Jamie Wins $426K in Big Brother Finale

jamie wins
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

My big brother bet for the last few weeks came in - Jamie won BB06 and $426K. TV SMS voting competitions are generally driven by 14-18 year old y-grrls and Jamie will have dominated their vote, and there was no against faction. (as both David and Camilla had)

I spent today (largely in the car for 5 hours)... at the Graeme Samuel talk in at Crown care of Rachel Slattery, which was interesting hearing about fast DSLAM's/ADSL2! and fast internet, which this country needs already without the rubbishy politics that is going on in TelcoLand. Just build it already and we will come.

I'm going to watch Jamie on gnoos (as well as big brother keyword) and see how quickly Aussie bloggers start talking up Jamie's win and what they think.

36 Months of Web 2.0 to Go, Max.

georgia rule
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Lindsay Lohan's latest exhaustion infraction with her film producers has shortened her summer window for simultaneous personal anarchy and wealth creation. At the same time establishing an attention deficit disorder Web 2.0 play has an equivalent perishability of 24-36 months care of Dead 2.0 (a post Fred + Feld are doing a jack johnson like summer riff' off)

It's amazing how over summer in the US, nothing much happens. Even in the blogosphere. We are coming out of winter here, and it feels as if the US is in cruising along mode. Anyway here is Mr Feld's quote : "As to whether Web 2.0 is a short-term window which may close in less than two to three years, I have no idea. Ask me again in three years. However, I expect that in three years there will still be an opportunity to create great Internet-related companies."

Dees beat Dogs Day Afternoon

hamstring
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Awesome day with Father of the Year Mr Strawberry Paton as we watched a highly enjoyable, skilled and passionate game of football, where the Dees beat the Dogs. The first quarter was a shootout, with Footscray up at qtr time.

With Neitz kicking goals at the start of the first 3 quarters and Adam Yze kicking 5 in his 250th, the Dees couldnt be stopped. Byron Pickett and his brother Aaron Davey have 3 week hamstring injuries from the match though.

Great debut by Nathan Jones : An 18 year old who was Melbourne's top draft pick last year, who has been killing it at Sandy. He had 17 odd possessions wearing Robbie Flower's old number (who gave him his #2 jumper on Friday night at a presentation)

Go Dees. The Blues next week. Watch out Dave Hughes, the blue boys are going down. Check post match gnoos on demons.

MELBOURNE: 5.2 9.5 13.9 18.11 (119)
WESTERN BULLDOGS: 6.3 6.7 7.12 9.14 (68)
GOALS – Melbourne: Yze 5, Neitz 3, Davey 2, McLean 2, Robertson 2 Holland, Godfrey, Bate, Bartram
Bulldogs: Cross 2, Ray, Grant, Smith, Johnson, Robbins, Eagleton, Minson
BEST – Melbourne: Bruce, Yze, Godfrey, Ward, McLean, Whelan, Neitz, Carroll
Bulldogs: Cross, Morris, Boyd, Griffen, Cooney
INJURIES – Melbourne: Davey (hamstring), Pickett (hamstring). Bulldogs: Nil.
CHANGES – Melbourne: Dunn replaced in selected side by Brown.
Bulldogs: Nil.
UMPIRES: James, Head, Ellis
REPORTS - Nil
CROWD - 36,466 at MCG

Yze : "And we are not going to get sucked in about where we finish on the ladder because that's what we have done in the past (before falling away in the latter stages of the season) so we are not looking too far ahead."

Kazaa/Skype Film Pitch : "The Fugitive meets The Matrix"

1st green
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

I parred the first today (pictured) but the rest of the day there were only flashes of skill - Great course though and fun with Jeremy and Wayne.

The Kazaa settlement + Ebay deal has to be made into a Michael Wolff post Burn Rate book, and then a movie (The Fugitive meets The Matrix)

USA Today : "Australia's Sharman Networks, the lead defendant in a lawsuit by the movie and music industries which was settled on Thursday, confirmed that Zennstrom and Friis contributed to a payout of well above $100 million.. The lawsuit meant that Zennstrom and Friis had to avoid travelling to the United States, even when they sold their popular Internet telephony service Skype to eBay for $2.6 billion, for fear of being served with legal papers."

Pilthy Insights for Filthy Founders :)

the moonah
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

As I ponder playing a course longer than most in the world (it has eaten up most overseas players), having not played golf for at least a few months (who has the time or money in a startup, plus 2 years ago i dislocated my knee hitting a 2 iron - crazy) here are my favourite 5 from 17 Pithy Insights For Startup Founders :

1. Startup founders work long hours for a reason. There’s more work than there are people. If you’re seeking balance, seek it elsewhere.

2. Learn to take calculated risks. The market rarely rewards safe bets.

3. Force yourself to write, as it will force you to think.

4. At least once every year or so, your startup will almost die.

5. The problem you solve should be ugly. The solution you build should be beautiful.

4 Ways to Monetise YourSpace.

heraldsun redesign
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Interesting (header) redesign for Herald Sun website. Sister website Daily Telegraph has also had similar treatment. News.com.au does not yet have the same horizontal nav bar (it's still vertical) We're continually looking for new rss feeds, so my day job involves lots of checking rss. On a semi-totally unrelated point, Pali Capital analyst Richard Greenfield has summarised the 4 revenue model opportunities for MySpace.

1. safer "programmed" sections, like books and film, where brands can accompany edited content;
2. sponsored pages bought by advertisers;
3. increased targeting capabilities on personal profiles; and
4. improved search functionality and increased paid-search revenue, which is expected to result from a pending deal with one leading search engine.

Time to bed here (while I listen to a classic Keith and the Girl Podcast taking it to Pacific Coast Hellway and Dawn and Drew), my bro is shouting me a hit around Moonah Links Open Course first thing in the morning. (stunning weather down Point Leo beach today during afternoon run, as it was glassy flat and 17 degrees - but it was ultra-foggy in main ridge at 7am - tomorrow is supposed to be good weather)

Hits Not Dead Say WSJ. Denise Richards at Petrol Station.

um photoshoot
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Yeah so WSJ have confirmed today that The Long Tail may shake out differently to how its proponents may want. Really it's a bit like politics, and the difference between Theory and Reality. I for one dont see hits going away at all. And I believe in the Long Tail. Isn't this why syndication makes people like Jerry Seinfeld billions ?

Sure there are going to be changes, but it may just change the Hit Experience as opposed to replace it; People will watch films even if they decide to pay a premium to watch it at home the day it comes out; And as for sports, they arent going away, except people may choose to watch as I did last Sunday the view of my own team at quarter time breaks. The Long Tail didnt stop me watching my AFL team play a crap game. (to be arrested since Sunday at the G!)

If people have the choice of buying from 10m books vs a few thousand at the local store, well they are going to buy a larger range from the website with 10m by sheer definition because you cant get them at your local store. This will change things alot, but not necessarily mean the death of hits or the fact that low culture dictates that the books people buy become that more esoteric. Maybe a bit, but not much. Whatever is on Oprah will sell alot etc.

The best example of how Hits are not dying, is The Long Tail Book itself; It's a book to start with. Not an ebook. It has a kewl title, quotes, a good looking cover, and had the bejeesus promoted out of it. And it has sold alot. Sure the author (who is a print editor :) microchunked the story on his blog pre launch (cheap marketing), but at the end of the day, he did exactly what other hit authors have done.

And now WSJ are digging a bit deeper - by updating and spreadsheeting the latest stats he quoted, or inverting the trend. I dont think either prove or disprove each other, but it may well sell more papers and books.

WSJ : "By Mr. Anderson's calculation, 25% of Amazon's sales are from its tail, as they involve books you can't find at a traditional retailer. But using another analysis of those numbers -- an analysis that Mr. Anderson argues isn't meaningful -- you can show that 2.7% of Amazon's titles produce a whopping 75% of its revenues. Not quite as impressive."

Chris Anderson replies : "What it does say is that the current data at Rhapsody, Netflix and Amazon show that the tail amounts to between 21% and 40% of the market, with the head accounting for the rest. Although I don't discuss this in detail in the book, in the case of Rhapsody, the trend data suggests that the tail (as defined above) actually will equal the head within five years. Which is why the language Gomes cites from the book jacket is actually all phrased in the future conditional tense ("What happens when the combined value of all the millions of items that may sell only a few copies equals or exceeds the value of a few items that sell millions each?"). I asked him to quote the jacket copy in full context, but it apparently wasn't convenient to his thesis to do so, so he didn't."

The $1B YouTube vs $130m in VC Limelight Networks Mashup

the search
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

I'm sitting here waiting for some design work and have been reading Om's confirmation of Limelight Networks (who say they have "created a scalable system for distributed digital media delivery to large audiences") raising $130m in VC, while in another tab browsing re- The Billion Dollar YouTube (whose tech infrastructure comes from Limelight) saying at Stanford "We see ourselves as developing the next platform to deliver digital media worldwide."

It all made me think : Lets not debate whether YouTube is worth $1bn or whether Limelight raising $130m (even though its profitable in prior quarters) is a return to 1.0 : Can YouTube and Limelight Networks both profess to be developing the next rich media platform ? And is there some double-counting going on here, in a big picture sense...

"I promised myself I'd profit from Web 2.0 and all I got was this tshirt."

turtleneck finger
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

There's been alot of talk about social media websites paying high trafficked contributors. On one side Digg are saying they might be able to come up with a tshirt or website badge.

Netscape are offering $1k per month to a very small number of people, which make it more a marketing activity to mess with the Digg'ers and position Netscape as The Number 2 that Trys Harder. That Cares. About You. The Content Contributor. At the centre of this new Web 2.0 Universe. ("There are millions being made off you. Millions...." : "I never thought about it like that - You are right. It isn't right.")

I think the shift towards having a COGS line for Content Contributors in social media websites is inevitable, however it's also something that will be protected against by the leaders (digg, flickr) It will likely be implemented by the challengers (netscape, ookles) although like Adsense, the network effect is with the leader even if all they have for you is a t-shirt. ("I promised myself I'd profit from Web 2.0 and all I got was this tshirt." - would be a kewl design Netscape or Digg could print up)

If you can put Google adsense on a blog, it's not really too big a step to be able to make revenue out of your digg/netscape/flickr account. If you get traffic that can be monetised - which you share in eg 10-15%; Performance Driven Content Payments.

I'd also file this under the 'no publicity is bad publicity' folder - In that we have heard more about Netscape as a content destination website in the last 6 weeks, than in the last 6-10 years (when we actually used the netscape browser)

Anyway, I'm also enjoying the meta-meta'ness of the debate - Where stories about "the (Digg vs Netscape) story" are dugg and netscap'd. And then there are stories that get dugg about not being dugg. Below is one of the "Top 12" contributors to digg who has dugg his emails from Jason Calacanis and the Netscape Team. I havent checked if they have been netscap'd.

Message#1
Was thinking, you're a digging machine... Maybe we could pay you to digg for us!
I know, sounds crazy, but so did getting paid to blog three years ago.
:-)

Best j----------------
This email was sent from my Blackberry.
Cell: 310-456-4900 | email: jason@calacanis.com

Message#2
Jason McCabe Calacanis
CEO, Weblogs, Inc., An AOL Company.
GM, Netscape.com
Office: 310-979-5654 | Mobile: 310-456-4900
Blog: http://www.calacanis.com
Yahoo/AOL IM: jasoncalacanis

Tyson: your work here is amazing... http://digg.com/users/tysonhy

CK: please talk t Tyson about working on the new netscape!

best j--

Read Rest.

Million Dollar Podcast

Llo dehydrated
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Very foggy in Main Ridge this morning, quite a contrast to the heat that has knocked out the female, younger Colin Farrell - Llohan.

Anyway, Cameron Reilly will be excited to know some podcasts have the potential to make over $1m dollars a year. $1m. Say it enough and it may come true. Rocketboom to the Moon.

Marketwatch quoting a Nielsen Analytics report : "The extraordinary variety of content is the medium's strength. The most popular podcasts are downloaded 2 million times a month: news shows, tech shows, self-help and advice programs are in highest demand.. With a podcast doing 2 million deliveries a month" a show could "conceivably generate $100,000 a month in advertiser/sponsorship revenue."

Reddit + NYT

nyt reddit
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Both Technorati with Wall Street Journal and Reddit with New York Times, are doing some interesting indexing and filtering of popular stories.

Reddit's vertical strategy, as also evident by their entertainment focused Lipstick.com product, make sense; You cant aggregate all content for all people at one place, necessarily. Or if you do, you can also slice'n'dice as you syndicate and develop partnerships. Smart.

The Herman Miller Fund.

belt it
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Web 2.0 VC Funding, is as expected, likely to get bigger in size per funding, pre Web 2.0 shakeout. (unless of course there really is a new new economy - joke) Om summarises it well with Zillow.com raising $25M. The difference this time is at least Zillow is in the Top 10 real estate sites in the US (by providing an "edge" to home buyers through real time data/valuations on house prices at the address level).

Basically the funding is going to new incarnations of the old things; While in Web 1.0 companies like Akamai were capitalising on Internet infrastructure, this time it's Limelight Networks - who powers rich media plays like YouTube and Podshow. In each segment the same trend is playing out, although there hasnt been much funding of B2B (although of alot of funds that havent invested are looking at new B2B mashup providers, as well as dressing up web based ASP services in areas like CRM that have open source pedigree)

GigaOM : "Zillow.com is the latest start-up to become part of a late 1990s trend that is making a comeback: return of the big money VC round. Last week, Seattle-based Jobster raised $18 million from Reed Elsevier Ventures and other existing ventures. Earlier in the month, MobiTV raised a whopping $70 million from the likes of Oak Investment Partners. As we had reported earlier, Limelight Networks is in the process of closing a monster round, which would make some of these investments look like chump change."

BB : If google pioneered looking at classic web segments in new ways, and Zillow attacking real estate is a symptom of that - I'm very interested in the rollout of new real estate and automotive models into non-US markets. (employment is one classified segment that already has alot of startups focusing on each of their regions but same point applies)

Alternatively if you are into real estate and podcasting, check out Cam anchoring podcasts on realestate.com.au (Australia's #1 podcast)

Marketing Budget = Crap.

new digs
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER: WHAT HAS SURPRISED YOU THE MOST ABOUT THE MYSPACE EXPERIENCE?

Rupert Murdoch: The speed at which it has grown. It has had no marketing. Not a penny has been spent marketing it before or after the purchase, and it just grows faster and faster every week. Now we're taking it out to other countries.

BB : The test of new products now is how much marketing they need. The more; The worse.

Rupe also talks about the importance of local in the interview : "The future of local stations is very good provided they remain true to their roots, be very local, have their own local Web sites and do all that properly. And if they are aligned to a leading television network, they are going to be in good shape."

Criminally Minded Media.

BarCamp San Francisco
Originally uploaded by miss_rogue.

Australian Media needs more authentic voices; It's why the best bloggers will do very well when given a mainstream audience to talk to on specific topics. (celebrity, tech, politics, food, etc) Dont underestimate the audience, too much.

Crime blogs in Australia for example, are starting to do really well, appealing to people increasingly schooled in TV forensics and temporal psycho noir-pathology. (murder, investigation and justice presented in 43 minutes of programming where there is a violent murder of an attractive person in OC-land : that could have been perpetrated by any of 3 people. Usually the second. Which becomes obvious from 47 minutes in. When havent Australians loved a story about Chopper or more recently the 5 star credit card identity stealer, Jodie Harris.

So who is the crime capital of Australia ? Sydney has seemed behind in the noughties thru its lack of public, tit4tat underworld killings that occured in Melbourne. (is it only me who thinks it's ironic Mokbel is in Lebanon ?)

Sydney however may be able to save its reputation here and fuse all the parts of the modern crime and media segment together : Crikey bridge the line between blog and news, fact and fiction : "According to bar patrons at regular Holt St watering hole the Evening Star Hotel (aka the Evil Star), two groups of drinkers – one including Gibbs – were ordered by a security guard to sit in different areas of the Surry Hills hotel following an argument (that presumably wasn't about punctuation) at 2am. It's believed Gibbs left the premises soon afterwards.

About three hours later, as Jackson prepared to leave the hotel, he was warned by a bartender that Gibbs was allegedly loitering outside. Gibbs, who has worked for the Daily Tele in the past, then allegedly pulled a silver revolver on Jackson, who retreated back inside the pub before Gibbs ran off. According to the Tele, Gibbs turned himself into Surry Hills police station about 1.30pm yesterday."

"What about a new media giant buying YouTube ? Nope"

collapses
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Battelle doesnt grok the $1B buyout rumour for YouTube. Following the where there's smoke there's fire model, if markets are just an aggregation of different parties perception of value at a point of time, the 2005 GEMAYA culture of Yahoo flipping 2.0 burgers for $25m to $50m, seems well and truly replaced in 2006 by whispers if not reality of $500m to $2b buyouts. (2.0 rumoured prices are tracking on par with Google's capex spending)

I've gotta say alot of people search for youtube on gnoos. Industrywide, early 2005 vs late 2006, its amazing much how things have changed valuationwise. I wonder what flickr would be worth if it had stayed independent and executed on the video space ? More than $35m ? Is YouTube or Flickr more valuable ? (id actually be interested in people's thoughts on that)

Either way, incorrect rumours now have another zero and more, vs last year. Definitely bubbly, but also like a red rag to late to market VC's, Media Co's and Public Portals looking for that easy billion dollar home run or unique visitor boost. (never do a meeting with anyone that says "sticky" in relation to the frequency and depth of a website visit)

Battelle : "What about a new media giant buying YouTube - Yahoo, say, or Google? Or Microsoft? Nope, nope, nope. Yahoo is a media company, and acts like one. Google doesn't have it in its DNA to run a service like YouTube (though Google, with its Switzerland like approach to content, is the best fit, in my opinion). And Microsoft? They don't need any more legal headaches over in Redmond right now."

Lots of analysis was also done on how no-one would buy Skype, because of its perceived negative sum game. Ebay however, at a parent company level, wanted to own peer to peer interactions and transactions, and Skype was a unique complementary asset to Ebay, just as Paypal was perceived and is. And then there are growth rates which companies from google down are judged by. (the P/E-G ratio)

Much has been made about NBC and the like partnering with YouTube, after initial frosty legal parlays. Who's to say this isnt try before you buy ?

Irrespective of potential court cases other media companies not experiencing NewsCorp's 16%+ stock spike thx to MySpace would have to look seriously at YouTube. Ditto slow following portals that want to cement a Top 10 traffic position.

If YouTube's selling price is $1b, my guess would be willing buyers would be more in the $500m-$700m space. (cheaper than myspace would probably be something you could get your boss to approve, but double is probably too much) I guess the VC's are playing high stakes chicken again :)

ENews : "Nobody's Watching," back in the game after its never-aired pilot popped up on YouTube last month, will be revived by NBC in a series of new made-for-the-Internet episodes, the network has announced. Additionally, NBC has ordered scripts with an eye toward making the show a prime-time player. The moves mark the first time a crashed network pilot has gotten back off the ground thanks to the Web. "This comedy pilot has generated a life of its own, and we are intrigued by its potential to develop into a series," NBC Entertainment president Kevin Reilly. "Sometimes, if you show it, they will come."

"If you are seeing a doubling effect going on, measure its amplitude, and then spend accordingly."

How to be an awesome blogger
Originally uploaded by dreadfuldan.

Scoble has also riffed off Fred Wilson's 1.0 Scars from the Last Bubble piece, by talking about how startup businesses should be chasing the doubling effect. The irony is it's very hard to put in place a marketing plan which acts as the catalyst. You can tick every box, but if what you are selling isn't authentic or reasonate with people, you won't get the Doubling. You can also put in place a marketing plan, get the doubling effect - but it occurred for another reason, like unexpected google referrals.

Good luck is also hard work, and once you know the secret sauce, and divine relationships between variables in your business, then you have to focus on making those things work. In Australia for example the number of local blogs is increasing dramatically, and people reading blogs and commenting on them is also going thru the roof. Many readers though dont even know they read blogs (or do if prompted, even if they dont) So having an exact understanding of the website behaviour and tactics to influence is important.

Scoble : "If you are seeing a doubling effect going on, measure its amplitude, and then spend accordingly. The blogging world was doubling every five months. In the first year I was blogging, 2000, that meant going from a couple hundred blogs that I could find to about 400. In 2001, it went to 800, then 1600 by the end of the year. In 2002 it went to thousands. In 2003 it went to hundreds of thousands. In 2004 it went to millions."

BBC is Watching Us

BBC TV Centre
Originally uploaded by Sparks68.

Interesting mention by BBC how blogs in real time are driving the shape and priority of their TV stories in current affairs : "In some ways the biggest change is how much closer we, as programme makers, are to our audience. If you email us during the programme the chances are that, if I'm editing, I'll read your message almost instantly. So on Wednesday night Ian emailed me during the programme to say: "Why is your interviewer standing while Menzies Campbell is sitting?"

Walmart's Faux Hub

erin mcuniversity
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Monday morning and (thru adage) Walmart have launched The Hub, the dept store's faux gen-y hang out : "It's a hybrid of an ordinary webpage and a social-networking engine ... la MySpace.com. Little Tyler and Kayla can customize their own pages to declare their own styles and see what Justin and Madison are up to, too. Here's a sample Hub post from "Holly" -- who happens not to be a random Hubster, but a child actress with grown-up ghostwriters. Bad grown-up ghostwriters."

"Targeting" "the target audience" isnt at all easy, and driven thru your friendly above the line agency, interactive, or otherwise will generally end it tears when it comes to launching actual community destinations for 14 yr olds. Ironically if Walmart created a community around their (older) core market and shopping experience (let customers help each other out with their home improvements, facilitated by Walmart) might have been a better starting point. And when all else fails, do what Larry Clarke did when he made Kids, get one of the Kids to actually write the script/website copy and creative.

1.0 Bears vs 2.0 Bulls

arranged marriage
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Fred Wilson reconstructs layer upon layer of the benefit of having dotcom scars, but (also) being alert to a defensive bias in decision making (relative to free-wheeling competition)

Fred's post rings true to me when I think about (Cuban's) "Do it right once" model - Where my focus at each step is to do what I think is right/best for overall business; You can get more money for your business; More engineers; More blue sky; Better offices. The costs are loss of control, external people/conditions running the business, and possibly giving yourself a noose to hang from. Burn Rate baby as they used to say. Or you can look at this hyperspeed market and say Im going to build it piece by piece and when Im sure it has been put together right : Then Push the Maxwell Smart button.

To me today, it's about fundamentals and flexibility. (and a little bit of art and commerce) If you build it right, they will come. Just make sure you have a good security fence. But you have to do the hard yards, because there will be playaz out there living it large, and u gotta be ready to represent, not be a-fakn. (sorry i saw the end of Be Cool the other day, which is a stupid funny movie - i love noir, but spoof noir is also funny)

A VC : "But what if the same moves we made last time are the right moves to make this time? Then we are going to sub-optimize this current market opportunity. We are going to be too defensive. And someone else is going to step on the gas and pass us at the next turn."

The dot com scars for those downunder were very substantial as the online startup industry totally died for 4 years (01-5) So starting a business even 18 months ago was absolutely foreign in this part of the world around blogs and really simple syndication.

Aussie Investors have gotten over their technology scars, and made all the money they will for the noughties in resources and property. So why not punt up some of that internet currency. Heck Seek is worth $1.5B they say and Google's $100B+ - How could I lose money, they say.

This makes the Web 2.0 entrepreneur the prodigal best friend to those wanting to drop "User Generated Content" into their small cap fund, or high net worth play investments. More than not there is also a media company lurking either as the investors preferred exit mechanism, or even as a supplier of resources to the operational 2.0 investor. It's a funny, full circle world, only different by more people on the internet, faster broadband, and the lessons learnt from last time.

A good environment isnt a bad thing though. And as always it's about finding the right people. Many you have known from the last time around. And complementing them with the New Web specialists : whether it be self service contextual and local advertising platforms; design skills in xhmtl/css; feed geeks; the vertically searched obsessed; copyright/ip law; social community builders; seo + syndication experts : And as always those who can Sell the new stuff - just like the troops who had to push banner ads in 1995-7.

If you have ever spent investors money as an employee or entrepreneur, you also know they want it back, quite a few times. So one never wants to be at another dinner party and asked sniggeringly "What do you do ? and What is your Business Model ?"

So it's quite natural this time for New Web businesses to not be raising and spending astronomical numbers. Although recent trends suggest round sizes and frequency of funding is increasing, as late to markets try and accelerate their market position by spending their way there.

One never wants to be back "There". But as for "Here" - there is a new group of "Build it and they will come"s - who do have "The Look" in their eyes. Open API's. Ruby on Rails. Ajax. Mashups. Social this and that; 1.0 Bears vs 2.0 Bulls - who will win.. or as Brad Feld says on the topic : "Remember, it’s not a success until you can buy beer with the cash.".. off to watch footy for me..

Raji: Stop hatin', start participatin'. Come on, twinkle twinkle, baby, twinkle twinkle. Wanna take a shot at me kid? Do it.
[Elliot threatens to punch him]
Raji: I'm just sayin' if that's what this is gonna be, it's gonna be that.

Zune me Up Stevie B

for real
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

So what is really going on with Microsoft's (Codename "Zune") WiFi Ipod Killer ? (or more hopefully what will make Apple wake up to its use of slave labour and not shipping features we want ??)

It seems (if) the X-box founder "J. Allard and his crew at Microsoft really are behind this project, these details make perfect sense. The corporate culture of the company is such that Allard's team is expected to work outside the confines of Microsoft's typical boundaries, which might otherwise hinder the company getting a foothold in previously unentered markets. Does anyone actually think the Xbox 360 is anything like the normal Microsoft product and marketing experience? No. But it's definitely shaping up so Microsoft's media player is going to be more media player than Microsoft."

One Ticket to Panama

At eye doctor
Originally uploaded by caterina.

A Yahoo engineer reflecting on GOOG's lack of Wall Street forward guidance : "Meanwhile, many of us at Yahoo are sad at how severely Wall Street punished our stock (down 20%), but we are hanging in there. Our executive management team choose to focus on the long term, and not try to rush things on the Panama front given how much of our long term value is tied to the new platform, they want the Panama launch to be perfect. I am proud to work at a company with that style of leadership, and I back them up 100%."

2.0 Adsense on the Edge for Content.

599gtb rally
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

It's Saturday here so that means its AFL football time in my world. I watched some of the Crows last night, who for the first 2 1/2 quarters actually showed some weakness to a congested game vs the Roos before they pulled away. North made fundamental skill errors, but I saw enough to think Melbourne can challenge Adelaide at the MCG come September (and round 22 when we have them next) if they play a balanced, tactical game.

Today is Rye vs Langwarrin home game. This will be one of the best local games in the Mornington Peninsula League with both sides being top 3 teams. Tomorrow Melbourne plays Fremantle (CJ out, Read in) which means it's only on Foxtel so I'll be watching that at Rye too. Next week Ill be at the G with Strawbs to see the Dees kick some ass.

In the commercial Web 2.0 world, as opposed to the blogging on the sidelines one, Jason Calcanis is spot on about paying the top "user content generators". The reality is no content is free, so real advertising revenue that is generated from content as well as a fixed cost for the base content needs to be paid, and will be increasingly. The bonus to Calacanis playaz is the current base price being offered is far cheaper than traditional media pays; This is just another marketplace evolution.

When you think about how small publishers make money at moment - they place adsense ads on their site. The change here is when you place content on someone else's site, there needs to be a reward structure for that, one of which will be financial. Leaders like flickr were able to avoid sharing revenue or paying for content, and while it wont necessarily be a pre-requisite for online communuties, for some it will help drive their model (esp those like Netscape that need quality, frequent content and have established players with huge depth of content contributors ala digg)

Calacanis.com : "There are thousands of great writers who got their start by free blogging who are now getting paid. Those new folks have lower pay expectations and the $1-a -word crowd was really pissed off about it."

Mike Arrington thinks the "Netscape product is a soulless reproduction" and doesnt think the payments will solve Digg's problems. While it's not the answer to the problem, the more Netscape have paid meta-journalists and then VIP paid contributors, that will assist in giving AOL Netscape end users something of value.

Having worked on large customer portals before - the critical success factors are much different to those of digg and the vc/startup/2.0 world. In fact, the AOL/Netscape audience will probably use a product more based on simplicity and conforming to old school portal/news user experience. (or user precedence as Dave Winer says)

For example, when the new version of beta.netscape was launched, some of the existing users (vocal minority) found the transition too much. Im sure there is quant' research/focucs groups/eye tracking by AOL on what the actual majority think about the changes. (and what needs to be changed)

If AOL keep making the service easier to use and the quality of content is high, and not too tech odd spot focused (ala social news sites) then Jason may well successfully leverage his old school audience with a bit of new school hip. Paying 12 people one $1k is just a small tool/trick in achieving the overall audience migration.

The proof to this story (pre longer term traffic benchmarks before and after) is in the reality and of course the best contributors are interested in the $1k a month offer (for 12 of them to start with ? - equivalent to 1 X FTE) JC certainly knows how to leverage blogosphere discussion (Web 2 crowd love talking about whats not right for the community, blaagh) : "Well over 50 folks from social bookmarking sites have emailed me already. Many of them are in the top 10-20 on the major services. So, while the elite Web 2.0 mafia may not like the concept of paying top contributors, the contributors certainly like the idea!"

"I've never been so filled with addictive fear as I have driving this car."

lambo mousepad
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Hehe, someone test drove a Lambo Murcielago LP-640 : "I've never been so filled with addictive fear as I have driving this car. Lamborghini's new Murcielago LP640 is a proper supercar - the kind I used to read about and lusted after as a 12-year-old. Big, brutish, loud, tricky, unfeasible quick and just jaw-slackeningly good-looking, it's totally over the top and goes like it looks."

Build it and they will Consult.

Hack Yahoo
Originally uploaded by caterina.

Brad Feld has his as usual extremely astute assessment of startups that consult or custom build without regard for the bigger picture. (It's a great piece because he recognises the grey in between the black and white of building for the future vs building for a paycheck) : "The contracts enabled us to “be in business” for a while, but they had nothing to do with the business we set out to create. While the work enabled “survival”, our complete lack of focus (among many other things) contributed to our ultimate demise.. While survival was nice (and fun for a while), at some point you have to decide what you are going to focus on. If you don’t, as a Brazilian friend of mine once said – pounding his fist into his palm – “our lack of focus will fuck us” (say that three times fast with a Brazilian accent.)"

Eric Schmidt in a totally unrelated quote from their latest conference call/quarterly results : "The world is a very big place and Google has very much a worldwide mission. You're going to see more and more international focus, international expansion, international growth. Another is the investment in new products has continued apace. The primary investment, of course, according to our 70% rule, is in search and ads. When we talk about search -- we talk about search in everything -- and when we talk about ads, we talk about more than just the text ads. "

Aussie Podcast Market Share Stats.

bad sunnies
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

I've got to say I'm listening to more and more Aussie Pro Podcasts in addition to my stable Keith and the Girl, TPN, Coverville, and Loudspeakers and whatever else turns up in my Ipodder and Itunes.

Through gnoos, we are indexing alot of podcasts as they are just another type of RSS to us. (note to self - prioritise/create a podcasting vertical that dynamically aggregates and break up the latest podcasts into a browse/vote/rate/comment page) Anyway, as a result I'm also listening to alot of pro content from Austereo, DMG/Nova, and ABC/Triple J.

I'll admit to liking some of Kyle (from Aus Idol) interviewing Big Brother evictees, as well as the classic Merrick and Rosso's "Original Pirate Material" podcast, which comes along with a daily 20 minute summary of their morning show (like Kate + Hughesy which is also great but no pirate material)

The Pirate Material from the Lads is great because they can swear and be more explicit than they can on public mainstream radio. (tangent : obviously also TV stations and radio vlogs are merging in a way too esp as Itunes supports both - note yday's announcement of Tony Faure now coming full circle as CEO of ninemsn where the article mentions success of video at ninemsn - "PBL executive chairman James Packer said at the time that ninemsn was doing "well over two million video streams a month" and there had been 400,000 screenings on the day of the rescue of the two miners.")

The numbers on podcast downloads cited by the Fairfax article (when something runs in SMH and The Age online as they do, what should the actually source be, for all you librarian/academic bloggers out there ?) seems to support podcast hitting mainstream - probably helped by Itunes Australia, as well as radio stations realising there are new non geographic channels to distribute already produced content, as well as new material.

And while some may debate high and low culture, Australia's tradition of putting their best comedians into high paying breakfast radio gigs funded by advertising, suits me fine, esp when they produce a daily RSS audio feed for me to timeshift.

There are so many limitations to typical radio anyway : How many morning radio shows can one listen to in the morning (ie 6am is often when content is best/less restricted), not to mention those outside your geographic radio zone.

Podcast Market Share Downunder (SMH/The Age)

The order is mine based on numbers in the article.

- #1 ABC Radio
* 1.5m podcast downloads in June 06 growing to 2 million podcasts a month by the end of 2006
* ABC Radio in June had 1.5 million podcasts downloaded in June
* ABC top podcast shows were Life Matters (135,000-plus per week) and Late Night Live (100,000 per week).

- #2 Austereo (Fox, MMM incl podcasts such as The Cage, Matt + Jo, Kyle + Jackie O Show)
* 2006 podcast downloads were 700,000-800,000 each month and "headed for 1 million by December."

- #3 Nova (Merrick and Rosso, Hughesy + Kate)
* 300,000 monthly downloads.

- #4(co) Macquarie Radio (Alan Jones)
* 250,000 monthly downloads
* 100,000 per month for Alan Jones

- #4(co) TPN (Cameron Reilly and 70 niche targeted shows)
* 250,000 monthly downloads.

Obviously this is becoming a very interesting market as the amateurs and the pros slug it out, while building the category together, and being symbiotic in the same way that bloggers and journos are intertwined.

Advertisers should get onto the TPN Ebay Advertising Auctions. Its definitely only Act One for podcasting downunder. Anyone with additional podcasting marketshare stats for other shows (eg Rove said his podcast was #1 on Itunes) please share. I'd also be interested in the geographic breakdown of the podcast usage. (Australia vs World %'s)

GOOG. Q2 06 FCF $142M.

tesla roadster
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Henry Da Blodge', The Internet Outsider, has the always interesting word on google's decreasing growth in FCF : "Last year at this time, Google was on track to generate about $2 billion in annualized free cash flow.. half the free cash flow generated by the largest media company in the world, Time Warner--combined with the free cash flow growth rate (100%-plus), made the stock's valuation tolerable.. But then the company began to ramp CAPEX.. it started buying buildings, data centers, etc. And then free cash flow stopped growing...and then started declining. Precipitously.

The net result of all this is that the company generated a paltry $142 million in free cash flow in Q2 and, so far this year, has generated about $600 million.

Back out the $319 million the company just spent on its Googleplex, and you get about $900 million in "normalized" free cash flow for the year. Double that for Q3 and Q4, and you're about where you were at this point last year--on track to do about $2 billion in FCF, a far cry from the $3 billion-plus the Street expected earlier this year and zero year-over-year growth despite a near doubling of revenue."

Yahoo + RSS : "We purposely kept it hidden and just let it leak out to the blogosphere."

bug eyes
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

The intrapreneurial story of Scott Gatz, a Yahoo product manager and a skunkworks RSS project shipped Jan 04 : "Early on, people in the company had said “you really ought to look at RSS”. In fact, one of the best My Yahoo engineers had already built a My Yahoo RSS reader on his own time. RSS wasn’t well known at the time (very few newspapers or sites had feeds) but we knew it could be really big.

There were a LOT of people in the company who still felt that we should be a walled garden and that doing this would kill our media business. So we quickly (in three months) created a scaleable RSS platform for Yahoo and shipped it (Jan 2004). We purposely kept it hidden and just let it leak out to the blogosphere. The growth was tremendous - users and traffic grew in multiples every month.

It grew so fast that we got the nerve up to go ask major papers & sites to start publishing RSS (Newsweek, Time, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal all launched in July of that year, and all with some form of “Add to My Yahoo” buttons). And like any entrepreneurial group, we realized that we were onto something, so we redesigned My Yahoo around RSS, and by that time, the company had caught up and realized it would help Yahoo for us to fully embrace RSS."

User

User. To make use of. Selfish. Addict. Self-interested. "Someone who uses a program from the outside, however skillfully, without getting into the internals of the program."

Creator. To grow or make or invent. The Judeo-Christian God as well says Dictionary.com.

User as Creator. User as God. Unique Users. 1.41 Visits per Unique User. 509 searching for Erin McNaught. 1.2% Opera. 40% referred by Google. 13meg of requests from Jordan.

Post BigBrother-ism

mac daddy
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

I'm off to Sydney Tues-Wed this week to riff @ The Future of Media Summit. For those up north, ping me if u r there and share an interest in "How Will Content be Created ?" as well as what is going to happen in Australia with changing media rules, decreasing newspaper readership, and whether Jamie will pull the Krystal Sequel on BB 06.

20k-quid Daily to Advertise on Pirate Bay

gotya
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Who said file-sharing doesnt pay the bills, although I also have no comprehension of what it costs to run a service like Pirate-Bay (I'd guess 70% gross margins, but obviously the issue is sustainability - which affects long term growth potential.. thus valuation multiple - but I sense this might be a dividend play not a capital gains blue sky end-user one ;)

Neowin : "The file sharing site The Pirate Bay are set to be making over $25328 a day, with single day advertisements costing €20,000."

"Madonna has paid out more than $4.5m to the Kabbalah in just four years"

disney movie
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

If you were ever interested as to why Lindsay Lohan (is planning to) change her name to Rose or what exactly Madonna's relationship to Kabbalah is, see below.

Exposay : "Madonna has paid out more than $4.5 million to the Kabbalah in just four years.. with the cash going directly to the heads of the faith Philip and Karen Berg.. The massive donations have been revealed in the US tax records for Madonna's Ray of Light Foundation.. The Bergs.. 2004 tax return revealed the couple attributed around $21.2 million in assets to their New York based Kabbalah centre and charity."

"It's a 20% project, if you will..."

twttr
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Evhead and the Odeo crew have bumrushed the wireless house and launched twttr, which has the kewlest logo ive seen, since um, riffs :)

Wouldnt it be funny if twttr became bigger than Odeo, similar to Evan's last venture Pyra Labs - which incubated Blogger as a side project that then became the main game : Being bought by Google and used by (millions ?)

Entrepreneurship is definitely not always about planning, but it is definitely about focus, and The Jack Nicholson as Father Bob says ("you cant handle the truth") is somewhere in the middle.

Evhead : "It's a 20% project, if you will, that we—esp. Noah, Jack, and Florian—have been working on on the side for a couple months. It has nothing to do with audio or podcasting, but we think it's kinda neat."

Sunday here, I'm off to do errands incl caffeine and a long beach walk (cue cheesy music......)

I missed that Steve and Dave

Steve Gillmor to Dave Winer : " " *

Dave Winer to Steve Gillmor : " " **

* Steve did not use quotes while Dave did as he was quoting Steve. (although Dave had the choice to not use quote marks, as did I, but its hard to quote silence without using quotes.)

** I assume Steve primarily means there is nothing more that needs to be said about Dave; That his black MacBook speaks for itself. And secondarily its a quasi-political message about the role of invisible attention gestures that need to be addresssed as this movement goes overground.

Update : Dave explains further on the dynamics, setting and links back, ta :)

Dees Beat Tigers.

aussie blog integration
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

We beat the tigers again in a scrappy quality game, but absolutely packed long room and MCG with a grand final like turnout. Dees up by 3 goals. News.com.au and Daily Telegraph have been linking to gnoos on what Aussie bloggers (and media) are saying about Israel and other politics, which has been very kewl, and makes sense to extend a story. (and we're not complaining !) Owen Wilson's chair rock is funny on DailyShow. Raining in Melbourne.

Do it Right Once. Then Blow It. Then Do it Again.

rocketboom mk2
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Cameron Reilly has a very honest podcast about TPN and funding that didnt come through. 12 years into online and I assume every deal will fail. That the product will not ship. That if its a success someone will screw me. If you build it, advertisers won't come. Something will not make it work. It's easier to take the money on the table than wait for the future payday.

But just once, I'd like to get it right. To prove to myself, that it can be done. Then blow it. Then do it again. It's bloody hard and while Richard Giles post Valley, may be excited in this podcast about changing the world, when you are looking down the barrel, its the last thing in the world you want to hear. Screw the World :)

But kudos to Cam for saying it. Often its more to do with internal misaligned objectives ("I'm rich" interchanged with "It will be easier now with resources") than it is with external people that dont come through with funding in 30 days. There never is the silver bullet. There is nothing but hard work. And if you co-opt enough of the right people and their resources into your hopefully right vision, and then execute faster, better and earlier than other people, then there may be a window you can parlay into the next stage of your life. As Cam said though, 99% of all new ventures fail. That's the economic reason why the 1% are so rewarded.

It's also the reason why it's such a great test of mettle, as is playing sport I imagine at the elite level. It's pretty much unfathomable what one needs to go through. The sacrifices. But for some, its a much better way of life, which is nothing but attempting to fulfill the little or lot each of us is given. Cliches like its a marathon not a sprint also come to mind. Go Cam.

On a similar tangent is Rocketboom (Joanne Colan's first vlog is up !) who is summed up brilliantly by Jeff Jarvis' mate Fred Graver who is ex MTV, current VH1 dude who writes the best (non)post on the topic thru BuzzMachine -

"Producers (myself included) make our living off of building a stage. We build it out of a concept, script, cameras, props, and actors… and hope and pray for an audience. At the very end of the equation (for most of us) there is money. (And rarely at the beginning… which is why Amanda and Andrew both get huge grace points in this story. It’s clear that two people who were overjoyed at splitting a forty thousand dollar check after months of work weren’t in it for the money.)"

Bebo No to 300m quid.

will deliver
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Techcrunch has heard whispers that UK/Europe Social Networking (Myspace meets Classmates) Powerhouse Bebo "rejected a £300 million ($552 million) acquisition offer from British Telecom Group “a few weeks ago”, according to an insider on the transaction. Bebo’s asking price? North of $1 billion."

The PBL Seek Classifieds Rollup Play

SLR 722
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Crikey have the word that seek are about to rollup e-real estate downunder through some financial engineering at PBL : "It's worth comparing the size and scale of a faltering Fairfax and a surging Seek just to get a sense of the online revolution. Fairfax had revenues of $977 million in the December 2005 half and reported a net profit of $124.8 million. The lumbering newspaper giant closed on Friday with a market capitalisation of $3.53 billion. Seek had revenues of just $47.3 million in the December half, but managed a net profit of $27.1 million and is now capitalised at $1.5 billion. If Seek can make serious inroads into the property market, James Packer might yet get to score another victory over News Ltd and Fairfax without buying into the dinosaur world of dead tree newspaper journalism."

2.0 Blogcommerce

mecommerce
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Was just reading The Australian Tuesday IT section which had an article from the Financial Times about MeCommerce; Who is the 2.0 version of 1.0 distributed wholesale commerce; The twist being bloggers are the distribution platform for customer generation and transaction. MeCommerce fulfills and shares 50/50 on the margin.

"A new way to earn money from your website or blog, by selling books, DVDs, and CDs. You'll earn 50% of the proceeds above the cost of products sold. You decide exactly what kind of books and music you want sold on your site. You even decide what colors to use in the product window to match and feel like a part of your website."

Retail being low margin, and Etail being even lower margin is always a hard proposition when you then talk about splitting the margin again between 2 parties. This was one of the big lessons of 1.0. If companies like MeCommerce could prove that their offerings make more money than Adsense, Federated, Adbrite, Adblogs and so on- Or at least increase the total amount they sell (incl any cannibalisation effects) then that is a strong selling point.

As challenging as it is making a business on clipping the ticket on low volume etail, the technical platform is something which is definitely needed - In so far as bloggers should be able to maximise the added value and money they make from the time they invest in running their personal brand : Whether it be from advertising, retail, home loans, or services.

Stowe Boyd has the soundbite : "This is another example of commerce moving all the way to the edge, and smart commerce platform builders will realize that the path to success does not require building a huge site a la Amazon or eBay, or even aggregating microformatted reviews a la Edgeio. All that is needed is to put better widgets into the hands of edglings -- the myriad bloggers and mavens out there -- and then watch the marketplace explode."

AttentionTrust also thinks "Me-commerce will be more likely to succeed when they can integrate behavioral data from recommenders' actual purchases and use it to power their Me-commerce recommendations."

BB : The magic will be in distributing beyond-Amazon like inventory in a way that can be tailored to a bloggers audience, then sell enough items at enough margin to make a quid, while still providing competitive value for the blog reader come ecom purchasee.

More and more, the challenge for bloggers, blog networks, and ad plays in this space is to maximise the relevance of additional offers on their site to a by definition micro-community. More science is needed in sourcing and managing different revenue opportunities, and then campaign management tools to maximise profit earnt.

And making it easy (self service, API's, choice, customised UI) to implement for the blogger is the other big factor to drive enough penetration for MeCommerce to get enough scale to secure good product prices. Obviously these make awhole lot of sense when built into a blog platform : The harder configuration elements will need to be left to the blog infrastructure Co' who I assume MeCommerce are trying to cut deals with. (or given its opensource background going commercial, maybe integrate into offerings like Automattic/Wordpress.com)

And as for us non-US second class citizens without local etailers like Amazon or strong self service ad platforms to implement across our sites, local is an inherent problem in this glocal world of ours.

"When you collaborate with Cambrian House, you get Royalty Points..."

Rocketsphere
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Cambrian House is like scriptlance.com meets Idealabs meets Wink.com. Their mission is to "crowd-source" new business opportunities through 6 week development cycles and create the new new big small thing. They have good design and send google pizzas, so that's enough for me to tick. How it works :

The Cambrian House Web 3.0 Business Model

"....You think it : Most aspiring entrepreneurs and armchair innovators have more ideas than resources.

Crowds test it : But don't buy that Mercedes just yet. Before we greenlight production, your freshly baked ideas run the consumer gauntlet. Flourish or flounder? The market decides.

Crowds build it : So the people have spoken, and they love your idea. .. Contributors can take their pick of exciting projects, and in return, they get a piece of the royalty pie.

We sell it : Show time! YourIdea 1.0 hits the virtual shelves with all the marketing power of Cambrian House behind it and with a little help from Chameleon.

You profit : When we say "every contributor benefits," we don't mean warm and fuzzy feelings. We mean real money. When you collaborate with Cambrian House, you get Royalty Points..."

"Microsoft is working with Samsung to produce a special 22-inch widescreen LCD"

mac setup
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

A wireless Ipod like device; A 22 inch Vista monitor - Microsoft are trying to out-Apple Apple it looks like. Time to upgrade the 20" :)

Engadget : "A new report is out claiming that Microsoft is working with Samsung to produce a special 22-inch widescreen LCD to work with Windows Vista and be branded with the Microsoft logo."

100% Success + 192 Times Return for Sub-$1m Board Seat Investments for Khosla

seed vs series a investing
Originally uploaded by pkedrosky.

Paul Kedrosky has a great graph of the 100% success rate and 192 times return in companies in which he has invested sub $1m and taken a board seat. Very interesting lesson if you invert the lesson from the entrepreneur's perspective.

"I’m told that Fairfax Digital is close to announcing entry into the now competitive directory space. "

boogy
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Aussie Newsagency Blog says Fairfax is about to enter the me-too local search/directory market. I won't even comment on how local can be done differently after 3 years at Sensis 2001-4. It's too obvious and close :) Maybe start by offering more than a phone number, address, map and advertisement ? Changing topics, Mums bday tomorrow so we had a nice lunch at Pier 10 in Shoreham/Red Hill, so off to the Beach to burn off the Eye Fillet pie.

Aussie Newsagency Blog : "I’m told that Fairfax Digital is close to announcing entry into the now competitive directory space."

"It's about ruthless personal honesty.. If you are not kidding yourself you are off to a good start."

Graeme Wood CEO of WotIf.com : Australian (based) travel bookings intermediary, had a chat with the Chief Information AFR Editor and Blogger Old Skool, Mark Jones. Graeme has already made $42m ($30M+ US from their IPO and he still has a large stake and international expansion happening) Mark extracts exactly what his "Filtered" blog is about, The Unfiltered.

"It's about ruthless personal honesty," he says. "If you are kidding yourself, you are gonna try and kid other people. If you are not kidding yourself you are off to a good start."

BB : Wotif is a great example of owning a non-rocketscience, non-theoretical, non-widget business segment (in this case travel accomodation - that alot of the wotif founders didnt even have previous experience in) and knowing that the economics of the industry, and your own business model could equal alot of economic value, once you execute. Which they did. Without distraction and no Wotif about it.

Dees Get 4 (Painful) Points

dees vs bears summary
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Dees went to the Gabbatoir and got the 4 points (we're top 3 as of tonight :|), but it was very painful to watch esp first quarter. Bradshaw kicked 8 i think (4 in first) and destroyed Carroll and Miller (who gave Aker a goal)

Neitz, TJ, Green, Davey (who kicked - soccer/afl - goal of the year) all did what they needed to. And Sylvia had a cracker... Good problems I guess.. Dees will learn alot from this game. Long day here - 2 footy games (Rye also beat Rosebud) 2 wins.. cant complain :)

"Sergey, you can have whatever bed you want in your room; Larry, you can have whatever kind of bed you want in your bedroom. Let's move on."

launch button
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

It's Rye vs Rosebud (away) for football tonight, then Dees on the box at Brisbane tonight. And who said the Google founders arent totally rational, esp when it comes to their 767 (ex-Qantas ?) jet ?

WSJ : "Brin and Page "had some strange requests," including hammocks hung from the ceiling of the plane. At one point he witnessed a dispute between them over whether Mr. Brin should have a "California king" size bed, he says. Mr. Jennings says Mr. Schmidt stepped in to resolve that by saying, "Sergey, you can have whatever bed you want in your room; Larry, you can have whatever kind of bed you want in your bedroom. Let's move on." Mr. Jennings says Mr. Schmidt at another point told him, "It's a party airplane."

"The $100mm exit moves the entrepreneur's needle but not the VC's. That's a problem."

F599GTB
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Fred Wilson is talking about ROI and "moving the needle" and describes the tension arising between small cap Web 2 exits and ever increasing venture capital funds wanting stratospheric absolute gains.

A VC : "When I started in the business 20 years ago, a $100mm exit, generating $20mm in value to our fund was always considered a big win. For many of the VC funds today, that would be a yawn. And that's a problem because for many entrepreneurs, a $100mm exit is plenty big, particularly if they can figure out how to hold on to 20+ percent of the company before the exit happens. The $100mm exit moves the entrepreneur's needle but not the VC's. That's a problem."

What Would You do with $900M ?

llo
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

As I was riffing yday' all this small round 2.0 angel funding is put in perspective when you think about $900M of Motorola and Intel funding for WiMax infrastructure. It's probably an amount close to aggregate VC funding for the Web 2.0 sector. The lucky company is Clearlight.

Cnet : "Deploying a nationwide network takes a lot of capital," said Sriram Viswanathan, vice president of Intel Capital. Viswanathan said the funds also will be used for customer acquisition and acquiring spectrum."

Fly to the Moon. And That Damn Icarus.

rocketboom
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

He Said : "As you know, when I gave you the 49% of Rocketboom I told you that I hoped it would work out and that the reason why I gave you that percentage was so that you would become involved enough to stay with the company."

She Said : "And Andrew, our agreement stands. I do own 49% of Rocketboom."

Amanda, as she started her new 'journey' today, should do a daily episode on her East Coast to West Coast coming of 2.0 age - Kinda The Apprentice meets Simple Life meets Tommy Lee goes to College, set in a Stanford Dorm. Later episodes would then go Curb Your Enthusiasm-ish meets Carnivale as she finally makes it to Hollywood and faces Damocles.