June 2010
“Forever 21 isn’t about fashion any more than fast food is about cuisine. The...”
– Hilarious evisceration of new Forever 21 at Times Square, by Cintra Wilson at NY Mag (via razorsharp)
I have always distastefully told J that Forever 21 is “disposable clothing”.
robgo.org: Making Sense of Micro-VC's and Super... →
For better or worse, Micro-VC’s and Super Angels seem to be the new intriguing sub-segment within Venture Capital. Funds like Floodgate, Lowercase, Founder Collective, IA Venture Partners, Harrison Metal, and Felicis and individuals like Ron Conway, Keith Rabois and others show up…
Six degrees of Wikipedia →
mcdavis:
guillee:
Cool, someone already applied graph theory to Wikipedia to find the “center” of Wikipedia (the article with the shortest average distance to any other article), and the shortest path between two articles. As of March, 2008:
The centre of Wikipedia is: 2007
From this article, it takes on average 3.45 clicks to get to any of the 2,111,479 articles reachable from it. The top...
Upgrading from original iPhone to iPhone 4 is...
This thing is fast! Also, screen is amazing, camera quality is no longer embarrassing, construction is nice.
Haven’t tried a phone call yet. Who wants to call me?
“Rumblefish is introducing a service that allows users to buy a license to a...”
– Rumblefish to Offer Music for YouTube Users - NYTimes.com (via interestingsnippets) (via infoneer-pulse)
Email Personalization
(This was the very first paid email newsletter I sent out, a little over a month ago. I’m publishing it here because people have asked for examples of the content I publish to my letter.ly. You can sign up for future newsletters at letter.ly/dave. It’ll cost you $4/month — the price of a latte — but as a group you can help get a poor entrepreneur out of NJ.)
There’s been some...
Airline Food is More Disgusting Than You Know |... →
Dear lord. Apparently:
LSG Sky Chefs is the biggest provider of airline food. In its Denver facility six months ago, FDA inspectors found dead roaches in numbers that they said were “too numerous to count,” as well as lots of other bugs, garbage, employees touching food with their bare hands and, perhaps worst of all, Listeria, a nasty bacteria that can kill people.
This is all...
“Groupon confirmed that the majority of the deals are not real, save for one...”
– Groupon’s Brazilian Site ClubeUrbano Loaded With Fake Deals Oopsie. (via jonathanmarcus)
WOW.
“It’s the same kind of sexual doublespeak that led Playboy to build a...”
– E3 2010: Why Do Booth Babes Exist? - PS3 Feature at IGN
iPhone 4 Video Sex Chat Services Already Staffing... →
courtenaybird:
“Woman will receive, as before mentioned, a free cell phone and a very competitive salary.”
Sarbanes-Oxley Audit Board Provision Is Struck... →
jonathan-deamer:
Sarabanes-Oxley is a big-deal piece of corporate governance legislation introduced in the wake of the Enron scandal.
I’m no accountant, but I get the feeling there might be a bit of a fuss over this.
The article goes on to say that the specific implementation is unconstitutional (too protected from presidential intervention, whatever that means), not the concept itself....
NYU starts Venture Fund
mknell:
New York University plans to launch a $20 million venture-capital fund that aims to spur technology entrepreneurship at the school.
The NYU Innovation Venture Fund is the latest initiative from the school to support new companies emerging from the university’s research.
Earlier this month, the Polytechnic Institute of New York University said it would join with New York City and...
Some Thoughts on the Super Angel Funding...
continuations:
Paul Kedrosky has kicked off an interesting debate by suggesting we will see a “super-angel crash.” Paul’s initial post resulted in a bunch of strong disagreement in tweets and comments, enough to cause an update to the initial post. While the update says many nice things about “super angels” and a bunch of negative ones about “incumbent vcs,” it ends on the same note by...
“Visa credit and debit cards will be the only ones accepted at shops or cash...”
– Olympics 2012: Fans must use Visa for tickets (via iamdanw)
Coming soon: Facebook Bucks.
“If you’re waiting for a boss or an editor or a college to tell you that you do...”
– Seth’s Blog: Validation is overrated
just do what matters to you. (via heyamberrae)
“The worst mistake I made, probably, was not being strong enough with investors....”
– Best And Worst Decisions – Paul Graham « Mark Fletcher’s Blog (via fred-wilson)
This should go in the how to be a entrepreneur handbook. (via siminoff)
Living this right now.
Practice Makes Perfect, Even in Fundraising
robgo:
A lot of folks start their fundraising efforts by targeting their first choice prospect and working down the list. It’s instinctively the most natural thing to do.
But unless you are a really good fundraiser and know that the process will be a slam dunk, I think this is exactly the wrong approach.
Practice makes perfect, and fundraising is no different.
Fundraising unfortunately is...
BP Builds Island to Dodge Offshore Ban; Borrows... →
mikehudack:
boutofcontext:
To get around a ban on offshore drilling, BP made a new island off Alaska’s coast, under which it will drill slantwise. Per another piece in that issue of Rolling Stone:
BP’s plan — which uses an unproven approach to extracting undersea oil — is not covered by the six-month moratorium on offshore drilling. This fall, the company plans to begin drilling for oil...
HTML5 and the Write-Once, Run Anywhere Dream
thegongshow:
Dan Kantor wrote a piece for Ajaxian about the “write once, run anywhere” dream and how HTML5 is a big step along that path.
Dan’s execution on Extension.fm feels like he reached two years into the future, and pulled an app back in time to show us all what the future of web development could be. In doing so, the tradeoff Dan made was to restrict compatibility to Chrome-only...
“Three quarters of people who pay for their own insurance just faced a premium...”
– Self-Insured Premiums Jump By 20%, Triggering Warning From White House
This is the future. Political and legal bickering between the feds and the insurance companies over the federally-mandated purchase of private, for-profit insurance. Who is going to win? Well, who do you think? Who’s winning the...
Sidewalk Collective NYC July
postling:
We are so excited to announce the next Sidewalk Collective event here in NYC. But this time, we’re going to Brooklyn!
Sidewalk Collective is a place for local businesses to gather and discuss their experiences with social media.
July’s event will take place July 20th in Brooklyn at Park Slope Eye, from 7-9pm.
This month’s open forum discussion will be led by Dr. Justin Bazan of...
“That new home sales would decline in May following the expiration of the home...”
– New Home Sales Drop to Record Low in May - NYTimes.com
Gen. Stanley McChrystal has submitted his... →
(via soupsoup)
“- Be an unrelenting machine- Brick walls are there to show you how bad you want...”
– Hacker News | Ask HN: How to become a millionaire in 3 years? (via tylerhwillis)
“A charismatic brand can be defined as any product, service or company for which...”
– Marty Neumeier in “The Brand Gap”. I am rereading this book slowly to ponder his wisdom and let it swirl in the grey cells. I thought about this quote all weekend. He goes on to explain a charismatic brand’s magical ability to bridge the gap between strategy and creativity. (via gbattle)
“Become famous with your customers. They’re the ones that truly matter.”
– Hacker News | Ask HN: How to become a millionaire in 3 years? (via viiv)
This. Screw chasing after TechCrunch write-ups.
How to Pitch a VC (aka "Startup Viagra") →
tedr:
Pretty darn funny and 100% great advice from Dave McClure if this kind of thing is your business
