When we think about what makes a life good or bad, we tend to focus on the key events: a small envelope on the counter, a basketball that rolls around the rim before falling in, the cold of a doorknob before you walk out. After offering career advice to a young Redfinner last Thursday, Greylock’s… Read More
I was just reading Chris Dixon’s notes on starting your first company, and noticed that five of his eleven recommendations focus on becoming a social-media player: reading “all tech blogs every day,” starting to blog and tweet yourself, cultivating advisors in part to “build your credibility,” searching Google for your own name, and going “to all… Read More
Every time I get on a plane, I think of Jim Flatley, the vice-president of sales at my old company, Plumtree Software. Corvette-driver, hair-gunker, suit-wearer, sausage-eater, Jim was about as different from me as a person could be. It took us many years to become friends. And because Jim was so very good at sales,… Read More
Whoa! Shocking news, guys. An engineer left Google for Facebook. The great Lars Rasmussen, creator of Google Maps and Google Wave, quit Google Thursday to join Facebook. This has, admittedly, happened before. In June, Matthew Papakipos defected from Google’s Chrome team. In May, it was mobile guru Erick Tseng. Even Facebook’s chef, Josef Desimone, was recruited… Read More
On a Sunday transcontinental flight , I was stuck in a middle seat next to a woman reading a book filled with crazy conspiracy theories. I minded my own business, thinking of a friend at Berkeley who once saw members of a cult walking down the street toward his house. Though heterosexual, he took off… Read More
There’s a fascinating essay on Facebook just now from the owner of the lovely Posie’s Cafe in Portland, OR about how Groupon nearly bankrupted her business. The coffee shop proprietor, Jessie Burke, was shocked at how much money the daily deals site charged to run the promotion. Groupon sold consumers a $13 Posie’s credit for $6,… Read More
It’s a simple argument: Bill Gates is, by far, our industry’s greatest hero. It’s hard to believe we once saw Bill as the pie-splattered villain, and others as the idealists. And it’s hard to understand why, even now, the entrepreneur whom our youth admire far more than Bill Gates is someone who has had great… Read More
I was just about to go to bed when I saw Sarah Lacy on TechCrunch predicting that a 50% drop in venture capital investing last quarter signals the beginning of the end of the industry’s golden age. True to TechCrunch form, it was an eye-opener. And we share some of her concerns. A few weeks… Read More
Redfin posted an essay on TechFlash late last night discussing the implications of what TechCrunch called “Danny Sullivan’s beautiful rant.” Sullivan argues that newspapers should just opt out of Google’s index if they don’t want their home pages to be replaced by Google News. But, as is usually the case with posts like this, we… Read More
As we plunge further into the Great Recession, it’s natural to wonder, like Alice falling down the rabbit hole, what the world will look like when we land. Other bubbles have left behind an excess of infrastructure that would later come in handy: railroad tracks, telegraph lines, Internet fiber. What will we have to show… Read More