Tim Marman's Loosely Coupled

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• Announcing the Notches Toolbar

  We released the first version of the Notches Toolbar today . From the start, we’ve always felt that reviews need to be delivered contextually and thus have emphasized partnerships over simply aggregating reviews. At the same time, we recognize that partnerships are not always possible for a variety of reasons. To that end, I’m very excited to be able to finally announce the Notches Toolbar , a Firefox 3 extension that enhances your browsing experience by adding reviews to sites that don't have them. Of course, this functionality builds on the Notches platform, so any reviews written on other partners (such as Facebook and Microreviews) will also be visible through the Toolbar (and vice versa). I hope you’ll try it out today and let us know what you think . Posted Sep 05 2008, 07:09 PM by Tim with | with no comments Filed under: Technology, Startup, Programming, NextNY, Notches

• 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

• We are looking to hire good developers

  Notches is hiring developers . We’re looking to bring on developers to be part of the core engineering team. We want people that can contribute to the product in a myriad of ways beyond coding. We want people who can ask the tough questions and challenge us. We want people who are not afraid to take ownership over an area and really drive it forward. Our core platform is written in C# / .NET, so familiarity there will help – but ultimately we’re looking for smart, ambitious people with a good background in computer science, algorithms, and so on. Our offices are currently in downtown New York City (SoHo). We’re certainly flexible in terms of hours but we do want to spend as much time as possible collaborating in person – in other words, we’re not looking for offshore firms or out-of-town developers right now. You can find a more detailed job description here . If you’re interested or know anyone who might be, please contact us. Posted Jun 12 2008, 01:47 PM by Tim with | with no comments Filed under: Software Development, Personal, Web 2.0, C#, .NET, Entrepreneurship, Startup, Programming, Notches

• 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

• 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

• Dealing with Review Integrity

  Over on the Notches Blog , I wrote about review integrity , highlighting some of examples of abuse and how we're trying to deal with them. Posted Apr 07 2008, 05:31 PM by Tim with | with no comments Filed under: Notches

• Notches, a platform for reviews

  We've launched . Notches is a free, open, universal platform for reviews. We're building a network of applications, partners and cool tools. Reviews written in any of the network's sites will be part of the Notches system everywhere. All the pieces share a common back-end which handles the heavy lifting. Today, we have released our developer API as well as a Facebook application and Twitter interface . If you are interested in developing for our API, request a key and get started today. If you are a site looking to integrate reviews, let us know and maybe we can help. Posted Mar 04 2008, 04:49 PM by Tim with | with no comments Filed under: NYC, NextNY, Notches

• Facebook opens up with a JavaScript API

  Facebook just announced a new JavaScript Client Library that allows you to make Facebook API calls from any web site . In other words, you can start building Facebook applications are live outside of Facebook. I agree with Charlie that this move " makes membership in Facebook that much more valuable ", and is probably a direct response to the openness promised by OpenSocial . Duncan calls it a clever move , but if their goal is to truly build the social OS - or what Charlie calls a "social dial tone" - then it's a necessary move. Henry calls the strategy "brilliant" . This move seems another smart step toward a hybrid strategy: Allow app makers (and Facebook) to extend social-graph functionality to the web, gather more app users, and recruit more members--but retain full control over the social graph itself. This is precisely the approach we are taking with Notches. A "walled garden" is nice because you retain all control, but these days you need... Posted Jan 27 2008, 12:38 PM by Tim with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: Technology, Software Development, Web 2.0, Facebook, Notches

• Taking the Plunge and Rediscovering Passion

  In my first few years in college, I took a few gut courses that older friends assured me were easy, requiring only 4 hours of work a week. I did terrible in every one. The reason, of course, was that I hated those 4 hours and avoided the work whenever I could. After a couple of semesters of this, I just started taking courses that interested me. Instead of those random "gut" courses, I took various advanced computer science courses. They were easily three or four times as much work, but my GPA doubled. What I realized then is that my success was tied to passion. If my heart wasn't in something, I had a tough time pretending and putting in the hours. When I first joined Goldman Sachs in 1999 as an intern, I had the chance to work on some really cool projects. We built an AJAX framework with client-side calls to ASP/COM objects before there was such a thing as AJAX and SOAP. My career there had its ups and downs in terms of the projects I was working on - there were other really... Posted Jan 27 2008, 11:17 AM by Tim with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Personal, Entrepreneurship, Startup, Notches

• Passion and its role in evaluating new product ideas

  Evan Williams has an absolutely wonderful post up about evaluating a new product idea . I think Marc is spot on - the "personally compelling" criteria is the one that stands out. Last on the list, but probably the first question I ask myself is: How important to me is it that this product exists in the world? If I were evaluating a startup, I'd ask this of the founders. . . . In theory, you can get around this with lots of user research. (It's pretty clear neither Slide nor Rockyou 's founders are creating widgets based on their own needs and desires.) But you're more likely to get it wrong that way. When I've gone sideways, it's when I wasn't listening to my gut on this issue. Specifically, Blogger and Twitter were personally compelling, while Odeo wasn't. Clearly, you're better suited to build a best-of-breed product if you're intimately familiar with the space and "scratching your own itch". But perhaps more importantly, I think... Posted Dec 26 2007, 01:01 PM by Tim with | with no comments Filed under: Technology, Software Development, Personal, Business, Entrepreneurship, Startup, NextNY, Notches