October 2005
Sessions Top Ten Insights - Two
Social production systems seem to deliver a much higher portion of the economic value created to the consumers than traditional production systems do. As Tim O’Reilly says, "if you look at … Ebay or Google, even though they're very, very... [Read More]
October 28, 2005 10:25 AM, By Brad Burnham
Comments (6)
| Tag this post with del.icio.us
Tags: topteninsights usvsessions
Sessions Top Ten Insights - One
As we get a chance to go back through the transcript of Sessions, we are finding a number of themes that are worth highlighting. We will try to get these thoughts up on the site over the next week or... [Read More]
October 27, 2005 11:52 AM, By Brad Burnham
Comments (4)
| Tag this post with del.icio.us
Tags: peerproduction usvsessions
Seeking A Super Talented Product/Design Person
One of the companies that we are invested in is working on reshaping a large and important industry with a new technology platform. The team that is building this company is first rate and has already built several very valuable... [Read More]
October 26, 2005 05:56 PM, By Fred Wilson
Comments (1)
| Tag this post with del.icio.us
Tags: design jobs productmanagement
VC Cliche of the Week
Every week, I do a VC Cliche of the Week post on my personal blog. This week the cliche is A Bridge to Somewhere. If you want to read about bridge loans and why they need to lead to somewhere,... [Read More]
October 26, 2005 03:37 PM, By Fred Wilson
Comments ()
| Tag this post with del.icio.us
Tags: cliche vc
We don't "get it"
One of the first posts that came out of Sessions was Joel Spolsky’s comment on architecture astronauts. Joel said. I'm starting to see a new round of pure architecture astronautics: meaningless stringing-together of new economy buzzwords in an attempt to... [Read More]
October 24, 2005 05:05 PM, By Brad Burnham
Comments (46)
| Tag this post with del.icio.us
Tags: web20
Peer Production in Action
This is a really great story about the power and perils of peer production. This morning Brad told me that there was a reformatted version of the transcript of the Union Square Sessions event on our wiki. I assumed that... [Read More]
October 24, 2005 04:37 PM, By Fred Wilson
Comments (2)
| Tag this post with del.icio.us
Tags: peerproduction
Union Square Sessions 1 - Transcript
It took a couple days, but we've uploaded the entire transcript of the first Union Square Sessions, an event focused on the topic of peer production and open data architectures. The entire transcript (all 227 pages) is available as a... [Read More]
October 23, 2005 10:18 AM, By Fred Wilson
Comments (4)
| Tag this post with del.icio.us
Tags: usvsessions
Union Square Sessions 1 - Photos
#flickr_badge_source_txt {padding:0; font: 11px Arial, Helvetica, Sans serif; color:#666666;} #flickr_badge_icon {display:block !important; margin:0 !important; border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0) !important;} #flickr_icon_td {padding:0 5px 0 0 !important;} .flickr_badge_image {text-align:center !important;} .flickr_badge_image img {border: 1px solid black !important;} #flickr_www {display:block;... [Read More]
October 20, 2005 12:02 PM, By Charles O'Donnell
Comments ()
| Tag this post with del.icio.us
Tags: usvsessions
Union Square Sessions 1 - Peer Production
Today we hosted the first of what we hope will be many conversations about the impact of information technology on our society, our economy and on the business of venture capital. The subject of this "session" was peer production. We... [Read More]
October 20, 2005 10:24 AM, By Charles O'Donnell
Comments (1)
| Tag this post with del.icio.us
Tags: usvsessions
Management Case, Base Case and Worst Case
Early stage venture capital investing is not really a numbers oriented business. Its much more important to have a feel for technology, markets, and people than numbers. But there are times when numbers are important. Two of the most important... [Read More]
October 20, 2005 05:21 AM, By Fred Wilson
Comments (1)
| Tag this post with del.icio.us
Tags: cash diligence numbers valuation
Metrics
We like to make our initial investment sometime between the formation of a business and the first dollar of revenue coming in the door. Sometimes that time period lasts a while. In the interim, how do you monitor how an... [Read More]
October 15, 2005 06:55 AM, By Fred Wilson
Comments (1)
| Tag this post with del.icio.us
Tags: metrics numbers usv venturecapital
Web Services are different
We are true believers in the potential of the web. Over the last year, we have seen a number of lightweight web services that could be the foundation for large and valuable businesses. Many of these services appear to be... [Read More]
October 13, 2005 02:04 PM, By Brad Burnham
Comments (3)
| Tag this post with del.icio.us
Tags: businessmodels investmentstrategy webservices
Hello World
Anyone who has been to our site before will notice a very different look and feel today. When we launched Union Square Ventures last year, we put up a web site that described who we were, how we saw the... [Read More]
October 12, 2005 04:41 PM, By Brad Burnham
Comments (6)
| Tag this post with del.icio.us
Tags: blog investment venturecapital
Founders
I just finished John Battelle's The Search. It's a great book. I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in business, technology, marketing, and the internet. One of the things I that I enjoyed most in the book was... [Read More]
October 11, 2005 08:11 AM, By Fred Wilson
Comments (2)
| Tag this post with del.icio.us
Tags: founders management startups
10 Steps to a Hugely Successful Web 2.0 Company
Do you want to make money in your own home? Forget real estate scams, tupperware, or becoming a spammer. Create your own Web 2.0 company NOW!! Its easy. Just follow these 10 simple steps and you, too, can be seen... [Read More]
October 11, 2005 08:05 AM, By Charles O'Donnell
Comments (18)
| Tag this post with del.icio.us
Tags: startups success web20
Audience Management
What is Audience Management? It's the ability to track your audience and customers, know who they are, what they like, how they behave, etc. Done right, it can allow a business to improve its relationship with its customers and potential... [Read More]
October 3, 2005 03:18 PM, By Fred Wilson
Comments (1)
| Tag this post with del.icio.us
Tags: audience marketing
del.icio.us
I didn't plan on posting anything about Union Square Ventures' most recent investment, del.icio.us. The founder, Joshua Schachter, posted twice to his list about the investment and I figure that is pretty much the whole story. If you want... [Read More]
October 3, 2005 03:09 PM, By Fred Wilson
Comments (5)
| Tag this post with del.icio.us
Tags: delicious discovery tagging usv
Indeed
Last year, when Brad and I were on the road raising our fund, we used to talk a lot about web services that should exist but don’t. One of Brad’s favorites was “paid job search.” Brad would say that job... [Read More]
October 3, 2005 03:08 PM, By Fred Wilson
Comments (5)
| Tag this post with del.icio.us
Tags: indeed jobs search usv
A New Dimension?
I feel in my gut that we need a new dimension, a new vector, a new lode to mine. And I feel that we are close to finding it. Note the conscious use of the word we in the last... [Read More]
October 3, 2005 03:00 PM, By Fred Wilson
Comments ()
| Tag this post with del.icio.us
Tags: relevance search
Impact Media
For the past 50 years, the media equation has most often been solved for the largest audience. That is changing and its happening pretty quickly, brought on largely by digital media. I think the media equation is going to get... [Read More]
October 3, 2005 02:26 PM, By Fred Wilson
Comments ()
| Tag this post with del.icio.us
Tags: media music radio
Downturns
The morning paper this morning is not a pretty picture. New Orleans is flooded. Large swaths of the southeast are down and out. Energy prices are spiking. The war in Iraq shows no sign of ending anytime soon. Interest rates... [Read More]
October 3, 2005 02:25 PM, By Fred Wilson
Comments ()
| Tag this post with del.icio.us
Tags: history trends vc
Inspiration
This is a picture of my office taken from my desk. Fred's Sitting Area Originally uploaded by fredwilson. I look at this artwork every day and it reminds me that I gotta get stuff done. It also sits... [Read More]
October 3, 2005 02:02 PM, By Fred Wilson
Comments ()
| Tag this post with del.icio.us
Tags: entrepreneurs pitching usv vc
Wikis
Some things take longer than others for me. I was quick to grok the blogging thing, reading them, writing them, etc. I was pretty quick to grok the podcasting and vlogging things too. RSS made sense to me immediately. But... [Read More]
October 3, 2005 01:53 PM, By Fred Wilson
Comments (1)
| Tag this post with del.icio.us
Tags: wikis
The Problem with Podcasts
I've talked about this before, but I want to say it again. The problem with podcasts is you can't link to a specific part of the podcast. You can link to the entire MP3, but if there is a funny... [Read More]
October 3, 2005 01:39 PM, By Fred Wilson
Comments (2)
| Tag this post with del.icio.us
Tags: music podcasting
Location, Location, Location
Steve Shu's post on VC in different geographies got me thinking. Steve wrote it on July 28th, but it only showed up in technorati's link search this week so that's when I read it. I also got a trackback from... [Read More]
October 3, 2005 12:59 PM, By Fred Wilson
Comments ()
| Tag this post with del.icio.us
Tags: investing location usv