Tim Marman's Loosely Coupled

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• You don’t change the world with a marginally better mousetrap

  For those of you paying attention, Cuil , a new search engine taking aim at Google, launched with much hype. Much of that hype comes from the fact that it was founded by former Google search architect Anna Patterson and her husband, Stanford professor Tom Costello. That hype and good press didn’t last long though. WebWare says they showed us how not to launch a search engine . Forget the hype and whether Cuil is or isn’t better or different or whatever than Google and all the rest – the real point is that it just doesn’t matter . As Jeff Nolan puts it , “you don’t beat Google just by being marginally better than Google”. I wrote recently that technology only matters when it creates new possibilities . Here, Cuil doesn’t really bring anything new to the table. Cuil claims to be be “bigger than Google” in terms of what it indexes, but it doesn’t really matter since most us of never get past the first page of results. Even though the This also underlines part of why Microsoft and Yahoo! can... Posted Jul 30 2008, 11:40 AM by Tim with | with no comments Filed under: Rants, Business, Microsoft, Google, Entrepreneurship, Startup, Venture Capital, Facebook

• Revisiting (and rethinking) the Twitter “Pay to Listen” business model

  Personally, I thought Charlie was spot on when he said that Sermo’s “Pay to Listen” business model might be the answer for Twitter and similar services. This was before the acquisition of Summize, which Allen thought was a short-sighted move . When Summize presented at the NY Tech meetup , they spoke about very large aspirations to track the real-time conversational Web, not just Twitter. If Twitter acquires the service, that goes bye-bye. As I said in comments , this makes more sense if “their monetization strategy is with analytics and reporting as Charlie has suggested in the past. In that case, Summize's technology is more than just a fix for the search and replies - it's the engine by which Twitter can make their money.” Recent chaos allegedly caused by the the new Twitter anti-spam bot gives me even more reason to suspect that this is the model. First, let me start off by saying that I don’t really see spam as a problem with Twitter. In fact, that’s the whole point of the... Posted Jul 27 2008, 12:46 PM by Tim with | with no comments Filed under: Business, Startup, Twitter

• The Exaggerated Death of Voicemail

  Mike Arrington said “ voicemail is dead ”, and I used to agree. I hated voicemail forever but it was a reality we had to live with. (I’ve made my suggestions in the past on how to leave good voicemail ). The thing that changed that all for me was voice-to-text voicemail conversion. I couldn't live without SpinVox - it's invaluable for all of the reasons that Paul lays out . (E.g., Corey uses PhoneTag , formerly Simulscribe). Best yet, it's helped me achieve a single inbox with my voicemail and e-mails. Paul highlights an important piece at play here - for most of us, it's a lot faster to consume voicemail after being converted to text. It allows me to process messages quicker, it ties into my existing Outlook workflow, and it allows me to read messages when I couldn’t otherwise (e.g., in a meeting, a loud bar, etc). At the same time, it's often easier and quicker to generate that message. If you’re driving, don’t have a full QWERTY keyboard on your device, or whatever... Posted Jul 09 2008, 03:37 PM by Tim with | with no comments Filed under: Productivity, Business

• Why you SHOULDN’T start a tech company in Silicon Valley

  There’s been a bit of back and forth on what the best place to start a technology company is these days. The conventional wisdom these days is that the place to start and run a technology company is Silicon Valley. The key reasons put forth to justify this is money, talent, and expertise. If you’re initially choosing where to move and start a company, Silicon Valley seems to be the right choice based on the confluence of these factors – but I would argue that in some cases these advantages are not that strong and there are just as good reasons to start it elsewhere. Money Most of the time when people are talking about money in the context of startups, they’re talking about access to capital, particularly in the early stages of a company. Menlo Park has perhaps the highest concentration of VCs around, at least those focused on technology companies, but for the most part they don’t limit investments based on geography. Sequioa says it is "helpful" if... Posted Jul 08 2008, 09:00 AM by Tim with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: Rants, Business, Entrepreneurship, NYC, Startup, Venture Capital, NextNY, Notches

• Google is “fast becoming just another company”

  An interesting article about the backlash with Google increasing its day care costs ( via Alex ). Two months ago, Google held a series of secret focus groups with employees who have children in Google’s day care facilities. The purpose was to gauge their reaction to the company’s plan to raise the amount it charged for in-house day care by 75 percent. Parents who had been paying $1,425 a month for infant care would see their costs rise to nearly $2,500 — well above the market rate. For parents with toddlers and preschoolers, who were charged less, the price increases were equally eye-popping. Under the new plan, parents with two kids in Google day care would most likely see their annual day care bill grow to more than $57,000 from around $33,000. At the first of the three focus groups, parents wept openly. As word leaked out about the company’s plan, the Google parents began to fight back. They came up with ideas to save money, used the company’s T.G.I.F. sessions — a weekly meeting for... Posted Jul 05 2008, 10:38 AM by Tim with | with no comments Filed under: Business, Microsoft, Google, Startup, Facebook

• Serial Entrepreneurs and High Valuations

  I wrote in the past that sometimes you can take too much money - doing so creates certain expectations for an exit that might not be achievable and limits your flexibility. In the context of the discussion last week, I think it's important to highlight that these economics are not always the fault of the venture capitalist. For example, Jason Calacanis said you should take as much money as you can get and Marc Andresseen said “ in general, [you should raise] as much as you can ”. Billions or Bust Another one of my favorite recent examples is Slide, founded by Max Levchin of PayPal fame. Slide recently raised $50M from T-Rowe Price and Fidelity - giving up 9% for a pre-money valuation of roughly $500M. Granted, T-Rowe Price and Fidelity probably aren't quite expecting the same kind of returns over the same time frame as a VC, but it still sets a ridiculous high floor for an exit. That is, in part, the plan. As Sarah Lacy put it , "Levchin, who co-founded and later sold PayPal... Posted Jun 09 2008, 09:06 AM by Tim with | with no comments Filed under: Web 2.0, Business, Entrepreneurship, Startup, Venture Capital, NextNY

• Simultaneous Discovery and its impact on stealth mode

  We’ve talked a lot about the anti-stealth movement here and on the nextNY list, and the topic has resurfaced again recently thanks to Brad Burnham’s post about the advantages of being open . I noticed that, at least anecdotally, there was a correlation between how open entrepreneurs were with us and their ultimate success. Simply put the entrepreneurs who are aggressively open in describing their plans seem to do better than the ones who are cagey. There is absolutely no data underneath this observation. It is just my sense after meeting hundreds of entrepreneurs over 15 years as a VC. If it is true, it could be for lots of reasons. The more experienced an entrepreneur, the more likely they are to understand that ideas are rarely unique, but the ability to assemble a team and execute against that idea is rare. Perhaps they are just more confident, and it is confidence that is correlated with success. But recently, I have started to think that there might be something more going... Posted Jun 08 2008, 09:49 PM by Tim with | with no comments Filed under: Intellectual Property, Rants, Patent, Innovation, Business, Entrepreneurship, Startup, Social Behavior, NextNY, Notches

• Free can make you a lot of money

  I’ve talked a bit in the past about the economics of free , and anyone who reads TechDirt knows that Mike Masnick has long been a proponent of these “new economics”. Mike recently gave an awesome presentation at mesh08 presentation called the The Infinite Good on this subject, making the case why free is not a bad thing and how it can actually make you more money. The video is available at rabbletv . Unfortunately, they allow you to embed but not link to a specific video. To watch, select “On-Demand”, choose “mesh Conference 2008″, then select Mike’s presentation. ( via Rob , who also happens to be a co-founder of mesh). When dealing with infinite supply, artificial scarcity is not the answer – limiting a resource shrinks the market. On top of this, infinite goods are much more prevalent in our digital world. The trick is to figure out how to use the infinite goods (i.e., the music that can be easily copied) to make the scarce goods that you control (i.e., the artist, the concerts) more... Posted Jun 04 2008, 03:21 PM by Tim with | with no comments Filed under: Intellectual Property, Business, Startup, Venture Capital

• Innovation, Disruption and The Economics of Free

  Hank Williams managed to stir up quite the controversy with his recent post lamenting the rise of free and blaming the VCs . His assertion is that the venture capitalists have made free, ad-supported businesses the norm and effectively "ruined it for everyone else" (my words). I believe it should be possible to start a small business and to have a small number of profitable customers, and to earn a living. From there, it should be possible to work hard, and to grow your business into something substantial. Until recently, this was the American way, and it applied to technology as much as to any other business. But no more. In today’s “free” world, in most online business categories, it is inherently impossible to start a small self-sustaining business and to grow it. This is because in the digital world, advertising, the only real revenue stream, cannot support a small digital business. If businesses were based on the idea that people paid for services then small... Posted Apr 08 2008, 10:41 PM by Tim with | with 4 comment(s) Filed under: Rants, Innovation, Business, Entrepreneurship, Startup, Venture Capital, NextNY, Notches

• T-Mobile doesn't know how to treat its customers

  It looks like T-Mobile dropped their data plan from $29.99/mo to $19.99/mo. I originally thought this was related to the new unlimited rate plans and losing the Starbucks account , but it was actually back in September (on my birthday no less). I must have missed it at the time, given that whole wedding thing. And worse, it turns out you have to actually ask for the new rate . After reading Kevin's post, I logged in to My T-Mobile today to adjust my plan. To add insult to injury, check out the options I'm presented with. For the past 5 months, I've been paying $10 more than I should have for this service. T-Mobile should have adjusted this for me automatically (as Kevin said, you can be sure they would if the price went up). At the very least, they could have told me about it via a pamphlet or during the time I spent talking to a T-Mobile representative as I was trying to get my phone unlocked for the honeymoon. They did neither, and were quite happy to let me pay $10 more a... Posted Feb 24 2008, 10:16 AM by Tim with | with 5 comment(s) Filed under: Rants, Gadgets, Things that bother me, Business, Marketing