All in Random Stuff
more animals
Zoe got cookied... I welcome cookies and other forms of culinary schwag on this blog. An entrepreneur's gotta eat...
"She connected to me through someone I know. Check.
She wrote an honest, friendly and personal email. Check.
She didnt pretend to be a long time reader of my blog. Check.
And there are no obligations as to what I have to write. Check.
Oh...and I get free cookies that are probably going to be delicious! Check!"
What if I wrote a blog post...
I've been reading all the right ones, following all the memes. I've been thinking...about data portability, Facebook, the iPhone, monetization, being an entrepreneur, platforms, VCs, the Loch Ness monster and the theory of Atlantis.
I have a good theory... err... Top 10 List... that ties them all together. It's funny, too--even has some lolcats in it. Yup... Everyone will be talking about "meme platforms", because that's the new Web 2.0 catch phrase I created for this post.
I'll write it from my blog publishing software, and use Zemanta to suggest links, tags, metatags, keywords, related videos, suggested articles, other books you might want to buy, people you may know, lovers you have had before, fantasy baseball free agents on the upswing, and an appropriate chardonnay to go with this post. I will not, however, check spelling.
I won't linkbait, but I can't help but quote smart folks like Robert Scoble, Fred Wilson, Om Malik, Henry Blodget, and MacRumors.
But first, I need to tell everyone I know about it--and right away. This is too important to wait for them to read it in their Google Reader. I'll post it to Twitter, and Hacker News, because... well.. I'm sure there are some people I know there, too. I suppose while I'm at it, I'll tag it in del.icio.us, Digg it, StumbleUpon it, Sphere it, Reddit... it... (allow myself to introduce... myself), Newsvine it, Share it from Google Reader, since I of course read my own feed in my feedreader, you know... just to see what the feed looks like and that it's still working, Mixx it, Furl it, Ma.gnolia it, Slap it, Flip it, Rub it down, oh no!!
And for a few close personal friends, I may IM it to them, too, just in case they didn't get my public DiggBeg.
And then... I'll wait.
I'll wait for the inbound links and the traffic and all the blog love... and the haters, too. That's ok. I'm sure some troll will comment on my Friendfeed about how I have no idea what I'm talking about. Flame war! Everyone will start talking about it... The Disqus comment notification e-mails start pouring in. I respond and respond... and sometimes I respond to my own responses, creating a small tear in the space-time continuum. I like words that have two u's in them in a row. Am I talking in a vacuum?
All of the sudden... BAM. There it is... barely perceptible in small font all the way at the bottom, but it's definitely there.
I'm on Techmeme.
Do I post a call for more links to push it up the list? Naa... that would be pushing it. I can't watch. It's too much. I need to go do something else. I'll go monitor the del.cio.us/popular list. OMG I'm already #3!
Dammit...
Stuck behind "100 CSS Hacks for people who still can't get shit to work in IE" and "50 incredible photos of children getting struck by lightning".
I'll never get past those. Oh well... 3's pretty good I guess.
The real question is how many more RSS readers am I going to tack on? I need to get to that next psychologically satisfying number... the big 3000. Of course, it's really just 1000 people who have inserted my feed into three different readers at one time or another but still... it's a nice looking number, no?
Hmm... that gives me another idea. Yes, that's it! Tomorrow's post!
"Monetizing Meme Platforms... ...in Second Life!"
Should this guy get run over by a Mustang, please forget you read this here...
A Coney Island businessman is suing the city for damaging the Bentley he was driving when he killed a Brooklyn dad in a hit-and-run accident. Harry Shasho, who pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident, says the NYPD failed to safeguard the battered black 2005 Bentley GT luxury sedan that was impounded as evidence of the fatal crash. He's asking for at least $190,000
Hit-and-run driver claims city didn't take care of his Bentley after crash
Fred posted about age today. For a guy who's pretty cool about most things, he does have this bizarre obsession with age--and he's worried that 47 is too close to the age where VC's start to fade. Frankly, I think that VC's fade more because of money than because of age. Why put in the same effort when you've got 20 million in the bank?
But Fred put this trend to bed years ago, because he made a ton of cash in the late 90's at a very early age. By all accounts, he could have retired seven years ago--instead he's working harder than ever. If you're not convinced, try getting on his calendar.
There are a lot of examples in my life where people don't act their age:
- My grandmother is 90. She learned to drive in her 50's and still takes the car out all over Staten Island to go shopping and take car of errands. She lives on her own, reads the paper everyday, and regularly cooks up a storm.
- My friend Darren has started something like 8 companies and is now the Head of Digital Media for Media Kitchen. He's married, lives in Westchester and is now expecting his first child. Did I mention he's only 26?
- When I started the Fordham young alumni softball team, we had a guy sign up who listed his grad school graduation year as 1980. I figured it was a typo, but the person who works in the alumni office handling signups said the guy was so enthusiastic that she felt too bad not to let him on. Since then, this 52 year old guy shows up and plays harder than just about all of the 20-somethings on the field, diving for balls and steamrolling around the bases. He calls me on the phone the day of every game to excitedly check on who's coming, what the standings are, etc.
- I originally got invited to teach about blogging at Fordham by a management professor who is nearly 70 as far as I can tell from her resume. She had an engineering degree and worked for Lockheed as an engineer from 1960-1966. Not only did she not fit gender stereotypes back than, but by reaching out to me to teach about social media's impact in business back in '04, she stood out from her peers on the cutting edge.
How old you are is a function of your willingness to learn new things, your ability not to let your experience close you off to new thinking, and your passion for what you do... which pretty much makes Fred one of the youngest people I know.
Equity Private is the most amazing woman that I don't know... She's incredibly savvy, and a total finance junkie. She's also got a helluva sense of humor.
She's been dubbing that "Der Untergang" Hitler mini-series (you know the one... it's been done on the Super Bowl, the Cowboys, Twitter failing, etc) with a financial crisis epic.
Three of the episodes are up, and she tells me she's got seven more in the complete set.
Here's the first one:
If you're into finance, Equity Private is a must-read.... and now, a must-watch!
Back when I was at GM, working on investing in private equity funds, there were two funds I really liked that the team eventually turned down:
Union Square Ventures, which saw exits in Tacoda, Feedburner, and del.icio.us, and is nearly guaranteed (because of significant revenue traction) $200mil+ exits in Etsy and Indeed. That's not counting the potential value of Twitter, either.
The other one was a consumer focused buyout fund called Catterton Partners, which PEHub just announced had a 7x return on Wellness Pet Food.
"Wellness represents the second big exit for Catterton in four months. In April it earned more than 4x its money when it sold luxury hair product company Frederick Fekkai & Co. for more than $400 million..."
I'm not going to say I told you so, but...