When I was in high school we decided to walk to Ottawa. By we I mean 6 of us who were all in the school’s camping club, which was called Outward Bound and modeled after the Colorado-based program with the same name. We camped year-round, regardless of the season or the weather. One year a […]
Category: Digital Media
What Kind of Need Does Your Business Satisfy?
Recently a business acquaintance told me about a website he’d invested in. In many ways, it sounded like a good opportunity. It addressed the needs of a large segment of the population, there was no clear leader among the incumbents, there were obvious revenue streams. I wondered if my lack of enthusiasm was just my […]
Cat Cora iPad App
We’re thrilled to announce the launch of Cat Cora’s iPad app, “Cat Cora’s Kitchen,” designed and developed by Troubadour in partnership with Nimble Chef. Cat Cora is a world-renowned chef, cookbook author, restaurateur and TV host—most recently of “Around the World in 80 Plates” on Bravo. She remains the only female Iron Chef. Cat Cora’s Kitchen, […]
Whither Facebook?
The tsunami of commentary about Facebook’s IPO has finally died down. So now what? I predict several quarters–or even years–of earnings “surprises.” But as Facebook meets the challenge of monetizing its site, I see trouble ahead. The User Experience Facebook’s monetization strategy will inevitably end up degrading the user experience. […]
Gigmor
Last month we launched GIGMOR, a new social network for musicians that matches players and bands based on location and musical compatibility. I founded GIGMOR because after I moved to LA it took me months to find compatible musicians to jam and gig with. I know millions of musicians face the same challenge. Our goal […]
Music in the Digital Age
The decline of the music industry has been well documented. But music is as popular as ever. So what gives? I know I’m buying more music than ever because of price, convenience and availability. The cost of an album has gone way down and I can buy music 24/7 without leaving my house. In the old […]
Digital Media
It’s been a while since I’ve posted here but I’ve been swamped with fun projects at my digital media agency, Troubadour Digital Media. See our website for more information on some cool stuff that we’ve been working on. I’ve also been working hard on Gigmor, a new social network which will connect musicians, bands and […]
The Dunbar Number and Tribes, Big and Small
Wikipedia defines Dunbar’s number (commonly cited as 150) as a “theoretical cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. These are relationships in which an individual knows who each person is, and how each person relates to every other person.” Dunbar is director of the Institute of Cognitive […]
More on Hunch.com
I’m seeing more and more written about the emergence of personalization on the web, a trend that has had me pounding the table for over a year. Recently Chris Dixon, a co-founder of Hunch, (which I covered in an earlier post), addressed a comment by an anonymous user of formspring asking (a little contemptuously) why […]
Crowdsourcing: Pros and Cons
The term “crowdsourcing” always reminds me of the book title, “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds” (which has been on my reading list for years). A Wired writer coined the term in 2006 by combining “crowd” and “outsourcing.” Wikipedia (probably the best example of crowdsourcing) defines crowdsourcing as “the act of outsourcing tasks, traditionally […]
The Catbird Seat
“Pretty soon you’ll be sitting in the catbird seat,” my boss said with a sly grin. I mumbled a reply, hoping to hide my confusion, and looked up the expression when I got back to my office. Yes, it meant something good was going to happen and I began to speculate feverishly about what he […]
Hunch.com: Not Ready for Prime Time
I’ve been following Hunch.com for a while since their site offers “personalized recommendations,” a concept I’ve been exploring with Trybe. Hunch’s “topics” are user-generated and they use AI (Artificial Intelligence) to make recommendations based on members’ answers to a series of questions like “Can you do 10 pull-ups?” and “Do you live in a city, […]
Creative vs. Marketing
I was struck by a recent article in the NY Times about The Economist (which I used to read in my Wall Street days.) The editor was quoted as saying, “Once you start trying to segment and work out what people might want to see, I think that would be a journey to some type […]
Superstar Entrepreneurs
I went to a seminar not long ago entitled, How to be an Entrepreneur Superhero. A panel of entrepreneurs answered questions in front of a room full of reverential novice entrepreneurs, dispensing the usual homilies on how to be successful: perseverance, focus, obsessive, attention to detail, etc. One had sold his web company for $85 […]
Don’t be a victim
Don’t be a victim. I first heard that admonition from a senior executive when I was at AOL. He was commenting on complaints he was hearing after a big reorg. AOL, like all big technology companies, was prone to massive reorganizations. Some were genuine attempts to manage a company in the throes of hypergrowth in an […]
The Missing 3rd Place
Being part of a community is basic to our nature. At AOL we used to call online communities the “third place” after home and work. Those of us who don’t go to church lack that third place and I know I for one crave it. (Starbucks calls itself a third place but I don’t buy […]
A.B.C.
I was having breakfast with a prominent VC a while back and happened to mention that my two partners had done some work for another startup that had gone belly up. “You’ll need a letter from your attorney stating that there are no issues with the code,” he said sternly, adding, “When you meet a […]
Web of One
“We believe in a web of one,” Carol Bartz stated at TechCrunch Disrupt. Yahoo produces thousands of custom versions of their home page to reflect users’ interests and preferences. I was struck by her comment because we all waste too much time trying to find what we’re looking for—online or offline. At AOL, our mantra […]
Startup Alley
I’ll be at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in New York next week and will post updates from there. Trybe will be exhibiting in “Startup Alley” all day Tues, 5/25. Feel free to drop by and say hello. We’ll be demoing gigmor, our musician matching site, which is in pre-beta and an interactive mockup of the […]
Skate to where the puck will be…
Recently I was having lunch with two tech entrepreneurs and we ended up in a debate about the right target market for startup web sites. I said I was aiming for affluent, well-educated users, not early adopters. I’ve watched plenty of “cool,” “hip” sites go out of business because they couldn’t attract a big enough […]