Lotsa work going on right up to the finish.
People who actually know me recognize the image to the left as my avatar. They might not know what it is, but they know they see it across many of my various profiles and instant messenger accounts. It’s actually the screenshot of a Voki character that I created—a little bald dude with headphones in front of a baseball, surrounded by a fireball. It’s meaningful to me because I was the Director of Consumer Products at Oddcast when Voki was launched.
Fred told a similar story this week about his avatar:
“I began to use it a bit here and there around the web as I set up new profiles. But by no means was it the only profile picture I used. For corporate oriented services like LinkedIn, I'd use my Union Square Ventures headshot. For social nets like Facebook, I'd use a regular headshot. I used a photo of me taking a photo on Flickr for a long time.
But then I started to realize that the Wallstrip avatar was becoming my online identity. People would comment about it all the time. Around the time we sold Wallstrip, Howard asked Jenny to do a real painting of it which I now have in my office at Union Square Ventures. It's a real conversation starter.
Sometime in early 2008, I just decided to go with it everywhere. It's at the top of this blog and everywhere else I have an online identity. It's my online brand now.”
One of his commenters agreed: “thats how i recognize the Fred Wilson brand online.”
The key here is that, by making our online interactions personal, Fred and I are creating a brand for ourselves that has real business ROI. Followers of my blog and my Twitter account know that I bike, play softball, and kayak. They’ll joke with me about my taste for heavy industrial music, and they don’t mind so much the occasional snark I use in my writing, because when you deal with me professionally, you get Charlie O’Donnell the person, not just the resume.
It shouldn’t be any surprise, then, that I think of my online presence as my most important business asset—and that I conduct a lot of important business through these casual and personal channels.
That’s also why, more and more, LinkedIn is becoming less of a place of business for me, and more like a static rolodex. At the end of the day, LinkedIn just isn’t a place where I want to spend much time. I don’t engage in nearly the kind of interesting back and forth that I do on Twitter or on Disqus comments either on my both or that of others. It’s just a well connected rolodex of over 1300 of my best contacts… but in the grand scheme of things, I’d rank it a distant fourth in terms of my most important online profiles behind my blog, Twitter, and Facebook.
So when I got notified that not only had LinkedIn removed my avatar, but had revoked my photo privileges, I was pretty stunned. They told me that “as a professional networking site” they give users the opportunity to upload a photo to assist other members in recognizing me.
Actually, I don’t need photos to help others remember who I am—because I only connect to people that already know me… and tend to know me pretty well. If you just saw my bald head at a conference and that’s all you have to go on, I’d rather you didn’t try to connect.
On top of that, LinkedIn’s language of photo “privileges” and giving me an “opportunity” is a rather interesting choice of words for a site that depends on its users’ content and active use of the site to upload their contacts to produce revenue. If anything, LinkedIn should be thanking me for the privilege I gave it to monetize my network, instead of reprimanding me for improper use of the “opportunity” it gave me like I was a child. Furthermore, who are they to tell me what acceptable professionalism is online? Clearly, over 1300 people find me acceptably professional. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t connect to me. How about removing all of the privileges of random people who don’t know me and try to connect.
I’ve been an active user of LinkedIn for years—advocating its usage and teaching about it up at Fordham. There are lots of things I wish it did—like helping me actively monitor relevant changes in my network or having better group tools. One problem I did not have, nor did anyone else, was too many people putting up avators or corporate logos as their image. It’s not a complaint you hear about Twitter—that the site is unprofessional because people don’t use their real pictures. LinkedIn may not care about how people conduct business now online—it’s making too much money selling access to my profile to recruiters. However, things have changed. More and more people are gathering in more friendly, social places online around common interests outside of their career and getting more business done like that than on a buttoned up resume site. Policing photos and reprimanding users that other users want to connect to shouldn’t be a priority for LinkedIn if it really wants to be the kind of place that up and coming professionals want to spend any time in.
My best friend since 1st grade just got hitched in Central Park.
Yesterday, I bought an Xbox off of BigDeal.com, one of our First Round Capital portfolio companies. I spent nearly an hour and a half bidding against some guy to try and buy at increments from about $18 all the way to $168. I tried every strategy I knew… holding out to the last second to try and lull him into a sense of security and then jump in… then brute forcing it by counterbidding every second all throughout the $30 and $60 range to try to wear him out. It was an addictive bidding frenzy—and my downside was just buying it at the Amazon price, so I couldn’t really lose. (I didn’t win, but I’ll be back!)
TechCrunch did a good job of covering the company yesterday, so I’ll just pull the highlights:
“BigDeal lets users purchase virtual bids $0.75 each which can then be used to bid on goods ranging from video games to high-end televisions. Whenever you bid on an item, its price increases by $0.15 and an extra 30 seconds are tacked on to the duration of the auction. With this model, items end up selling substantially below their market value. But one of the main criticisms of Swoopo was the risk of losing your money spent on bids (regardless of whether you win or not) when the auction concludes. BigDeal takes a couple of steps to mitigate this risk.
With BigDeal’s model, any users who get outbid get a full credit of the money uses for bids to buy the item via a “Buy Item Now” option (which Swoopo also has, called “Swoop-it-now”). So if you spent $10 on bids, your Buy It Now price will be dropped by $10. Of course, the Buy It Now price will frequently be higher than the price of item sold for in the auction but at least users aren’t necessarily losing money all together. And the Buy It Now price is set at the same price that Amazon lists for the same product.
That’s not all. BigDeal provides an added incentive for bids by letting all users trade in the money they spent on bids for gift cards. All users get $1 gift card discount for every $1 spent on bids. So if you buy $25 in bids, BigDeal will give you a $100 gift card for $75…
…It seems that Big Deal has taken the best elements of Swoopo’s model and added several features which make it more of a win-win for consumers. Plus, it adds information, like bidding history, to the process to make the auction more fair.”
I’ll be interested to see how the company works towards providing more and more auction transparency. Admittedly, when I bought my Xbox, I didn’t realize that I wasn’t getting my bid points back when I took the “buy it now” price. I thought everyone was seeing the same price, like a loaded gun on the table, and that everyone’s bid lowered it. I figured everyone else’s lost bids were subsidizing my price, but as it turns out, I didn’t really get “refunded” my points back—they just came off the MSRP. So, I effectively just paid the MSRP price… not what I wanted, but not a terrible outcome, since it’s been years since I had a game system and I was kind of itching to get back into it. Perhaps I’ll bring it to the new First Round offices in Union Square (coming this January) and we’ll have entrepreneur Madden tourneys!
I've been thinking a lot about where entrepreneurs and startup talent come out of in NYC. A lot of folks believe that you can train people coming out of the financial services base to do something entrepreneurial, but honestly, I'm not so sure about that. What I do think, however, is that it takes more than just a visionary leader or a ninja-level hacker to start a business. There are tons of startup companies in New York City, many already making money or well funded, that are looking for top supporting talent--engineers, designers, salespeople, business development pros, product managers, etc. This is where we, as the startup community, can do a better job--mining the installed base of talent in big companies. I'm actively looking for ideas on how to tell the masses of talented, experiences folks slaving away in Cubeworld that there's a thriving innovation community in New York City with lots of great companies looking for talent. How do we pick apart the CondeNasts, JP Morgans, and Time Inc's? Please talk to me about it. If you're a recovering Fortune 500 employee, tell me how you got out. (charlie@firstround.com) One way the nextNY community is trying to help is with Matchup Camp.
MatchupCamp is for skilled professionals to find new opportunities—for developers to find inspiring projects, for salespeople to find interesting products to sell, etc. It’s not a bunch of unemployed people handing out resumes. It’s for people looking to explore where they might best fit. When we did this two years ago, technical talent probably made up 40% of the crowd and we’re working hard to make sure it’s not just people with ideas, but people who can make them happen.
When: December 8th at 6:30
Where: FYI Studio 22 West 27th, 6th Floor
Wow… what a long way we’ve come. In February 2006, I started nextNY because the only community-wide event in town was the NY Tech Meetup and, at the time, it didn’t have much community about it. I think I was member #71 and now it’s got over 10,000. At the same time, the NY tech community has exploded with events, both educational and social. One look at GarysGuide and you can get quickly overwhelmed.
A number of people asked me at recent nextNY events how they can find out about what’s going on. Pointing a busy entrepreneur or executive to the nextNY listserv, which buzzes all day with discussion of memory caches, CMS’s, and finding a bookkeeper clearly isn’t the answer.
Therefore, I’ve decided to take the attendee lists from the last two Shakeshack events and some recent nextNY talks and start a once a week e-mail newsletter as a curated version of what’s going on around town and in the online communities as well. In the future, I’ll also be highlighting some open job positions, maybe some companies, and maybe just some recommendations on people that you should follow. If you’d like to sign up for the list, just go here. It’s going to look pretty texty and unformatted for a bit, but I’ll dress it up soon.
Event of the Week:
The Net Neutrality TechDebate, an Oxford style competitive back and forth on what is probably the most important topic in technology today that few of us have a clue about.
The debate will be held on Tuesday, November 17th at the IAC Building, 555 W 18th St btw 10th & 11th ave. Doors open at 7:00 PM. **RSVP here**
The Debaters
Against
James Assey - Executive Vice President, National Cable and Telecommunications Association
Robert Quinn - Senior Vice President-Federal Regulatory, AT&T
Christopher Yoo - Professor of Law and Communication; Director, Center for Technology, Innovation, and Competition, UPenn Law
For
Tim Wu - Coined the term "Network Neutrality"; Professor of Law, Columbia Law
Brad Burnham - VC, Union Square Ventures
Nicholas Economides - Professor of Economics, Stern School of
Business, New York University.
Can't make it?
The debate will be streamed live at: http://www.livestream.com/techdebate
A podcast will be available after the event at: http://tech-debate.com
Would rather drink?
Check out the NYVC Happy Hour instead.
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This week is O’Reilly’s Web 2.0 Expo at the Javits Center. By registering for an Expo Pass, you can get in free to see all the keynotes, the sponsored sessions, Web2Open, Launch Pad, and the Birds of a Feather sessions.
Here’s what you won’t want to miss:
Monday
Ignite NYC – 5 minutes, 20 slides. Geeks + Slideshows = Awesomeness
7PM at New World Stages: 340 West 50th Street
Tuesday
2PM: A Conversation with Caterina Fake Jennifer Pahlka (Code for America), Caterina Fake (Hunch)
2:25PM: Streams of Content, Limited Attention: The Flow of Information through Social Media danah boyd (Microsoft Research)
Wednesday
2:20pm A Conversation about the Realtime Web Brady Forrest (O'Reilly Media, Inc.), John Borthwick (betaworks)
Thursday
9:15am A Conversation with Beth Noveck Tim O'Reilly (O'Reilly Media, Inc.), Beth Noveck (Executive Office of the President/OSTP) <—Yes, *the* President
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It’s also Entrepreneur Week and there are a couple of noteworthy panels. Unfortunately the event is sold out, but there will be a livestream available on their site soon.
I think the pick of the conference is this panel at 2:15PM on Thursday:
The Revenue Inflection Point: The New Reality of Scaling a Business to $100MM in Revenue
MODERATOR: Bob Tedeschi, New York Times Technology Columnist
PANELISTS:
Stephen Messer, Co-Founder of Linkshare
Omar Amanat, Entrepreneur in Residence, Wharton School of Business
Marc Cenedella, Founder & CEO of TheLadders.com
Nancy Pedot, Former CEO of Gymboree & Party City
Chris McCann, President of 1-800 Flowers.com
Also right up there is this Friday panel at 10:30AM:
A Roadmap for the Entrepreneur Pt. 2: Top Venture Capitalists Reflect
MODERATOR: Murat Aktihanoglu, Founder of Centrl & Entrepreneurs Roundtable
PANELISTS:
Albert Wenger, Partner at Union Square Ventures
Jim Robinson, Co-Founder & Managing Partner of RRE Ventures
Anthony Marino, Managing Partner at Virgin Investments
Howard Morgan, Partner at First Round Capital
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This weekend is Startup Weekend. Startup Weekend recruits a highly motivated group of developers, business managers, startup enthusiasts, marketing gurus, graphic artists and more to a 54 hour event that builds communities, companies and projects.
David Kidder will be speaking Friday night while Nate Westheimer, Sam Lessin, and I will be on the Sunday night panel.
Last week, First Round Capital had its annual meeting, where we got to walk through our portfolio with our investors. Honestly, I didn’t realize how many cool companies we had invested in, so I’m going to take the time each Friday to highlight another company.
Since I got a “One of Josh Kopelman’s friends likes your photo” note from Thread yesterday, that’s going to be today’s spotlight.
Thread is a pretty simple concept: Meet people through your friends on Facebook. Now, conceptually, meeting people through social networks is a good idea—but we all know how unappealing setups can be. Thread enables you to get proactive about searching your friends’ networks while minimizing the effort and risk they put in as a middleman.
What I really like is the anonymizing features of the site—where someone can reach out to you, but they’re shown to you in a group. You only get matched when there’s mutual interest. That keeps down the awkwardness of a turndown should you ever meet in person. For all they know, you just don’t check the site. This works a little like those “One of your friends likes you” viral sites from the late 90’s, but now you’ve got the assurance that there’s a real human behind the interest.
The site could do a little better job learning about my preferences and keeping me searching for more people, but overall, it’s a pretty solid concept and execution. So, if you feel like you’ve got a pretty good network of single friends, but don’t really want to get too involved with matching people up, let the interwebz do all the heavy lifting and sign up for Thread. You can just sit back and reap all the social capital.