How YouTube Started Out

GigaOM has an interesting post about how YouTube took off.
http://gigaom.com/2006/10/26/jawed-karim-how-youtube-took-off/
At the very least, the lesson to be learned here is perseverence. Ah, who am I kidding, they didn't even try that hard. They just happened to be at the right place and the right time and didn't quite early.
HYSTA invited Steve Chen to be on a panel at their Startup Bootcamp event in mid Nov, so I will have a chance to chat with the guy and see if I can find out more.

Can a gene turn water into energy?

Doesn't this sound a bit like science fiction? I have to put on my anti-hype cap for this one.
http://news.com.com/2061-11128_3-6128475.html
This can really change the world, so hope this guy is not smoking something. =)

Web 2.0 Defensibility

Guy Kawasaki has a great post on what to say and not to say when the VC ask how you would defend your Web2.0 biz idea. Worth checking out, especially the "what not to say" part. I am not a VC and I don't hear a lot of pitches (though I do hear some), yet I've personally heard a lot of bad answers regarding how to create barrier-to-entry and they've always made me cringe, so you can imagine what a turn-off they could be to the real VCs who hear them all the time.
http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/10/how_to_change_t.html

Quote of the Day

"The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it." *Chinese Proverb.

Cool to Check Out: Google Mobile Offerings

Just go here and you can see everything that Google is currently providing for mobile users as well as some very nice information (including some demonstration videos and turorials) that will help you get the most out of these handy mobile tools. Enjoy.

U.S. Venture Capitalists Invest $6.36B In Q3

Ernst & Young and Dow Jones VentureOne are reporting today that there was $6.36B invested in 611 venture capital deals in the third quarter, with a slight increase in both the number of deals and amount of investment versus a year ago.
http://www.socaltech.com/fullstory/0005923.html

Unconscious avoidance/fear

I noticed sometimes on the freeway that even though it's the weekend, a lot of cars wouldn't take the carpool lane. They are contend to be tightly spaced at 55mph on the other lanes rather than taking the carpool lane. People are so used to not driving on the carpool lane during the weekday commute hours that they automatically avoid using the lane even when they can. Whatever we used to avoid or used to fear become a habit that we no longer re-examine and continue to reinforce.

Another more telling example... An experiment was done where they put a shark in a large tank with a small school of fishes, but divided the school from the shark with a thick piece of glass. Naturally, the shark chased after the small fishes but each time just as it got close, it would hit the dividing glass and hurt itself. Everyday, the shark tried. Everytime, when it thought things would be different, the result was always the same. After many days of this, the shark started to stay away from the small fishes - which now represent pain instead of food. After a while, even though the dividing glass was removed, the shark wouldn't even try to eat the small fishes that swam right in front of it.

I think you know what I am trying to get at.
Do you unknowingly avoid or fear something?
Have you ever examine all your fears and the assumptions behind them?

Marketing is too important to be left to Marketing

Sorry I have been slow with my blogging. If blogging is my broccoli, then I have not eaten my vegetable. If it is my R&R, then I have just been too busy to take a break. Either way, it's not a good thing.

Since I am currently in Marketing (note that I don't label myself as a marketing person), I want to talk a little bit about Marketing.

First a very interesting quote by a renown VC and Marketing guru, Bill Davidow: "Marketing is too important to be left to marketing." This insightful quote illustrates both how important as well as misunderstood Marketing is. In my opnion, Marketing is the most misunderstood function, not just to outsiders, but even to Marketing people themselves. To outsiders, Marketing is nothing more than sales and promotion (such as advertising) and evokes the images of slick talking car salesmen type with expensive suits. Even among the professionals, folks in other departments don't really have a lot of respect for Marketing either. The sales guys and field support and application guys don't think Marketing knows jack because they are not as close to the customers. The executives don't trust strategic planning to Marketing because they don't think Marketing have the smart to think strategically. You can almost hear Marketing folks signing that song, "R. E. S. P. E. C. T., find out what it means to me..."

I found a great blog entry that explains well what technology marketing is about. Here are the first three elements of this top-ten list:

Marketing is not a department. Marketing is a combination of elements that creates the environment in which it is possible to meet a customer need (starting right back at product development). Promotion and sales are just sub-sets of marketing.

Marketing is a conversation, but most people don’t speak geek. Successful technology marketing must translate the creations of the uncommunicative into the needs of the untechnical. Spin is not good marketing. Lucid two-way communication is.

Simplicity does not negate complexity. Reductive marketing that simplifies ideas does not undersell your complex creation. It facilitates an entree to your world. You can’t have passionate users until they start using.

Truer words have never been spoken. The rest of the top-ten list is here:
http://makemarketinghistory.blogspot.com/2006/08/geek-marketing-101_115529822564302037.html

Sometimes it's hard to understand someone's job until you are in it. So don't worry if you can't fully appreciate that post. It is also quit possible that I am just hyping up Marketing to justify my two hour commuting each day for my current job.

While I like this list, I don't think it's complete. A very important piece of marketing that is left out is strategy - what to do to win against the competitors. That's what Davidow was referring to with the first "Marketing" in his quote.

Bringing the Grameen model to China?

In case you have been hiding under a rock and never heard of microcredit and a guy named Muhammad Yunus, he is the founder of Grameen Bank and started a world changing movement called microcredit. Very simple idea, but powerful impact. "Ending World Poverty" is deemed so near impossible that anyone stating it as a life-long goal is viewed as idealistic or even naive - sounding like a child or a contestant on Miss America. But this guy had the idea of giving very small amount of loans (on the order of $10USD) to help the very poor in 3rd world countries get started on something that can help them become self-sufficient. He has been very successful at this and his bank has lended out billions of dollars and been seeing unexpectedly high rate of repayment. Btw, the guy just recently won the Nobel Peace Price for his work. The link below is a post by something asking if the Grameen model can be applied to China as well.
http://www.pacificepoch.com/blog?id=P77846

Bringing the Grameen model to China?
Muhammad Yunus, citi, grameen, microcredit
Posted by: Sage Brennan on Oct 17 12:10
In case you missed it, Muhammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last Friday, in recognition of the enormous positive impact that the microcredit movement has had in Yunus' native Bangladesh and in the many other places where the concept has been duplicated.Microcredit networks make a large number of tiny ($10-range) loans to finance small-scale entrepreneurial ventures in poor areas, and then lump them together to leverage the better terms of larger commercial financing. A simple solution to a complex problem.

Double the World's Labor Force

If I don't have anything to blog, I could at least past along interesting posts I ran across.

The Harvard law professor Richard Freeman has started a debate amongst others in the New York Times on the relationship between labor and capital. In short his argument is that 1.5 billion workers in the west have been joined by 1.5 billion workers in China, India and other places, double the capacity of labor and undermining the position labor has been having in the past in Europe and the US. Now their workers are better trained, US and Europe also lose their relative advantage very soon.Here is Freeman's argument in full, as presented at a conference of the Boston Federal Reserve Economic conference in June 2006. There are two scenario's, one suggesting that as the baby boomers retire, labor will have a shortage. The other, saying that through globalization the work force in the world has doubled, so the retirement of the baby boomers does not matter that much.Not everybody agrees. One of the questions at steak: is the world really one market, as Freeman suggests.

Daily Reflection

Hype and Fear... seemly very different things, yet if you really think about it, they are really just two sides of the same giving-something-more-credit-than-its-worth coin. Hype is thinking something is better than it is and Fear is thinking something is much worst than it is.
Lets examine Fear in more detail. Fear is being afraid of something that might or not might hurt or kill us. It arises from our survival instinct and is meant to keep us safe. However, in this day and age, how likely are we to be killed by a predator? Most of the time, what we fear are only figment of our imagination, of what we THINK would hurt us. Fear is very subtle and manifests itself in many ways, such as fear of rejection or failure. Do we really get hurt or die from rejection or failure? Also, some fears are completely irrational such as fear of height, water, success. Fear of success! What's that about? Yeah, success is gonna kill you or hurt you bad. So in a nut shell, fear is also giving something in our conciousness or even subconciousness a lot more power than it deserves. Have you ever examine your fear? Have you ever wonder why you behavor a certain way? Underneath it all, it might just be fear. Pay close attention...

The 20 Mistakes that Kill Startups

Paul Graham, a well known blogger on the topics of VC and entrepreneurship, has a post on mistakes that kill startups. This guy is very insightful and writes very well. These mistakes are likely from first hand experience as he saw with the startups he invested in, so there are definitely value in that. Paul listed 18 mistakes, but I want to add two more from my own list (to make an even 20) and not coincidentally those two factors are also part of the title of this blog-- hype and fear.

http://www.paulgraham.com/startupmistakes.html

The 18 Mistakes that Kill Startups
1. Single Founder
2. Bad Location
3. Marginal Niche
4. Derivative Idea
5. Obstinacy
6. Hiring Bad Programmers
7. Choosing the Wrong Platform
8. Slowness in Launching
9. Launching Too Early
10. Having No Specific User in Mind
11. Raising Too Little Money
12. Spending Too Much
13. Raising Too Much Money
14. Poor Investor Management
15. Sacrificing Users to (Supposed) Profit
16. Not Wanting to Get Your Hands Dirty
17. Fights Between Founders
18. A Half-Hearted Effort
19. Hype (From James' List)
20. Fear (From James' List)

Green Tech and China

Two big long-term trends to care about...
Also, as a note of disclosure, VC is also something I care about.
So, what could be more fitting than to start this blog out with a link to hear John Doerr talked about green tech (as opposed to clean tech) and China at the recent HYSTA Annual Conference.
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/IndustryInfo/story?id=750595&page=1

Related news from yesterday:

Granite Global Ventures Closes $400 Million Venture Fund
http://www.ggvc.com/news/900833.aspx

Google to build largest solar installation in the U.S.
http://venturebeat.com/2006/10/16/google-builds-largest-solar-installation-in-us-oh-and-bigger-than-microsofts/

Practical Instrument and concentrator startups
http://venturebeat.com/2006/10/16/practical-instruments-joins-solar-gold-rush-raises-8m/

The First Post

Since the journey of a thousand miles start with a single step, I won't "Hamlet" this and just get that first "formative" post out of the way. This is intented to be an open blog for anyone who has anything intelligence to say. Now you have it. Go wide, go deep, go wild!