Master of 500 Hats

Securitizing Happiness: Hacking Human Suffering thru Financial Engineering (TEDxShanghai, June 2009)

Below are slides from my talk on "Securitizing Happiness" at TEDxShanghai later today.  This presentation is a slight update to the original talk i gave back in March 2008 at the O'Reilly Collective Intelligence FOO Camp, held at Google HQ in Mountain View:

Securitizing Happiness: Solving the World's Problems by Making Trillion-Dollar Markets for Individuals, Small Business, & Natural Resources

View more OpenOffice presentations from Dave McClure.

Note: many of these concepts are still fairly raw, and since i'm not really a financial engineering expert they could certainly use further refinement... so your feedback and comments are appreciated.  That said, i'm optimistic the basic ideas here are viable, worthwhile and can have substantial economic impact on society in the future.

US Platforms & Social Networking (Startonomics Tokyo, June 2009)

Here is presentation from the panel i'll be giving on US Platforms & Social Networking this afternoon at Startonomics Tokyo conference in Japan.  This is part of the GeeksOnaPlane East Asia tour.

Overview of US Platforms & Social Networking (Startonomics Tokyo, June 2009)

View more OpenOffice presentations from Dave Mcclure.

The 2009 TechFellow Awards: The Envelope, Please...

2009 TechFellow Awards
Photos by davemc500hats

Thanks to everyone who helped us pull together the first inaugural TechFellow Awards (2009)... according to a few who remembered the evening, it was a raging success :)

I'd like to congratulate all of our 22 TechFellow winners, as well as thank our nominating committee, and TechCrunch and many many others for helping us produce the event.

If you'd like to see more, you can find my photos of the 2009 TechFellow Awards (photos) and also the 2009 TechFellow Awards (uStream webcast).

(one other note: we are all saddened by the recent passing of Rajeev Motwani, and our condolences to his wife Asha and family... thanks to Ron Conway for providing a thoughtful tribute to his dear friend at the beginning of the award presentations)

DMC Metamorphosis :)

I feel like i've hit a turning point in my life.  Something has happened in the past 6 months, in the past 3 years since leaving Simply Hired & PayPal.  I'm not sure when it all clicked, but i've been fortunate to have a lot of wonderful things come my way lately.

Those things include but are not limited to:

• working with / investing in great startups like Mint (thx Aaron), SlideShare (thx Rashmi & Jon), TeachStreet (thx Dave), and many others
• running conferences like Startonomics SF (thx Debbie), Graphing Social Patterns (thx Gina & Tim), and Web 2.0 Expo SF (thx Brady & Jen)
• creating the now-infamous Stanford Facebook class (thx BJ, Yee, Jia, many others & our students!)
• coming up with Startup Metrics for Pirates AARRR! (thx Hiten, Andrew, Eric, *SO* many others) 
• getting Startup2Startup rolling last year (thx Leonard, Brian, Kat, Saar, & MANY friends/sponsors)
• joining FoundersFund this year (thx Sean Parker for giving me a shot)
• launching FF Angel LLC and investing in some great startups (thx FF, also Jeff Clavier & many other angels & VCs for great advice)
• retooling fbFund & creating the fbFund REV incubator program (thx Cat & folks at FB, Accel & FF, many others)
• kicking off GeeksOnaPlane Asia trip (thx Christine, George, lots others)
• putting Finance4Founders together & ready to rollout (thx Dan & others)

while this may seem like a laundry list, the one common thread in all of the above projects has been the amazing help of my friends & colleagues.  there is no way i could have accomplished any of these efforts without the patience, tolerance, brilliance, and sheer hard work of my home boys & girls.  you folks really do rock.  (and i know how much of a pain in the butt i am to work with!)

seriously: how lucky am i, to be blessed with so many incredible people in my life, who have given me so much, created such tremendous opportunities... while i remain the lazy, ADD, easily-distracted, crazy sonuvabitch i've always been, who barely manages to make rent each month. i mean, it's nothing short of a miracle that i can find my ass with both hands in the morning, and yet somehow after so many years in the valley i have found a nice little groove. how cool is that.

these days i actually wake up early & excited to do the work i'm doing, happy as a newborn puppy to spend time working on projects with people i like, and i keep pinching myself to make sure this shit doesn't disappear tomorrow.  well even if it did, i would treasure the moments thus far...

lastly, i must acknowledge the folks at home who help me find purpose and reason amidst all this insanity... thank you to my wife and our two beautiful kids.  you are the light of my life, and your smiles & laughter are precious beyond the treasure and measure of mortal men.  

truly, i am a very lucky person.  thank you to everyone :)

Tweeting Real-time @TWTRcon w/ Kara Swisher, Jeremiah Owyang, Paul Saffo

Twtrcon09: Kara + Dave's laptop
Original by kyeung808

yes, i'm a geek... (ignored Kara's command to "put down the twitter!", kept on tweeting real-time from the stage... probably why she's frowning ;)

more photos by Ken Yeung, Brian Solis, and other misc #twtrcon photos

TWTRcon was great... thanks for having me Gina!

MediaMemo: PAID is Not a Dirty Word

i may swear a lot on this blog and in person, but the word "PAID" is not a dirty word (altho strangely, it *is* a four-letter word ;)

here's interview i did at SXSW with Peter Kafka of Media Memo / AllThingsD:

note to Mom: didn't drop any F-bombs, only a few choice curse words. oops.

Silicon Valley 2.0: The Startup Metrics Revolution (Tokyo, Dec 2008)

I'm giving a Startup Metrics presentation in Tokyo today... for those of you who've seen it before, it's modestly updated.  here is the latest & greatest:

Silicon Valley 2.0: The Startup Metrics Revolution (Tokyo, Dec 2008)

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: dave.mcclure tokyo)

Employees Suck. Don't Be One. Don't Hire One.

absolutely awesome presentation by John Buckman, given at LeWeb 2008 in Paris, about how to build incredible one-person companies that just don't suck:

Employees Suck

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: le web)

Startup Metrics Revolution: Tokyo, Japan (Fri 12/19)

at the moment I'm on my way to Paris for the LeWeb conference... but after i get back to Silicon Valley, almost immediately i'm headed off to Japan for a family visit and to hang out with some friends in Tokyo.

i'll be in Japan from 12/16 thru 01/08, and on Friday 12/19 i'm speaking at an event i'm putting together with Andrew Shuttleworth and his friends who run the Tokyo 2.0 meetup.  I'm doing an afternoon presentation on Startup Metrics called:

Silicon Valley 2.0: The Startup Metrics Revolution

Some of the material is similar to my Startup Metrics for Pirates presentation i've given previously at Startonomics and Web 2.0 Expo, but we'll also add a few new twists. Here's a brief description (i'll update as we have more details):

Silicon Valley is re-booting... again.  As the rest of the US economy gets turned upside-down, startups in silicon valley are getting used to a lot less capital, and a lot more numbers.  The "Web 2.0" startup model has matured, and internet startups are now applying a more scientific & metrics-oriented approach to their business, and a more cash-conscious approach to funding & operations.  The best startups now build products on a budget of less than $1M (some for under $100K), and use startup dashboards & web analytics tools to measure user behavior, product usage, feature conversion, and marketing effectiveness.  They also use rapid development, fast iteration cycles, and a/b / multivariate testing tools to optimize product features & marketing programs.

If you are a startup entrepreneur, developer, investor, or technology business executive, this 3-hour lecture & workshop will show you how to put together your own business metrics framework for your startup or company. The workshop will focus primarily on how to use a simple 5-step model for startup metrics (Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral, Revenue) to make better product & marketing decisions. We'll show you how the model works, how to apply it to your business, and we'll do live "Startup Makeover" reviews for 5-10 companies. Examples & variations on the model will be explored for several types of startups, and we'll cover the following topics: creating a basic user conversion dashboard, defining your company & product keyword vocabulary, selecting & evaluating marketing channels, testing & optimizing landing pages, setting up simple email strategies for user retention, and designing a business model that will attract investors.

to see more of what you'll get, here is the latest version of my Startup Metrics presentation (from Startonomics SF, Oct 2008):

Startup Metrics For Pirates: AARRR! (Startonomics SF Oct 2008)

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: aarrr metrics)

hope you'll join us for a fun session in Tokyo!

NOTE: for Silicon Valley geeks who would like to tag along and visit Tokyo, we're gathering a small group of geeks to head over for about a week (altho i'm staying thru New Year's).  If you'd like to join us, twitter or email me for info.  I'll be flying over on Tue 12/16 out of SFO on a JAL flight at noon, along with a few friends.  Come visit Tokyo & meet some Japanese entrepreneurs!

The Secret History of Silicon Valley: Thu 11/20 Brown Bag Lunch @ Computer History Museum (Mt View)

Steve Blank is a pretty sharp guy, and one of the best folks in the valley on technology marketing.  He teaches at both Stanford and Haas/Berkeley, and besides being an academic he's been involved in several startups and actually knows his shit.  His book "The Four Steps to the Epiphany" and his presentation on "Customer Development Methodology" are must reads for tech entrepreneurs.

Next Thursday, November 20th, Steve will be giving a lunchtime talk at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View on the Secret History of Silicon Valley.  You can check out a previous video of his talk below:

Here's his Customer Development Methodology preso on SlideShare:

Customer Development Methodology

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: customer development product development)