end of the workshop we'll do a few Extreme Startup Makeovers for any brave souls willing to subject their websites to public review & commentary (promise we'll play nice ;)

So hurry up & get those tubes humming!