If you’re interested in social media and aren’t already a subscriber to Andrew Chen’s blog, you should be. Today’s post is just one example of why: a companion post to his earlier analysis of user cohort segmentation, Andrew lays out a mathematical model for viral user adoption and attrition over time that makes it painfully continue…
As most readers of this blog know, I’m a big fan of Warren Buffet’s partner Charlie Munger, but as a startup investor I follow Fred Wilson just as closely. I just read this Fred Wilson post and I swear Fred was channeling Charlie when he wrote it. If you don’t want to click through and continue…
A while back I posted about some counterintuitive trends in digital media. My example then was Colligent’s success at selling tools and analytics to support a new model of marketing for the digital music industry. Today’s example is even more surprising: despite growing inventories, increasingly transparent (and competitive) markets and frictionless online purchasing, prices in continue…
This article in Wednesday’s New York Times caught my eye. The theme is ‘coworking’: “where someone sets up an office and rents out desks, creating a community of people who have different jobs but who want to share ideas.” We didn’t know we were in on a national trend, but this is what Andy and continue…
Q: Chris, as an entrepreneur, how do you balance the need for a general state of dissatisfaction and the need to celebrate victories as they come? Posted by rpathak A: Hi Rahul, thanks for the great question (and apologies for the delay in responding – just operator error, as far as I can tell). My continue…
This item caught my eye this morning as I scanned my Reader account: “Mozilla officially launched its new Thunderbird focused spinoff Mozilla Messaging yesterday with David Ascher as CEO. Mozilla Messenging begins with the proposition that e-mail is broken, with its goal being to fix it.” I’m currently working with or have recently heard a continue…
I’m not sure where I got that line, but it’s a pretty good bet it was my brother (who’s one of the best skiers I know). The same formula applies to startups: if you haven’t had a blowup yet you’re probably not trying hard enough. I was reminded of this by a couple of posts continue…
Yesterday was Askablogr’s 1-month birthday, and in keeping with my “Open Startup” promise, here’s a little stats update. Last week was a great week for the site. I got distracted by real life in early February and stopped fanning the Askablogr flames for a while, with predictable results. But then Craig shipped WordPress support, which continue…
I just came across this interesting piece by John Markoff in today’s New York Times titled “Seattle Taps Its Inner Silicon Valley”. I grew up in Seattle but lived and worked in the Bay Area through the first Internet boom-bust cycle, and the idea of Seattle becoming more like Silicon Valley strikes me both as continue…
I received a link to this deck last fall via an email chain that included a long list of Seattle-area entrepreneurs and VCs. I’ve since passed it on by email to over a dozen people who were looking for ways to accelerate user adoption of (or engagement with) their Web application. I just sent it continue…