May 2013
Union Square gets 5,000% return on Tumblr →
shortformblog:
soupsoup:
Tumblr’s employees will also do well. The company’s first 10 employees will receive an average of $6.2 million in cash; the first 30 will receive an average of $3.3 million in cash, and the rest of the 178 employees will each receive $371,000.
However, in a comment on Hacker News, Union Square’s principal, Fred Wilson, calls the numbers offered by PrivCo ”total...
“It’s worth noting that while Twitter may be increasing in popularity with the...”
– Teens Love Twitter, Feel Burdened by Facebook, Pew Study Finds - Mike Isaac - Social - AllThingsD (via khuyi)
travels with khuyi: 8 questions to ask yourself... →
khuyi:
8 questions to ask yourself before *applying* to (not even joining) a startup. Why before applying? Because not knowing the answers to these questions, or worse, not having even considered them, makes it much harder for the person hiring you to believe that you’re truly interested.
What kind of…
WatchWe passed by a tub full of ducklings yesterday that were for sale. $8-20 per duckling depending on the breed.
Yahoo Back On Top After Purchasing Millions Of... →
“While Yahoo has seen its share of struggles over the years, the company’s acquisition of over 100 million blogs written by middle-school females before bedtime has already majorly revitalized the company’s brand,”
Thoughts on Tumblr/Yahoo! →
percolatehq:
Starting Friday the tech world was abuzz with talk of Yahoo! buying Tumblr for $1.1 billion. At the time it seemed like just a rumor, but it quickly coalesced, ending with a press release this morning trumpeting Yahoo!’s “promise not to screw it up“.
We’ve been working with Tumblr since we started and have been one of Tumblr’s A-List partners since they introduced the program in...
WatchHere’s a taste of the Pacific for those of you far from the ocean.
1 tag
Another win for USV
Tumblr’s (alleged?) sale to Yahoo for $1.1B this weekend is one more datapoint in a theory I’ve had for a several years now on USV’s investment strategy for the decade following 2002. I haven’t asked Fred or Albert or Brad to verify, so this is just a hunch. I also think this strategy is no longer in use.
My theory is that they looked to invest in network effect driven businesses that were...
The $3B+ Exit Tumblr Could Have Had | Danielle... →
4:45am
In case you were curious what time all the roosters start crowing in Hawaii.
Tumbling Valuation?
gbattle:
A $1billion valuation for Tumblr is about 40-50% of what I would have expected (based upon the last Pinterest raise/val). If sold to Yahoo, I’d want as much cash as possible to mitigate clear risk vs. Facebook where I’d take 20-30% cash as a floor based on Instagram deal. If they are pricing on 10X expected 2013 revenue, that’s the wrong metric - not even in the right neighborhood in my...
“Online education strips away all of those expenses except for the cost of the...”
– College Is Going Online, Whether We Like It Or Not - Zachary Karabell - The Atlantic (via infoneer-pulse)
Bullshit. Online Ed that is nothing but a talking professor sucks. Great online education costs money too, just in different places.
JFK -> Honolulu is 10.5 hours
Which means you have time to watch almost the entire first season of Homeland. Good show!
Bon voyage!
R and I are off to Hawaii for 10 days. We’ll be on the Big Island for a week, staying (for free!) with my uncle near Hilo, then 3 days in Kauai. Who knows, maybe by the time I get back, Yahoo will have bought Tumblr*.
*Tumblr has to sell. It’s a no brainer. Tumblr has not shown it knows how to monetize to a level that surpasses a $1B acquisition price. The investors need an out and a $1B sale...
“College enrollment in the spring-2013 term dropped by 2.3 percent compared with...”
– College Enrollment Fell by 2.3 Percent This Spring, Report Says - The Ticker - The Chronicle of Higher Education (via infoneer-pulse)
“Our age elevates the precision-tooled power of the algorithm over flawed human...”
– Steven Poole – On algorithms (via infoneer-pulse)
Amazon had the humans compete against the algorithms for who was better merchandising. The algorithms won. Sorry but not sorry.
“Think about the difference between a house (Germanic) and a mansion (French), or...”
– Ten things you might not have known about the English language | Oxford University Press (via slantback)
“The research arm of dating site OKCupid looked at 500,000 first contacts and...”
– Apostrophe now: Bad grammar and the people who hate it Read: BBC News (via brooklynmutt)
You should try semi-colons.
“If you grew up and went to school in the United States, you were educated in a...”
– “Sorry, College Grads, I Probably Won’t Hire You” via The Wall Street Journal
Despite some quibbles with this op-ed piece, the fact is that our education system is not adapting fast enough to a world that is relying more and more on technology. In order to succeed, students are going to need a...
“Vendors are pitching a faster web. Consumers are expecting a faster web....”
– Steve Souders, from How fast are we going now? | High Performance Web Sites. The post is a summary of Steve’s presentation on the same topic given at the HTML5Developer Conference.
From both the deck and the post:
The deck, at a key slide:
This is also closely tied to my previous post,...
“Just imagine you could be given 10 percent of the future earnings of one person...”
– Fast Company (via khuyi)
Today was a long day.
My grandfather’s funeral and then all day at my grandparents house where my grandmother is sitting shiva. I’ll be back there tomorrow and the weekend. The hardest part, besides missing him, is seeing her so sad.
“I am constantly amazed at how people haven’t yet learned that the payments...”
– Yishan Wong Excerpt From Aaron Greenspan’s Lawsuit Against Money Services Businesses (via jonathanmarcus)
New design pattern: Livatars
msg:
avimuchnick:
“Livatars,” a Portmanteau for “live avatars,” is a pretty simple concept: Take a traditional headshot and make it subtly animated so the person in it appears alive. It’s an homage to the living newspapers in Harry Potter and player popup profiles that appear on tv during sportscasts. We tried this on Aviary’s company page and have gotten great feedback on it from people who...
Three weeks
My grandfather passed away yesterday from pancreatic cancer. It had only been three weeks since his diagnosis. At the time, the doctors thought he would have 3-6 months to live. I last saw him on my birthday. I spent the next weekend in Charlotte celebrating R’s grandmother’s 90th birthday. I skipped last weekend thinking I’d see him this coming weekend. Had no idea that that...
