frankly speaking

Great slideshow from Tim Homuth about how to ‘Think Like a...

Sun, 27 May 2012 10:48:04 -0700

Great slideshow from Tim Homuth about how to ‘Think Like a Growth Hacker’.

Life, Elevated, in the SF Bart (via)

Fri, 25 May 2012 12:40:26 -0700

Life, Elevated, in the SF Bart (via)

Undervaluing Facebook

Sun, 20 May 2012 14:37:38 -0700

Facebook went public last week and to people outside tech and finance, it appeared to be a flop. The share price ended the day at nearly the exact same price as the price it ipo’d at. Further, there’s plenty of evidence that the banks that brought the company public were buying tons of shares towards the close of the trading day to bring support to the price of $38/share.

Lots of people are still saying that Facebook is still overvalued at its current price. In fact, my friend Brandon said the following:

Here’s the problem with that analysis - Facebook has nearly 900mm users. Assuming the company is worth $100B, and using Brandon’s logic, that would value the personal data of every user at $111. I think most people would value their personal information at a much, much higher dollar figure than that.

Further, influential Tech Blogger, Sarah Lacy was on CNN this morning and I felt made a much more compelling point. She said that Facebook went public way too late (in comparison to companies such as Zynga and Groupon). To a certain extent, Sarah’s right - Facebook has nearly 900mm users and it’s been widely reported that their user acquisition has slowed somewhat.

Here’s the point that I think is being overlooked by most people, Facebook’s core business, advertising, is really only 4 years old. Re-read that last sentence again. That means that Facebook has yet to really scale it’s ability to make money. Remember when Google’s Adwords program was only 4 years old when it went public - and look at the behemoth that it’s become today - most companies can’t live without it. Facebook has yet to really tap into most of the ad dollars that are out there. Further, there are other business models that could have a huge impact on their bottom line (Facebook Credits being one of them). Once advertisers figure out how to properly leverage facebook the way they leverage Adwords and when etailers finally figure out F-Commerce, the possibilities for Facebook’s stock price are endless.

Data doesn’t lie. More here

Sun, 06 May 2012 10:51:11 -0700

Data doesn’t lie. More here

Organic vs Non-Organic Customers

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 17:18:33 -0700

I follow a lot of blogs of guys who moonlight as venture capitalists, and one thing I’ve noticed that they all agree on is how much they hate paid marketing and much prefer organic growth. I’ve written here before why I believe that thought process is misguided. Having said that, I’ve had some time to think about what they really mean and here’s what I’ve come up with - organic customers are worth more than paid customers.

Think about it, for the most part, tv, radio, billboard and banner advertising are demand stimulating channels - the purpose is for the advertiser to get a potential consumer interested in their product. Search is a demand fulfilling channel - someone types in a query into google because they are already interested in a particular subject or product and they click on the link that they find most relevant.

Customers who come directly to your website (or in some cases searched for your product or heard about your product from a friend) are generally referred to as organic customers. The life time value of these customers (from what I’ve seen) is longer and more valuable than it is for non-organic customers. This is the reason (I believe) venture capitalists would prefer organic customers over non-organic customers.

Further, the cost of acquiring an organic customer is dramatically lower than the cost of acquiring a non-organic customer. So simple math (longer life-time value, less cost) tells you that the focus of your strategy should be to get organic customers.

That said, it would still be a mistake to have zero paid advertising. Some traction is better than no traction and paid advertising is a way for you to get customers quickly and if done right, is a scalable solution to customer acquisition.

Want.

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 17:00:02 -0700

Want.

Love this..

Sun, 15 Apr 2012 12:03:03 -0700

Love this..

Photo

Sun, 08 Apr 2012 11:51:00 -0700

(via)

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 16:13:30 -0700

(via)

Rise of the CrowdSourced Start-Up

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 20:08:00 -0700

Recently, the US Senate passed the JOBS act. One of the most interesting provisions of this Act allows for more start-ups to pursue funding through crowdsourced funding methods. Of all the things that the Obama Administration has done, this could yet prove to be the most valuable.

The ramifications of this are pretty huge for technology companies, and this could go along way to easing unemployment in our country. This is sure to stimulate growth from the bottom and hopefully further disrupt age old ways of doing business. One of the big problems that many would be entrepreneurs have faced when trying to start companies is the very restrictive nature of trying to secure capital from angels and venture capitalists. Now, entrepreneurs can raise that much needed capital from complete strangers.

Make no mistake, this process will not be perfect. There will of course be bad apples who take advantage of the system and use money from well-intentioned individuals for nefarious purposes. Further, there will be thousands of uneducated potential investors out there who think they’re the next Peter Thiel or Ron Conway and end up losing their shirt.

Eventually, through trial and error, I think the process will work itself out, and some basic ground rules will be put in place that protect investors and companies and this will be a huge win for everyone involved.

How I’m traveling to Paris…

Sun, 25 Mar 2012 17:38:00 -0700

How I’m traveling to Paris…

Why I'm off the Foursquare Bandwagon

Sat, 24 Mar 2012 12:57:00 -0700

Look, I like Foursquare a lot. I’ve been a big fan of the company ever since it launched. I’ve even reached out to Alex to give him a couple product ideas. I think the company has tons of potential and it’s going to exit for a ridiculous multiple one day and make Dennis, Naveen, Tristan and Alex very rich. Bully for them.

Here’s the problem - using Foursquare is relatively pointless. Sure, it tells my friends where I am whenever I check in - but I can also do so via a number of different social methods (or I can go old school and text people where I am). Further, I live in the Bay Area and everyone is on the Foursquare and they use it frequently - so frequently that it’s pretty useless for me to check-in to a place and hope that I get the ‘Mayor’ special. It’s doubtful that I’ll ever become the mayor of any of the places I frequent (go ahead and call me a trend follower, I really don’t care).

The move that I thought was really interesting for Foursquare was partnering up with AmEx to provide people % off purchases whenever a user who synced up their AmEx card with their foursquare account. This made sense, but unfortunately for people like me, it only helped people with an American Express card. People with AmEx cards typically tend to fall in the higher end of the income bracket.

If Foursquare wants me back, all they have to do is get another deal with Visa or MasterCard and I’ll be back faster than you can email me to let me know about the deal. Hell, give me a call, Tristan, and I’ll get a deal going with the Prepaid Visa Card that I manage and give you access to millions of customers, most of whom have mobile smart phones.

If you weren’t a fan of Armani, you will be now…

Sun, 11 Mar 2012 11:06:49 -0700

If you weren’t a fan of Armani, you will be now…

How Successful Do You Want To Be?

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 10:19:47 -0800

How Successful Do You Want To Be?

Bringing (Un)Sexy Back

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 13:26:00 -0800

When a lot of people start their business, they do it for the wrong reasons - they do it for the parties, they do it for the women (or men), they do it for the press, they do it for the stock and they do it for the money. They go out of their way to try and get a weekly mention by Mike Arrington or a tweet from Sarah Lacy. This can be an effective strategy but it’s not always a winning strategy.

When I opened up the SF office of my current company, there was no new office party where we invited top name reporters hoping that they might drop a mention in their twitter feed or check in to our party on foursquare. Even though our company was founded by a guy who is very well known to a lot of people and backed by a top tier venture capitalist and a premier private equity company, you don’t consistently see us in the headlines.

Our business isn’t sexy - we don’t gamify, pivot or provide platforms for other companies to make money. But we’re good at what we do and we provide a product that serves a lot of people well. We’re not number 1 in our industry (yet) but we are very competitive. We don’t hit a lot of homeruns, but we hit solid doubles and triples. We put points on the board.

The reality is, for all the Mark-Z’s and Dennis Crowley’s in the world, there are hundreds of Joe Businessmans, people whose businesses will never see the front page of TechCrunch or the back page of the New York Times. When you start a company, focus on a the product, market the product well (and efficiently) and everything else will take care of itself.

Crazy post courtesy of @zerohedge showing youth unemployment...

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 19:07:00 -0800

Crazy post courtesy of @zerohedge showing youth unemployment trends in Europe..

"“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”"

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 20:03:43 -0800

“

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

”

- Leonardo Da Vinci

Disrupting Hollywood

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 16:06:00 -0800

I took my five-year old to the movies today. I spent $30 combined on tickets and two small popcorns. Here’s the problem, I really don’t have a problem paying that much for a movie, but I know a lot of people that do.

Maybe not this year, and probably not next, but at somepoint, the movie business is going to become more broken that it already is. The masses simply won’t be able to afford to pay $50 to see the next blockbuster. Something has to change.

The technology for that change is already in place. Broadband penetration reaches most rural areas these days. With a couple clicks of my mouse in fact, I could have simply avoided paying the $30 and streamed the movie right from my laptop to my big screen. But, I consider myself somewhat ethical, so I paid to go see it.

Here’s the point - Hollywood needs to realize that there’s a much bigger market potential by streaming first run movies directly into people’s homes rather than forcing them to get a babysitter for their kid, pay for parking, pay $10 per ticket, $30 for snacks and an untold amount of patience for having to sit in a dark auditorium with complete strangers.

To their credit, some movie executives have realized the value of allowing their customers from getting first run movies directly in their homes. Recently (while it was still in theaters) I was able to watch “Margin Call” from the comfort of my home. Sure, I paid my cable provider a premium for watching the movie - a cost I would happily pay for first run movies in the future.

This idea isn’t unique at all; Mark Cuban first floated it a couple years ago (and to his credit, most movies from his production company are streamed via cable companies while they’re in theaters). All someone needs to do is convince the rest of the Hollywood execs of how much they can benefit (read - profit) by taking the same approach.

Funny that Bryce would post this video this weekend. My boss and...

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 10:30:57 -0800

Funny that Bryce would post this video this weekend. My boss and I were discussing this exact same subject as we were driving up the 101 on Thursday and were passed by an experimental google self-driving car. The funny thing was, he seemed much more comfortable with the concept of self-driving cars than me.

Definitely makes you stop and think about what the next big thing is.

brycedotvc:

I saw this video from Matt Jones last week and I haven’t been able to shake his concept of the robot readable world.

Let the concept, it’s implications and opportunities, rattle around in your head for a bit this weekend

It’s a new year and I think it’s going to be much weirder and interesting than the last one.

Which is why Matt Jones discussing the opportunity of making the world more robot readable is required weekend viewing on BRYCE DOT VC.

Luxury Rap - let’s be honest. Kanye and to a lesser...

Tue, 27 Dec 2011 17:25:00 -0800

Luxury Rap - let’s be honest. Kanye and to a lesser extent, Jay-Z get a bad name from a lot of people for the genre of music they are involved in. They rap about everything to women, to cars to ridiculous vacations. Most people will never be able to experience what these two guys experience. These guys are aspirational rappers - Jay transformed from a realist (well, I guess he still is a realist). He’s a guy who talked about what life was like selling dope, to a guy who now talks about decking out his bathroom with pieces of art worth millions.

Both of these guys never thought they would be where they are today. They really enjoy what they’re doing, and it shows up in everything they do, especially in their latest album ‘Watch the Throne”

The above video shows a little bit of what goes on behind the scenes in producing an aspirational form of art.