Generated Transcript

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Okay. Welcome to Venture Cast 26. I’m Craig Severson of Grunt Media. I am David Hornick of August Capital, and we are here at August Capital, as per usual on a Friday. Only there’s something different.

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Yeah, there’s a bunch of people here. It’s very disturbing, frankly. There’s banners, there’s people. We are here at the TechCrunch party. That’s right.

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It’s out on the August Capital patio, which, you know, this is what it’s best for. Yes. Beautiful spot. Pretty. Pretty excited about that.

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And so I think we’ll just wander around a little bit and see. Just harass people. Yeah. See who’s here. That’s a good idea.

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We should. We’re standing right now in the hallway leading in, waiting to entrap people. I mean, you know, Dave McClure is sitting here taking our picture. We could talk with Dave, but, you know, I think he’s just. That’s just a cry for help.

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That’s a cry for help. Yeah. Oh, he’s wandering over. Really? You know, if you’re gonna rip me while you’re recording, then I’m gonna come over and bother you.

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Okay. It serves us right. It’s true. That’s your prerogative. All right, let’s go wander around.

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Let’s go. Let’s go. All right. Yeah, it looks like the front has cleared up, so we should just go to the noise, Noisy patio. All right.

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And see. See what we got. There’s a lot. There’s a huge amount of setup. This.

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This particular party a year ago, there were lots of people, but there didn’t seem to be this much production value. We got Michael Birch over here. Should we interrupt him and see if he wants to chat with us? Hey, Michael Burch, David Hornick. Hi, David.

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Good to see you. We’re. We’re recording venturecast here out on the. On my patio. Okay.

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And so, you know, this. This Bebo thing, it’s Is. It’s pretty spectacular, so I figured I’d come and tell you that it’s spectacular. Thank you. I appreciate that.

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How many frequent flyer miles do you have over the period of this year? I finally just got a gold card with Virgin Atlantic. Yeah, Pretty delight about that. I imagine that it’s pretty that. That you’re probably there sort of every other weekend or something.

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Every other month. Yeah. I’m trying to cut back because I kind of live on a plane, and they don’t have Internet connection there, so it’s not so good. Yeah, no. Well, didn’t Lufthansa do the Internet connection in the sky thing for a while.

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They may done. Do they fly to. From San Francisco to London though? No, probably not. You’d have to go through then I’d have to go around the world just to get.

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Would it be worth it? Would it be worth San Francisco, Frankfurt just to have Internet connection and then a quick hop from Frankfur? Probably not. Probably not, no. That way you’d have to draw the line there.

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Yeah, well, fair enough. I’m probably not answering any meaningful questions about social. We’re not asking any. So it’s fine. Oh, that’s good.

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No, it’s fine. It’s really friendly sort of chatty stuff. Yeah, no, we’re happy to ask you about future, you know, future functionality or like, you know. Yeah. Then you get the normal kind of.

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I can’t tell you that answer. Yeah, what a crap interview that was. Well, so you know, Craig, I don’t know if you know this, but Michael’s one of the, if not the king of viral media. Certainly, certainly among them. Yes, indeed.

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So we really just wanted to come pay homage. I appreciate that. Good to talk to you. We got Gilmore. We got Heather.

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Well, we should grab Heather. But are you going? So are you en route somewhere, Mr. Arrington? Excellent. Oh wait, he’s about to be.

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He’s about to be pod teched. Here we have. We got to duke it out with a pod tag. Right? Yeah.

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Gilmore is going to try and, and take over the make a video cast. Just because you have a video camera doesn’t mean you’re bigger and better. Yeah, we choose not to. I mean, geez. Besides, who wants on camera?

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Oh, is that Mike Aaron? One more.

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That’s right. That’s just how much love there is here out on, on the, on the patio. Yeah, that’s right. Why not? We were just taking some shots here with Mike Arrington.

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So Mike, what do you think this year? Big, bigger and better than last summer or you know, just as awesome? I’m hoping there’s more damage done to the building. You know, last year all we had was the a rip down from the August capital and I’ if we can get the whole sign down and maybe some of the art this year. Well, clear.

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Yeah, clearly it was an insufficient amount of damage because you’re back. So it’s going to be good. I mean, what is it? It’s 6 o’. Clock.

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6:10. I’d say there’s 300 here now. Yeah, it’s good. But any, any big excitement in store for the evening or is it just people doing deals and schmoozing and we have no major announcements to make tonight. No.

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Yeah. And nobody. And. Yeah. All right, well, we don’t.

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We don’t need major announcements. There’s a couple of companies launching, which is really cool, but for the most part, this is just a party to enjoy. Good. And how many people are here exhibiting today? Exhibiting?

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I think there’s 20. Yeah. So we were noting this sort of kind of penis envy screen size thing that’s going on. Yeah, that’s pretty cool. There’s a margarita stand, which is kind of cool.

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So anyway, thank you again for letting us have the party here. Hey, happy to do it. All right, cool. All right, I’ll see you guys. Enjoy.

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See ya. Look, Dan Farber getting his picture taken. There’s nothing, frankly, there’s nothing better on a podcast than Dan Farber getting his picture taken. Makes really good audio that makes awesome podcast right there. Me, Dan.

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David Hornick. Good to see you. Thanks for having this event. You bet. That’s great.

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Yeah, total, totally fun. It’s become a tradition, so I hope so even if there’s no tech brunch, we still have to have it. It’s a deal. I’m always game and my partners go away for the weekend, so they don’t want it. It’s like a don’t ask, don’t tell kind of strategy here at August.

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So let me ask you something. A lot of people been asking me this bubble question, which I think is kind of nonsense, because I look and I say, well, most who are operating today, we’re in the first phase, rode the first wave, so they’re a little bit smarter. And if you think about the number of people now and the amount of money moving online, that I just don’t see a super big bubble. No, I don’t either. And, you know, look, the first version was, hey, there are all these great things that we can enable by having this unified back end, but now we have to figure out who will pay for it and how.

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Yeah, you know, now we pretty much know you can try something out, and if it doesn’t work, well, it doesn’t work. Okay. Advertisers aren’t going to support this or, you know, you can’t charge a subscription to that. But there are a whole bunch of things that clear they will. We know how much it’ll cost to get there.

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We can make reasoned decisions about it. So there’ll be lots of money lost, but it won’t be disproportionate. To the amount of money that’s being invested in really early stage ideas. So. And I think the amounts that are going out to companies are a lot smaller too, so spreading the risk around.

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But I think, you know, to me, it doesn’t cost that much now to be entrepreneurial. Yeah, it’s a much smaller, you know, initial investment to determine whether there’s something there. And then if it’s working, then there’s going to be a lot of money invested. And you may have a Facebook outcome where, hey, this is great, it’s working well, or you may have, you know, a less enviable outcome where it turns out the, the cost of serving video or audio or whatever exceeded what you could make and. Oh, well, you know.

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Yeah, I mean, yeah, you know, that infrastructure costs or platforms and services, it’s getting cheaper, it’s getting easier to deploy, I think that’s all. Yeah, you know, people sort of speculate that this is a bad thing for the venture business, but the reality is, you know, we don’t, we don’t want to invest in the easy stuff anyway. We want to invest in the stuff that, that adds disproportionate value. And now it’s just another layer on top of this stuff. And so, yeah, in fact, it seems like a lot of the cost because you’re working at a higher level layer.

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A lot of the costs you don’t have to deal with. Go to Amazon if you want to, if you want to have infrastructure. And yeah, the tools are much better. And the only issue for me is like, in any Catego, there’s 10, 20 people trying to get at the same, which is a huge issue. Right.

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I mean, and if that’s the case, how do you distinguish yourself? And so it’s probably not a great opportunity. Right. The question is, who are the entrepreneurs who are doing those few things that are different or have some unique traction or whatever else? And that’s kind of like the Twitter story, which is, I don’t know, the business model.

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We don’t even know that, but we just know that people like it, so there must be something there. It’s accelerating. I think Facebook had the same thing. And now the question, okay, there’s a lot of people on Facebook, 30, probably soon, 35 million. And so, oh, okay, well then why not invest in companies developing for Facebook right now?

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So, and they say, okay, well, what’s the important value that you’ll add on top of that Facebook platform that is differentiated and will be defensible and all those things and I think people will figure that out. How much of when you’re investing are you thinking about investing in companies where you get synergies among your investments? Yeah, I don’t really. I mean, it’s a nice thing if it happens and I’m more than happy to, you know, have my companies work together. On the other hand, you know, I invest in really smart entrepreneurial teams and ultimately they’re going to succeed based on their skill and insistence on not failing and luck and time and luck and timing and markets and, you know, hope and pixie dust.

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And so if a couple companies can work together, that’s good news, but it’s not, not, it’s not a criteria. Yeah, because I think, yeah, you get yourself into a corner, right? Absolutely. Oh, this fits in well. And, you know, I think it’s easier to think about those things when the company that you’re talking about is, okay, I have Google and what fits into that sort of hole in Google.

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But on the other hand, I still think it’s a bad strategy because as a board member, even of a company, it’s not like you’re setting specific priorities and then funding the things that fill them. And do you, do you invest in media content companies at all? Do you see that as a viable. Yeah, I think the answer is probably no. But I think that there are lots of, there are lots of sets of technologies that enable media companies.

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And so I don’t think that I’m likely to invest in the video game, but I am likely to invest in a set of services underneath the video game that make it monetizable or social or, you know, serve ads into it or whatever. Because we’ve all seen things that seem like a really good idea and nobody likes it. Well, it’s a scalability issue too, right? I mean, it’s harder to scale content company and it is an infrastructure company. We see this.

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Just because you’re a great blogger or a great author or whatever doesn’t mean you then will hire 73 more people who are as good as you are. Right. So would you invest in TechCrunch? I mean, again, TechCrunch, the question is, is TechCrunch a platform that has a set of interrelated media properties that can grow value? On top of that, then it’s, then it could be an interesting investment.

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If it’s, hey, this is the TechCrunch site and it has a lot of traffic, you know, that’ that’s a harder thing to invest in. Although at least it has a lot of Traffic. I always think of it like television programming. You have to have a show, you have to have a good script, you have to have good talent, good cast of characters and a star, and then you have a chance of getting good ratings. If not.

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And then like you were saying, well, you might have one good show. Not every show is going to be a hit, but you have to have a string of hits if you’re going to be successful as a company. Yep. Well, and if you, and if you’re the guys who make CSI and then CSI Miami and whatever, you know, then it’s great. Been able to leverage this platform.

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But again, each one of them is still going to live and die on its ability to provide entertainment. And you know, that’s just, that’s a tricky business model. So I think the talent, the content game, blogs and everything, it’s much more of a talent game, which is if you can hire the talent, then you can have the good shows. Right? No, it may be that if you’re.

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You won’t get people’s attention. If you’re a personality and you are good at it, it may be that you can attract more people like, like you. And so you may have a better job, an easier time of scaling these things, but it’s still tough, right? I mean, you know, you’ve been living in this world. I mean, there are just not that many great people with a great voice and style and integrity and all those things.

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Because if you look at CNET, you know, we’ve been around for 10, 11 years and really cover the waterfront on everything with a lot of high quality. But yet someone with a strong voice and opinion, like a gadget or something can come along and, and, and they ju claim a bunch of mindshare. Yeah. So the model is changing where it’s much more about. It’s still the same.

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It’s about the quality about your talent. Do you have the right talent? Yep. Can’t get away with just saying, well, we covered this and that too. Not like the New York Times could get away with that or the Wall Street Journal could get away with hiring mediocre people.

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But saying, well, we’re the Wall Street Journal or we’re the New York Times. You know, everybody talks about them and they do have a lot of influence. But how many reporters against how many people at cnet or how many bloggers? It’s not a fair fight, right? They lose that fight.

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No, absolutely will. And so for any given, you know, media company, it’s about creating the highest quality that attracts an audience. Which is a cost issue. Yeah. Because you, you know, it’s a talent game.

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And so if you don’t want to invest in talent, you shouldn’t play in the game. Yeah, no, I totally agree with that. And it’s like Hollywood that the talent can walk so well. And it’s particularly troubling. You know, I had this blog post when Scoville left Microsoft.

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I wrote a blog post which was, who owns scobalizer.com? right. Can you, Robert Scoble, leave Microsoft and claim that this BL is still yours when it’s been built on, you know, Microsoft’s dime? On the other hand, you know, is Microsoft really going to say, hey, we own scovilleizer.com and put up that fight? They could try.

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And it would make it more famous. Right? Exactly. And make them look worse. And the same thing with you.

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If you were to move on and they were trying to, you know, CNET were to say, hey, no, no, no, you know, we own the. Your Persona, it wouldn’t happen. Right. So anyway, can I get you guys here? Sure.

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So now, you know, it’s a party. Yes. When Scott Beale takes your picture. Because until then, you know, it’s like. No, it’s like a tree falling in the forest if.

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If Scott has not taken your picture. Yeah. Are you really there? I didn’t. I didn’t feel like anything until now.

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Now. Now we’re here. But it’s that cheap lens I’m worried about. That’s just. Yeah, that’s a piece of crap lens.

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Right. What do you. Right now? It’s my 1.250. Lovely.

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Lovely. If you ever need it cleaned or anything, just let me know. Craig is such a spit on it. You know, Craig is like the. The biggest equipment worshipper.

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You know, he’s. Thank you for using the word worshiper. I’m like, oh, look at that. Gonna use other words. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

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Who am I to. Who am I to question? So what’s happening? How are you doing these days? Just checking it out.

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This is not even. Probably half as crowded as it’s gonna be, right? What? It’s getting out of the sun. It’s pretty crazy.

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It’s good. I’m not used to, you know, you’re down here. I’m not, you know. Yeah, that’s right. You guys know this weather.

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That’s right. No, I’m on the other corner of the building, you know, and I don’t even have shades on my window, which is somewhat tr. Troubling. Yeah. But it’s all right.

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It’s all good. It’s good to put this patio to reasonable use. Oh, yeah, you should, for sure. And, you know, I appreciate that you spread its. Its beauty across the web, you know?

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Yeah. Who you. Who are you shooting for? I just shoot. I actually wasn’t even gonna shoot, but, like, for old time’s sake, I didn’t.

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One of the reasons I started shooting recently was because of Mike had those barbecues, and I thought they were really like, this is weird. You know, like, Dave Weiner’s giving a keynote in his backyard, you know, and that stuff. And in bar camp, too, that was another thing. So I was just sort of documenting history because I thought that was sort of an important. Obviously it is.

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It was an important thing that started happening, and now it’s huge, so. Or just for old time’s sake. There’s a lot more people walking around with very good cameras now. I’m seeing that. And they weren’t two years ago.

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They were. No, not the SLRs. And you’re like, people didn’t want to spend the money or, you know, they dropped in price a lot, too, so it’s helped. Yeah, I find. I find.

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Yeah, I finally got a digital slr. And it’s. The difference is so unbelievable. It’s hard to go back. Pictures of the kids, and I look at them, you know, I put them up, and my sister’s, oh, I need.

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I just had this conversation, oh, I need that camera. She had you. She had commented on a bunch of posts on vox, like, yeah, I need that camera. So then I was at a thing with her, and I pulled out the camera and I was taking pictures, and she said, oh, that’s what you’re taking those pictures with? I thought it was just a better little camera.

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Ah, yeah. It’s a commitment. No. No carous guy around, making sure I get a good shot. That’s right.

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Make. That’s right. We can’t have you leaving without a good shot of us. Let’s. That’s what you got.

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This is. What are we talking about? I don’t know. That’s what I’m talking about. What, are you talking to people?

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Yeah. Look at. Give me. Give me that.

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All right, good.

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Well, we’re here with Molly, who is the world of teachers, but Dagby was the one I was going to just ask. So you. Let’s say, for example, you’re an entrepreneur, sitting here on this. This porch, and you. You make your 20 million bucks.

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What would you do with it? Now you’re the expert in this, right? Yes. Yeah. Okay.

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I mean, it depends on where you are in your life.

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Well, is that what you’re encouraging? I mean, you’re. You’re a wealth manager. You’re like, exactly. I want all.

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And you’re not just. I mean, you know, you’re the. You’re the prime of. Right. You’re the right.

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You’re the. Like, you know, that’s. That’s the thing. So. So what would you.

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Of me? Okay, me, I got the four kids. I got the. You know, I’m coming up on some college. I.

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You know, I’m 39. What do I do with my 20 million bucks? Should I have 20 million bucks? Should I. Should I have it upon this.

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That’s a moral question, but we’ll skip that one. You should invest to make sure that you never lose a lot of money in down markets, and up markets will take care of themselves. All right? So you should find somebody responsible and conscientious who cares about their clients. And where can.

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And where can we reach you? It’s funny. You can reach me at Lehman Brothers. Thank you. I was waiting for them.

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You were so good. I mean, like, you got a pitch. I mean, that’s it. I was just. We’ve been sitting here saying, like, I don’t know how I ever got in this business, and I’ve recently had some success, and I’ve been in Barron’s and some other things, and I’m not really a marketer, naturally.

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No. You have two younger guys on my team that create meetings, like Chris, who set up meetings. And I can see people here who he’s. And I’m like, I’m the wrong person. But I. I happen to be married to Molly, and she is the organization who is getting this organization.

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This whole event is benefiting my school that I. Yes. Oh, that’s awesome. So, yeah, it’s a fun. Yeah.

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That’s fantastic. Yeah. So this is great. Thank you for hosting, and this is exciting for us. We just finished.

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I’m an entrepreneur, but I didn’t make $20 million. But not the right space. He might not talk to you anymore. Be careful. No, no.

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Yes, he will. Okay. Yeah, he will. He. Because what I’ve done instead of raising, you know, making $20 million, is I’ll change lives of children who will then change our world, which is equally valuable.

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We just. I actually just had this conversation with a friend, and she was. And we were talking about their engagement, and her husband to be. Was saying, you know, like, I’m not. She was saying he’s not very materialistic.

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And she said, yeah, he’s not very materialistic. And he said, which is a good thing because I don’t have a. Any money. And I said, so then there was no prenup. And they.

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Oh, yeah, well, I’m. I’m very rich, you know, but I’m rich in, you know, on charm. And so it’s a curious. It’s. Right.

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It’s a curious prenup, right? It’s like, you know, saving the world and charm, good looks and, you know, all that stuff. Well, it pairs well. Yes. We like to say Molly saves the world, and I save Molly.

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But you need that, right? Molly takes kids that are reading in the second and third grade level. They come into fifth grade at her school, and she gets them reading above average in the district. Reading and doing math above average for the whole district, no matter what the demographic is by eighth grade. And then maybe 40.

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Put it this way, our 40 kids in Hunters Point in San Francisco, they earned over $400,000 in scholarships to the best public, private, parochial schools in the city. That’s awesome. Do you really have kids going to. Going to college? No, no, not yet.

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My oldest. My oldest is 12. My oldest is 12. So. So I’m not.

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I haven’t. I would like to say on. On tape that I did buy some S. S and P. 1450 puts. Okay. Three days ago.

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Look at you. Oh, my God. Up 2% when the market was down 2%. That was yesterday’s numbers. And they probably.

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No, but now. Now, of course, it’s a put. You got to exercise it. So, you know, now you just got to sell it. Right?

[00:20:47]
So. Oh, you just make money. But no, this is just a hedge. What we’ve done is we’re actually doing straddles and we sell. This is the stuff I don’t understand.

[00:20:54]
Craig knows me well enough to know that if it actually has anything to do with real finance. I don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re not an arbitrage. No, which is why I need to just give you my money. Yes, pretty much.

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Excellent. Did we agree on that? Right. Yeah, I think we’re all agreed. Exactly.

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We’re on something here. Don’t you think? Right. This is. This.

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It is. It’s digital. What do you. What do you call it now? Craig, you’re the man on chip.

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We’re on chip. I’m on. See, that’s what I was about. I’m on ants. I think of them as ants.

[00:21:25]
It’s a long Story. Yeah, but data’s like ants. Okay. Right, Craig? Yes.

[00:21:31]
So I can go into the whole story, but I won’t, I won’t bore you. So you guys are going and then spending some time around the party, getting an audio of. Yeah, we just. So we do this, we do this podcast called Venture Cast. Every two weeks we hang out.

[00:21:44]
Hang out. Craig and I sort of have a conversation about what happened the last two weeks in tech. And then we, and you. So you can go to itunes, get Venture Cast. And so.

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And it’s really arbitrary, which we think is particularly appealing. It’s very interesting to us. Yeah, we listen to it. Right. Actually, my kids, they do think it’s sort of absurd.

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Every so often they walk in and they hear my voice and it’s like, are you listening to your podcast again? Like, I was just checking how it went, checking the levels. They’re like, they’re the technicians. They think, that’s sad. That’s exciting.

[00:22:17]
Minnesota Public Radio. See, that’s. No, that’s, that is exciting. I mean, I, you know, I, I, I believe that when I get on Terry Gross, that I will have made it. And until then, I gotta keep working.

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I gotta keep stuck with me until then. Yeah. Right. Terry, for the love of God, seriously, the will be us 30 years from now. This is.

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You’re doing your Step Gobert thing. Oh, my God, Craig, you’re killing me. Are you again? This is so great. You seem very comfortable in your element.

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This is why we have to have the party on my deck. Then I can. Great party. It’s great. This is good.

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That’s good. Never could have gotten in without my wife. Yeah. Well, on the record, I’m Dagney Maidman. Thank you.

[00:23:01]
We need that. We need, need that. You know, there’s no, there’s no point in having a Shameless plug if you don’t list your full name and your court and your. And your phone number.

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Shameless enough.

[00:23:15]
Good. Anyone’s welcome. No, but forget, Forget visiting. Just send money. Send money is.

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Don’t you think? Yeah, but could you, could you use more money for the school? Do you think that would be helpful? About 200. About $2,000 per student.

[00:23:27]
And we have 220 students, so we’ve got a big money to raise every year. But I’m not kidding about visiting because the visiting, you’ll understand. It’s amazing. The kids will win you over in about a heartbeat, and you’ll want to come back and come back, and then you’re going to start volunteering and Then you’re going to wonder what kind of project you can do with them. All right, so for our four listeners that shouldn’t overwhelm you, they can all go up and.

[00:23:52]
What’s the name of the school again? Camp Bayview Academy. It’s right by Camp Candlestick park in Hunter’s Point. And actually, the TechCrunch money is going to go to support from technology. We’re going to have a computer in every classroom now, which is exciting.

[00:24:04]
We got a lab, but not a computer in every classroom. And that’s what we’re going to spend it on. So I wonder. I’ll talk to Mr. Arrington because I’m wondering if we could get Apple to, you know, give us a deal to get more than a computer for every classroom. That would be lovely.

[00:24:18]
All right, let me go see. He has not done anything that. That wonderful for us yet. We’d love it. All right, let’s go track down.

[00:24:24]
Let’s go get Lippman. He’s here. Hey, apple.com. come on. It is great to see you.

[00:24:29]
Good to see you.

[00:24:32]
Yeah, yeah.

[00:24:36]
What happened? I was going to say hi to Josh Lippman and he. And he ran away. We got to find him. All right.

[00:24:41]
Gotta find him. And then two of my students. Then there was another one who just walked by and wanted to harass him. He shook my hand and then moved on, knowing better. Oh, there’s Josh.

[00:24:51]
Let’s go harass him. I mean. All right. You know, it’s not often that Apple is represented on. Can’t even say he’s with Apple.

[00:24:57]
I don’t know. We’ll find out. Oh, you think you can run away from me and not get on the record? I’m not getting on the record, so. Too late.

[00:25:04]
So here we are with Josh Lippman, who is on the record. So you’re like, now, as I understand it, you are the master of all things sports and at sports entertainment on itunes. Is that correct? Can you answer that question for us at least? What?

[00:25:20]
Don’t you think he’s well trained? He’s. I’m a. She’s in a show business. Yeah, you’re cold calling.

[00:25:26]
Exactly. He’s from, like a show business family. We’ll just talk to J.T. we didn’t. We didn’t want to talk to you.

[00:25:31]
Anyway, J.T. has a more interesting job. Much more interesting. J.T. so, J.T.

[00:25:35]
you are marketing with Firefox, are you not, J.T. batson? That is correct. And Firefox is like, truly the. In many respects, the superstar of the grassroots marketing world.

[00:25:46]
So that’s, you know, you got that going for you. Absolutely. So that means I don’t have to do anything. We just let everyone else do it for me. So you’re just taking dumb and calls.

[00:25:53]
Yeah, exactly. So thank you. Great job. Good work. No, we have a lot of work to do to try to make it so that people can market Firefox.

[00:26:00]
So make sure that, in fact, one of the big things we’re doing is trying to expand internationally our efforts so that our marketing communities all around the world can get synced up, up and help spread Firefox. As I mentioned earlier, you know, we’re approaching 30% market share in Europe, which is pretty amazing. We’re trying to do things to replicate that other places around the world, so. Well, I was hanging out with your. With your European tech guys.

[00:26:21]
Sure. At Le Web. I guess it was last December. Very cool. You know, they’re awesome guys.

[00:26:27]
Totally focused. Absolutely. Absolutely. No. Very good.

[00:26:30]
I was a little concerned about the fact that they were driving around the city on motorbikes, because I think that’s dangerous. But otherwise, I think we don’t as ultimately owned by a nonprofit. We don’t make enough money to. For having to, you know, afford fancy cars. That’s right, exactly.

[00:26:45]
They have to, you know, go with the. More gas efficient. Exactly, exactly. So now, Josh, how you doing? You’re still here, aren’t you?

[00:26:52]
I’m still here. It’s a heck of a party. I’ve heard on my. On my SMS that the folks are twittering up, that there’s a line all already forming outside. Really?

[00:27:03]
Yes. So Twitter is a Twitter. That’s what. Twitter popularity of this. That’s what August event.

[00:27:08]
That’s what the Twitter is saying. Yes. All right, well, who are we to question Twitter? Question Twitter. Right.

[00:27:16]
Power of the mob, which apparently. Who are we to question Twitter is just enough characters to be. Yeah, let’s Twitter that. Let’s Twitter that. I’m going to send that actually.

[00:27:25]
Now. Can. Can you use this iPhone to Twitter? I don’t know because I’ve never twittered. Oh, well, the answer is yes.

[00:27:32]
Okay. So I set up my Twitter and then I’m not that interesting. Yeah. Driving to work. Yeah, that’s bad.

[00:27:41]
Working. Cleaning the carpet. I heard today or the other day. You know, I’m a Mark Twain fan as far as statistics goes, but I’ve heard that text messaging while driving has become as dangerous as doing anything else before you get into a car and driving. So I’ll Tell you this, this, this afternoon I or this morning I had a board meeting.

[00:28:03]
I was driving back, I was late for a meeting so I was driving relatively rapidly down 280 and I got an email saying like to schedule a call for between 1:30 and whatever. And so I email back I’m available at 2pm only I didn’t hit the shift key and so it said RPM and they translated that to like oh he’s available at any time. Yeah, he’s downshifting. Oh no, Chris, don’t go anywhere. Don’t go anywhere.

[00:28:30]
I’m with. This isn’t necessarily the Chris Anderson of Wired. This is the Chris Anderson of booktour.com is that not correct? That is correct. So and Kevin and Adam, your co founders of booktour.com so I should tell you guys, I was, I just returned from Cape Cod and while I was on Cape Cod I went on booktour.com to see who was signing what and, and there was a sub book signing in Brewster Mass.

[00:28:55]
Just you know like 17 miles from where I was staying in Chatham. I was very excited by that. Fantastic. Glad that worked out. Well no, it turned out that it wasn’t you know a topic I was, I was, I was ready to jump to.

[00:29:08]
But we’re creating new sub book tours for topics business, humor, romance. Maybe your thing, I don’t know. Oh yeah, absolutely. My cousin Abby just won an award for her we romance novel she edited that was about nascar. So maybe that that author would play big in like Atlanta.

[00:29:25]
We’ve got such custom, such passionate customer bases as a romance novelist. Sports too. So, so that author, if your sister joined she would be both in romance and in sports. See now, now my sister and actually this is important because I’ll tell you this. We will go to book signings on the Cape but they will all be kids book signings.

[00:29:43]
And so my sister is the, is a children’s book publisher and and every one of her authors clearly should be. Should be on bookdoor.com and they all do this traveling through the Cape. Exactly. And kids are a section as well. Starting there’s a lot of them.

[00:29:58]
It turns out that the venues are things like public libraries. There’s a load of non purpose bookstores and that’s just not a book signing but also book reading which is a lot of fun. No, absolutely. Because that would be more interesting than the bad magic show that I went to this past Thursday at the Chatham Public Library. That was not.

[00:30:16]
Sorry about that. Yeah, not so you did you go to badmagic.com to figure that out ahead of time. Right, right. Exactly. MagicTour.com.

[00:30:24]
that’s our next magic. What’s in your ear? Oh, nothing’s in his ear. No, it’s just his Madonna look. Yeah, right.

[00:30:31]
This is. Oh, yeah, this is. They’re just two microphones. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

[00:30:34]
I see. You just thought this was a fan. You don’t have to do this. Right, exactly. I’m the.

[00:30:39]
I’m the swing the mic guy. I did this for you. He’s got the co host to do it for Craig Crai about the wrist. You know, I get. I get.

[00:30:47]
I get carpal tunnel if I have to hold the handheld mic. And I’ve got him on a wireless kit here so he doesn’t feel tethered. You guys understand. This is our host of the day. And this is.

[00:30:57]
How many years have you been doing this? This is a couple years running. ARC of Staniel. We do here a lot. I know, and I’ve already RSVP to that one.

[00:31:05]
Excellent. That’s gonna be fun. But the TechCrunch party, we did it last summer and we apparently didn’t do too much damage because we were able to convince him to let us do it again. I saw the ropes and the guards. Yeah.

[00:31:16]
Did you notice that a fair amount of the artwork had been removed from the walls? I did notice that. That’s just unbelievable to me. The plastic on the carpet, the whole thing, it’s like kid proof. So Kevin and Adam were asking me on the way down, who are these people and who will they be?

[00:31:30]
And I guessed, and I probably guessed a little bit wrong, but. What’s your answer? You mean this crowd? Yeah, this crowd. I would say the TechCrunch crowd is the consumer web focused, largely entrepreneurial.

[00:31:44]
Although there are a number of hangers on like my. Myself in the venture community who come by, you know, basically like sharks. Right. And I would say that the age tends to trend somewhat younger, so in the kind of 30s median. We love that.

[00:32:00]
Adam’s 19. Adam, you know what? Get to school, go to school. I’m going back. Okay.

[00:32:07]
This is his second company. He’s written two books. You’re a keynoter at Macworld every year. Not a keynote. Not a keynote.

[00:32:14]
Well, yeah, yeah. Right behind jobs. What an. What a 19 year old MIT undergrad can do with Ruby on Rails is amazing. Awesome.

[00:32:22]
And now where are you living at mit? Are you in Baker House? No, I’m actually moving into a fraternity next year. Oh, come now. Why?

[00:32:30]
Why? It’s a familial Relationship. My dad and brother. Oh, yeah. So, you know, we have.

[00:32:37]
We have our. You know, we have our loyalty to Baker House. They both live there. My brother most recently. So.

[00:32:45]
Nice place. It’s not bad. It’s not bad. My dad was at the. Was at the media lab, so.

[00:32:50]
So that was really cool. And I thought it was really, really. He was the systems guy, so he sort of managed the infrastructure. And when he left, I thought that was very inconsiderate of him. It’s like, wait, I’m.

[00:33:00]
But you do understand, I’m gonna. I’m a vc, and you’re leaving the media lab. Like, parents are so inconsiderate. So much for supportive. Well, about the media level.

[00:33:12]
Hey, Pete lady went to a startup. So there you go. You built the goat book tour and sort of the functionality, and then you’re gonna go back to school, but you’re still gonna work on it over the school year. I actually built the beta version during finals week. This is one of my favorite stories.

[00:33:28]
And still did well. It took us all back to that period in our lives. Regretful. Yeah, right. Thankfully.

[00:33:34]
As a matter of fact, all of our engineers are students at this point. Well, all two of them? Yeah. Oh, okay, here, look, here’s the thing. Fair enough.

[00:33:45]
You’re gonna learn about marketing. Yeah. Right. We’ll remove that. Let’s try that.

[00:33:52]
I heard that all of your engineers are students currently. 100%. The entire team. 100%. Yeah.

[00:33:58]
That’s awesome. And so. So you recruit around campus then? And other campuses. Yeah.

[00:34:02]
Wow. See, now look at. What a quick learner. That was spectacular. But this is a scary thing that Adam built this, built the entire infrastructure in two months using free software.

[00:34:13]
Our total outlays at this point are less than one of those drink tables cost. What do you guys pay for lunch? Yeah, I was going to say. Wait a second. So you don’t.

[00:34:23]
You don’t actually need me? No, we’re nice to you because we like you.

[00:34:28]
Well, you’ve got me between a rock and a hard place. That should be a good thing.

[00:34:35]
I just. I guess I’m just gonna have to write a book so I can have something to do with booktour.com. please do. It’s more authentic this way. So what is.

[00:34:42]
What is Grunt Media? And so Grump Media, Craig. That’s my company. A podcasting company. And one of my hobbies is doing this show at David.

[00:34:50]
It’s hobby. I’m a hobby of his. Well, anyway, don’t let us delay you any further. I think that you should go schmooze, see what kind of authors you can find here. And since you don’t need need money, I’ll point out all the VCs and don’t talk to them.

[00:35:03]
Completely useless to you. Congrats. Good to see you.

[00:35:10]
So have we ever bugged Gabe? Tech Meme Riviera? I don’t know. I see Gabe everywhere I go. I go to the line for the iPhone and Gabe’s there.

[00:35:21]
Come to my office, Gabe’s there. Go to the web things, you’re there. You’re omnipresent. I think of myself as a non omnipresent person, but I think I, to be honest, I’m semi omnipresent. Yeah, it’s like being semi omniscient.

[00:35:43]
I only, I hope technium’s semi omniscient, but I can tell you I’m not semi omniscient. I’m not even micro omniscient. I recently sent an email to my friend Eric Savage, who writes Baron’s blog, to congratulate him on success. And success was measured by appearing pretty frequently on techmeme. I was very excited by that.

[00:36:03]
Yeah, he gets on a lot and he’s. Well, the other day he went to that Microsoft thing and actually had, you know, real firsthand observations to post. So that helps. Yeah, yeah. But he writes all sorts of cool stuff and, and he’s funny.

[00:36:17]
You know, it’s not often that you have the like reporter talking about stock picking and you know, check out the earnings results and then are funny. Is that in your algorithm? I’m not, yeah, I’m not keeping track of funny right now. No. Yeah, that’s a bummer.

[00:36:32]
Semi funny is okay. Yeah, right. He’s semi, semifunny. I was, you know, maybe the, maybe the links in the rest of the web automatically validate funniness, but you haven’t, haven’t addressed it directly. All right, all right, well, so when, so when are we going to get our techmeme Facebook app?

[00:36:50]
How long would that take you? It shouldn’t take a long time, but boy, you know, when I map up my priorities, I don’t know where that is. Do you think? I mean, I know a lot of the right people are on Facebook, but are they actually pouring over their own profile? Do you think they would get it from there?

[00:37:06]
I don’t know. So that’s the question, right? Is it the primary information and communication source for people and to what extent, and if it is, how many and what’s the demographic? Right. Because I Do think that when you’re in college, it is.

[00:37:19]
It’s like, oh, hey, she’s hot. And, hey, we’re going to this party, and can anyone help me with physics? Right? And what’s happening in TechMean, I just don’t. My intuition is that for most of those 30 million or users, it’s.

[00:37:36]
They don’t want to mix Tech Meme with that stuff. All right? So I’ll just have to keep going directly. Tech Meme. View my ads.

[00:37:46]
I’m. I’m happy to do it. In fact, you know what I was very pleased by is that you go to Tech Meme on your iPhone and it says you really want to be a tech mini. Tech Meme. Oh, yeah, yeah.

[00:37:56]
Which I think that’s nice. I like that. Although. Me. Although.

[00:38:00]
Excuse me. Tech Meme Backslash. Mini. Is that right? Yeah.

[00:38:04]
Okay, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Although for the iPhone, maybe that’s not true, because I’ve checked on an iPhone, and it’s doing a pretty good job at rendering the site. You’re right.

[00:38:13]
You’re right. That’s absolutely true. It’s probably my trio. You’re right. My trio goes to the mini site, and my iPhone, you can go.

[00:38:21]
What’s that called? Horizontal. Yeah, Landscape. Thank you. You go landscape, and then you can.

[00:38:27]
And then you can read it without having having to do anything. Anything wacky. I thought that I just looked up because I saw something falling down, and I had the sense that Benchmark Capital was throwing stuff on us. Wouldn’t that be funny? Used to look up there and girlies, like, throwing water balloons down on the TechCrunch party.

[00:38:45]
Hey, you ne’ er do wells Benchmark above you or beside you or what? Let’s be clear about this. They. They occupy the space upstairs, and that’s all. That’s all I’m doing saying, you know, we can’t be making any value judgments based on us having the better patio.

[00:39:01]
Who would. That would be. That would be rude of me. Patrick, how are you, sir? Patrick is the VP of marketing from Splunk.

[00:39:09]
Now, do you. Do you use Splunk to debug your systems at Tech Meme? I’m sure if I knew what Splunk was, I would. Oh, Gabe, come on. You’re so.

[00:39:17]
You’re really not the geek that you pretend to be, are you? I don’t even think I pretend to be a geek. Oh, all right, then if you were, you know, you would understand Splunk, right? Yeah. I mean, actually, we should turn to.

[00:39:27]
To Patrick to describe it, since it is, you know, he is the VP of marketing. That’s his job. But let’s suffice it to say that I funded them and therefore they must be immensely interesting. Oh, Splunk.

[00:39:42]
Yeah, we search for. For IT events. IT events on sports. That’s right. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:39:48]
That’s how I found this one.

[00:39:52]
But seriously, people, I just posted. Actually, I just wrote this, the second to last post in Shameless Self Promotion Month. We started our Shameless Self Promotion Week on Venture Blog. And which month is that? Just help me out because.

[00:40:05]
Yeah, right now. Right now, it’s. Right now, I’m living shameless. It was supposed to be shameless for Self Promotion Week. And then I got distracted and then I hadn’t gotten through it, and then.

[00:40:15]
And then, you know. But I did want to, you know, talk about all my portfolio companies and their glory. But I just recently posted my. You know, this is how awesome Splunk is. It’s this incredibly broad search engine for your.

[00:40:25]
For your data center that can take all events from all machines and to be all things to all people. And, you know, so you should go to ventureblog.com and check that out. And then you should go to splunk.com and download it and you can try it out. Right, Absolutely. But, you know, you don’t have.

[00:40:41]
You might be reading, you know, something about an IT event on what, like sourceforge, where? Exactly. Now, Patrick, you know a thing or2 about Sourceforge, do you not? I do. I ran that site for five years.

[00:40:56]
Five years you were the master of sourceforge, which is pretty awesome. I mean, that gives you way more geek credibility than Gabe who just wandered off, slunk off because he, you know, my geek. Yeah, exactly. He’s only se. He’s only semi.

[00:41:11]
Prescient and semiotic too. Yes. So if you go to sourceforge, you’ll see lots of Splunk presence and presents. Splunk banners. We’re big fans of sourceforge and supporters.

[00:41:22]
And I’m a huge fan of Splunk because when I funded it, there were three guys and I said to them, this would be awesome if you could build it. Do you think you can build it? And then they said, yeah, yeah, we think we can build it. And I said, all right, cool. And.

[00:41:38]
And they did, you know, and then we. 100,000 downloads later of our product, you know, and all over the world, people are using it to troubleshoot and find out what’s happening in their data center. That’s pretty good. That’s a big change from we think we can build it. Absolutely.

[00:41:52]
That’s a step in the right direction from a venture capitalist perspective. That’s a step in the right direction. Capital in action, ladies and gentlemen, it here first. That’s right, people, if you are questioning what a venture capitalist does, if you’re wondering, you know, whether you should increase your taxation of the venture business, for example, you know, why would you want to discourage this kind of incredible innovation? Would you, Craig?

[00:42:16]
Would you want to discourage that? I would never carry that interest any further than. Good. You’re good, you’re good. Yeah, we’re all good.

[00:42:24]
We’re harking back to last last podcast when Craig asked me to take a position on, you know, the taxation of the carried interest, which, you know, I wasn’t a hard target. It was not, you know, that’s just kind of boring, frankly. So now are we still going with the Take the sh out of it and T shirts are one of our best. That’s a best seller. We give those away at trade shows.

[00:42:47]
We’ll be at Linux world in about 10 days, so you can come by our booth and it up there. Why go to Venture Blog for shameless self promotion when you come. Come here to Venture Cast for shameless self promotion. That’s what I’m saying. Yeah, you’re a marketing genius yourself.

[00:43:06]
All right, enough of that.

[00:43:11]
All right, David, let’s put this puppy to bed. It’s been getting late. It’s getting late. The sun’s down. Party’s not dying down.

[00:43:17]
Down though. No, this is how we got shut down by the police last year. Oh, problem. The Menlo park police with no sense of humor. Yes, they said, you know, it’s past 8 o’.

[00:43:28]
Clock. The noise is wafting over the neighborhood. Oh, gosh. Okay. Yes, our little burg.

[00:43:37]
So if we don’t. Yeah, if we don’t close down by 10, it’s going to be trouble with the police. We’re going to. We’re going to get raided. Well, I think it was a success.

[00:43:45]
I hope Mike is happy. Seems like he is. It’s good. It’s good until. Until next summer, I think we’ll see if this Web 2.0 thing has legs.

[00:43:54]
Yeah. Who knows? I think it’s a fad. It’s a fad. It still has to prove itself out, frankly.

[00:44:00]
Yeah. We’ll be here to chronicle its demise. Yes. Word by word, moment by moment. And we give our thanks to Cash Fly for providing bandwidth for our show, as always and until whenever we are meeting again.

[00:44:12]
And. And to the good folks at itunes for hardwiring our photo so that we have the appropriate on the feed. Yeah, there was something we. We need that. Something funky going on, but they worked it out.

[00:44:25]
Thank you. ITunes. Yes. And who else? Do we have anyone else to thank?

[00:44:29]
I’d like to thank my. My wife for putting up with me. I couldn’t begin to do that. I would take a whole. It would take a whole show for me to do that.

[00:44:38]
You don’t think that one small thank you is sufficient, darling, for putting up with me? All right. All right. It’s feeling like an award show. Exactly.

[00:44:47]
All right. See you next time. All right. Bye. Bye.

[00:44:52]
Once, a little old lady named Laura Scudder had a thing about potato chips. She hated chips that sounded like. Now I ask you, who likes chips that sound like. So Laura Scudder decided to make her own a crisp, noisy potato chip, and this was the result.