Inspirational

"In short: Nuclear weapons have been the United States’ third-highest national priority since World..."

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 12:56:05 -0700

“In short: Nuclear weapons have been the United States’ third-highest national priority since World War II, in terms of dollars, and we spend a fortune every year to manage and secure them. Yet a crucial facility in this nuclear enterprise “wasn’t even nun-proofed, much less terrorist-proofed,” as a Tennessee congressman would put it in a February hearing on the break-in, which shut down Y-12 site operations for two weeks.”

- The Prophets of Oak Ridge | Style | Washington Post

Nothin to lose, everything to gain. #49ers

Sun, 03 Feb 2013 19:26:15 -0800

Nothin to lose, everything to gain. #49ers

Marc Andreessen on why VCs exist.

Sun, 27 Jan 2013 19:40:21 -0800

Marc Andreessen on why VCs exist.:

A big part of why venture capital actually is important and enduring is because the public market is flighty and late-stage investors are flighty, and customers for that matter are flighty, and so you can’t — if you are running one of these companies you can’t — you just can’t rely on people being balanced. They are just not going to be.

And so you have to have a level of determination to just stick through the good times and the bad times. And you need to have investors at the core of your company who are going to support you through that.

The big advantage that we have as a venture capital firm over a hedge fund or a mutual fund is we have a 13-year lockup on our money. And so enterprise can go in and out of fashion four different times, and we can go and invest in one of these companies, and it’s okay, because we can stay the course. And then what happens is everything tends to get better, all the products tend to get better, all the companies tend to get better over time if they are working hard at it. So we are fine.

Like if everything we are investing in goes out of fashion, we are not going to change anything we do, because we can’t change anything. We are already invested in these companies; we can’t sell our stock. We don’t have to sell our stock. So we just say, we will go back to work. And then at some point it really gets exciting again.

"I could probably give you a list of 10 major things that are wrong with email. I try to maintain..."

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 09:58:30 -0800

“I could probably give you a list of 10 major things that are wrong with email. I try to maintain lists like that in my head.”

- Google’s Larry Page on Why Moon Shots Matter | Wired Business | Wired.com

Keeping lists of problems in your head is a good idea.

nevver: The alphabet fades away

Sat, 15 Dec 2012 01:02:43 -0800

nevver:

The alphabet fades away

"Celebrity gossip also has the tendency to make even the non-famous paranoid, especially online. Now,..."

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 18:51:01 -0800

“Celebrity gossip also has the tendency to make even the non-famous paranoid, especially online. Now, any secrets you may have—no matter how small or mundane—might suddenly come to light. Is our obsession with celebrity gossip partly a way for us, as vulnerable online users, to vicariously work through anxieties regarding our own privacy?”

- A Complete History Of Gerbiling | The Awl

davemorin: This is the right type of thinking for the future....

Wed, 31 Oct 2012 17:22:19 -0700

davemorin:

This is the right type of thinking for the future. Our air networks are vastly underutilized and under engineered. Rethinking how we move not just bits in networks, but atoms, is the future.

Matternet Is Developing a Vast Network of Delivery Drones to Move Our Stuff | Motherboard

Registering voters with Mayor Ed Lee and Ron Conway. at Ferry...

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 12:29:23 -0700

Registering voters with Mayor Ed Lee and Ron Conway. at Ferry Building – View on Path.

"I believe that entrepreneurs could do well, generally, by looking for opportunities in industries..."

Wed, 26 Sep 2012 22:18:22 -0700

“I believe that entrepreneurs could do well, generally, by looking for opportunities in industries that are dominated by private-equity players.”

- We Need a Warby Parker for Mattresses | Hacker News

… “If an industry is overweight PE, you can bet that the market analysis looks fantastically attractive (competition isn’t too fierce, suppliers have little power, buyers have little power, not many substitutes, and little perceived threat from new entrants). If a clever entrepreneur can render that last condition false and enter that market, that entrepreneur has the opportunity to shrink and consolidate a $huge market that’s owned by PE players into a $smaller market that is owned by the entrepreneur.

PE controlled competitors will, generally, not be particularly agile, because PE tends to capture value by leveraging the heck out of a currently viable business model. It’s a model that works really well as long as base assumptions hold true, but startups can ruin that for them.”

At Peacock Court Ballroom

Fri, 21 Sep 2012 14:17:16 -0700

Party with Mindjet and Unified. Come say hello! – at Peacock Court Ballroom – See on Path.

So good.

Mon, 17 Sep 2012 17:29:59 -0700

So good.

fascinated: zoya: Going through some repos, handing out...

Fri, 14 Sep 2012 16:38:28 -0700

fascinated:

zoya:

Going through some repos, handing out awards.

#fuckyeah

great idea!

"If you’ve worked with the spineless, you know how frustrating it can be to deal with their..."

Mon, 30 Jul 2012 14:03:49 -0700

“If you’ve worked with the spineless, you know how frustrating it can be to deal with their poisonous helplessness — something that’s only heightened in a startup where the most important thing you can do is not give up.”

- Keep calm & carry on: What you didn’t know about the reddit story - Making the World Suck Less

"I’m also excited for the opportunity to invest alongside my friend Tom Conrad. As everyone knows he..."

Fri, 27 Jul 2012 13:37:54 -0700

“I’m also excited for the opportunity to invest alongside my friend Tom Conrad. As everyone knows he personally programs each and every Pandora station himself, and has for years. So he clearly has great tastes in music that morph in real-time to coincide with pretty much every citizen of the United States.”

- parislemon: Stamped: Is It Worthy?

The time for messin’ around, children, is through.

Thu, 21 Jun 2012 13:01:00 -0700

The time for messin’ around, children, is through.

feltron: Stephen Wolfram’s personal analytics

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 13:38:55 -0700

feltron:

Stephen Wolfram’s personal analytics

How Naval looks at a company

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 14:56:04 -0700

“I look for two things that are paramount above all:

Great team. It’s obvious. It’s a tautology. Everybody says it. You have to be working with some of the best people in the industry you’re in.

Huge market. Niche markets just don’t work because the first idea never works. You always have to change the idea, so you need room to maneuver in a big market.

There are three more factors that I look at. Not all three of them are required but I prefer a company to have at least two of them: Difficult technology that is compounding over time.

- A proprietary distribution channel.
- A clever viral marketing, or SEO, or partnership, or whatever strategy that gives them a leg up over competitors.
- A direct monetization model. Something more than throwing up 10 cent banner ad CPMs.

"There’s this wonderful paper called The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Data (PDF) and it shows that..."

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 12:54:21 -0700

““There’s this wonderful paper called The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Data (PDF) and it shows that for every increase in order of magnitude of data you have, it beats all improvements in algorithms. For me this means to get data, you have to get people to use you…so design is the necessary prerequisite to the data that you want.””

- Massive Health Co-Founder and CEO Sutha Kamal Leaves The Company (via rahmin)

brinking.: Instagram is worth 1%, not $1b

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 12:15:37 -0700

brinking.: Instagram is worth 1%, not $1b:

nabeel:

The best way to think about the value of Instagram is not to think about $1 billion or $30/user, it’s this: 1%

The value of Instagram is tied up in Facebook being valued at an unprecedented $100 billion valuation. To use the case that Paul Graham makes for YC: do you believe that Instragram adds…

John's Tumblr: Dammit.

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 00:16:08 -0700

John's Tumblr: Dammit.:

lilly:

I was frustrated tonight with something that made me write something careless. Which ignited an intense back & forth that I think is somewhat better now, and will lead to a more substantial and useful conversation I think.

But I was so focused on it that I was a crappy dad. Didn’t pay enough…