A Venture Forth

I’m Still Here…

Dan Grossman — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 22:28:23 +0000

…notwithstanding my lack of recent posts. I’ve been busy with projects and haven’t had much time to blog. In the meantime, check out this Slate article (co-written by my fiancee). It’s a little off topic but that’s a proud guy’s liberty…

Hedge Funds Love Volatility

Dan Grossman — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 02:03:00 +0000

Paramount studios announced today that they’ve severed ties with Tom Cruise after a 13 year relationship due to his “unacceptable” behavior. Strangely, Cruise’s agents claim that they terminated negotiations with Paramount after turning to a pair of hedge funds to finance Cruise’s future projects. Clearly, there’s more to this story: as my fiancee said, Tom Cruise could declare himself the spiritual leader of a small group of zebras and studios would still bank his movies if they believed in his money-making appeal. The real question is why would hedge funds want to get involved? Didn’t they see this?

A year ago, the Boston Globe wrote about how hedge funds are beginning to poach on venture firm’s traditional turf by financing early stage companies. I suppose a certain amount of “mission drift” is normal, but today’s move seems wacky.

Video of the Day: Young Steve Jobs

Dan Grossman — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 19:32:07 +0000

From 1984, as he presents the original Macintosh computer:

The screaming crowd reminds me of footage of old Beatles’ concerts–maybe it’s the bow tie?

What is Creativity?

Dan Grossman — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 16:15:20 +0000

Umair at Bubblegeneration recently wrote a great note on the “post-network” economy–the main idea being that bland strategy is increasingly a commodity, and that in mind, the next great shift in value creation will come from creativity.

But what is creativity?

The best answer I’ve recently heard comes from Sir Ken Robinson. If you haven’t seen his talk from TED, available here, I recommend you check it out when you have a free 20 minutes.

In a nutshell, Robinson defines creativity as the process of generating original ideas that have value–and typically, these ideas come through the interaction of different disciplinary ways of looking at the world. Robinson argues that our current educational systems look for and cultivate a narrow set of skills–typically related to mathematics and language–at the expense of many others. As a result, he believes, we aren’t fully preparing ourselves for the future.

Robinson’s ideas (which deserve a much fuller explanation–check out the video) have significant implications for managers and policy makers. At a macro level, what is the right composition for functional teams tasked with key projects? What are the right metrics to track, measure, and change? How can different ways of thinking be effectively synthesized into a coherent plan?

At a micro level, what do you do to foster creativity? If you’re a software engineer, would it be helpful (not to mention fun) to visit an exhibit on Dada-inspired art? If you’re a painter, would you gain from building your own TiVo?

Kiko Now For Sale on eBay

Dan Grossman — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 21:18:20 +0000

Kiko, the online calendar I picked as my favorite Ajax application back in September 2005, is now for sale on eBay. The starting bid is $49,999.99, with no takers yet.

While Kiko’s functionality was solid (and improving, especially with recent releases), the team apparently wasn’t able to develop a viable business model to compete with the many other free alternatives (30Boxes, CalendarHub, Airset, and–oh yeah–Google Calendar).

I suggest keeping an eye on company founders Justin Kan and Emmet Shear–they’ve no doubt learned lessons here and will go on to bigger and better projects…

Pictures That Lie

Dan Grossman — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 18:58:17 +0000

CNet has an interesting gallery of doctored photos–worth a look, especially given the recent Reuters brouhaha (via Buzzmachine).

Mahmood Ahmadinejad Is Blogging

Dan Grossman — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 22:49:13 +0000

In my last post, I described a new service that tracks what other sites are popular with my readers. I didn’t fully realize it at the time, but one such site is the brand new blog of Mahmood Ahmadinejad, the President of Iran. It’s worth a look (but see the update below first)–in the upper right hand corner, you’ll find a series of flags. Clicking on the second from the left will translate the site into English from Persian (thanks, AfghanMania).

The site also has a “question of the day” feature. Today’s question is: “Do you think that the US and Israeli intention and goal by attacking Lebanon is pulling the trigger for another word war?” Currently, 71,844, or 55% of all replies say yes. 58,919, or 45%, say no.

Frightening.

MyBlogLog

Dan Grossman — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 21:49:45 +0000

MyBlogLog is an interesting service that’s worth knowing about–especially if you maintain a blog. Initially, the company offered a simple web analytics tool which provided basic statistics on site visits, page views, and outclicks. Recently, MyBlogLog launched a community feature: after registering, the service lets you join the “community” of any other registered site. You can then easily find the blogs that others in the community are reading. Some of those blogs will likely be interesting to you.

MyBlogLog also anonymously tracks what links were clicked on by members of my blog’s community. Here is a list of today’s top ten for my readers:

I don’t watch The Family Guy so I’m not sure what to say about item #5….

Anyway, those of you who read this site with your browser rather than a feed reader may have noticed a widget like this on my sidebar:

As you’ve probably guessed, the widget shows a list of recent registered readers. It’s fun to track and, as I’ve been looking for new ways to better engage with those who read this blog, I encourage you to click here to sign up (it’s free and takes < 1 minute). Thanks–I appreciate it.

Interactive Buys Majority Stake in CollegeHumor

Dan Grossman — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 16:41:32 +0000

Looks like Interactive just bought a 51% stake in NYC-based ConnectedVentures, which runs CollegeHumor.com, among other sites (link to more deal info). Gawker reported last month that this was in the works, valuing the company somewhere between $20-30M. According to CollegeHumor’s media kit, the company displays ~280 million pages each month and has ~240,000 email subscribers.

At the same time, rumors are still circulating that Viacom will buy The Onion. The NY Post puts the price tag for this deal at only ~$10M (link).

While these are small deals, I think the moves make good sense: there’s real value in brands. In particular, both CollegeHumor and The Onion have fanatically loyal readers in a premium (ie young) demographic.

Fastest Growing Web Sites

Dan Grossman — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 19:30:19 +0000

Following is Nielsen/NetRating’s list of the top ten fastest growing internet sites, as measured by monthly unique visitors:

While I wasn’t surprised to see Wikipedia and MySpace, I didn’t expect HSBC or the Associated Press to make the cut…