Generated Transcript

[00:00:14] Craig Syverson
Welcome finally to Venture Cast 27. I’m Craig Seaferson of Grunt Media.

[00:00:19] David Hornik
Indeed. Finally. This is David Hornik from August Capital. And we are back.

[00:00:25] Craig Syverson
A long hiatus. Not planned as long. Well, it wasn’t planned to be as long as it was.

[00:00:30] David Hornik
No. We recorded the show while we were out and about at the TechCrunch 40.

[00:00:34] Craig Syverson
We did record a show. We didn’t release that show.

[00:00:36] David Hornik
Yeah, we just, you know, that’s like. What. What is it when we have the tapes that the band doesn’t produce?

[00:00:43] Craig Syverson
Yeah, yeah, the basement tapes.

[00:00:44] David Hornik
Yeah. So we’d love to. You. You know, someday those things will be a collector’s edition.

[00:00:49] Craig Syverson
Right. Yeah. So for all of you who we bugged at the TechCrunch 40, thank you. Sorry things got out of hand.

[00:00:55] David Hornik
If you had said something really interesting, we might have listened.

[00:00:58] Craig Syverson
They did say something. It was interesting. We had some good stuff.

[00:01:00] David Hornik
Oh, yeah, we chatted with Gabe. Gabe was a riot.

[00:01:03] Craig Syverson
Yes. Mark Jeffrey of Mahalo and all sorts of interesting people. But things got out of hand schedule wise for both of us.

[00:01:11] David Hornik
Yeah, you were off touring and speaking and making and doing.

[00:01:16] Craig Syverson
Where do we begin? It’s been since August.

[00:01:19] David Hornik
Holy cow.

[00:01:20] Craig Syverson
Yeah. Since our last show. But thank you for all everyone out there who has been very supportive and.

[00:01:26] David Hornik
Also known as pestering us to get back to it.

[00:01:29] Craig Syverson
But it’s great to hear from all of you and to know they’re out there. I mean, I was approached by a lot of people when I was at the podcast expo saying that they listened to Venture Castle. Thank all of you for coming up and saying that.

[00:01:41] David Hornik
So what’d you do?

[00:01:41] Craig Syverson
I’m saying, why are you listening to a venture capital podcast? I mean, you’re a podcaster. What do you care?

[00:01:46] David Hornik
Please. It’s genius.

[00:01:50] Craig Syverson
Dripping with juniors.

[00:01:52] David Hornik
You’re questioning why someone would listen to VentureCast?

[00:01:54] Craig Syverson
I mean, well, that crowd, I mean, I thought, you know, be more of a like a investment type crowd or.

[00:01:59] David Hornik
All right, we don’t talk about investment.

[00:02:02] Craig Syverson
That’s true.

[00:02:03] David Hornik
What do you. What did you talk about it? You did the podcast expo. Did you do here’s how to Make a Good Podcast thing?

[00:02:09] Craig Syverson
No, I didn’t. The first I did two. Two talks. One was the day before a group called the Podcast Academy does day long trainings for. Yeah, and so I did a piece that I entitled New Media Old School. And it was pretty much an analysis of what are the differences between new and old media. That’s boring. But what are the differences from a production perspective? Because the distribution thing, we Know, there’s this huge difference and that’s what everyone’s up in arms about. That’s where a lot of big money’s going to be made. But I was looking at it more of kind of an analysis of the memes of the old media, like what we thought of as movies and television and then kind of everything else, you know, documentaries and corporate and all that kind of thing, and seeing how things are sort of smooshing together in the new media realm. But there’s still going to be a huge need for old media things like, for instance, I feel television as an industry, as a content producing industry is still very viable.

[00:03:07] David Hornik
I hope so, because I love television.

[00:03:08] Craig Syverson
Yeah, television’s great. Television’s getting better, I think, certainly, because I’ve been able to experience it online without commercials and without interruption. So it’s far more of a narrative, you know, real story for me. But guys like me and my small little production companies like Rhett Media, we’re never going to do a Lost or a Heroes. There’s just no way.

[00:03:29] David Hornik
You can’t. Can’t afford it.

[00:03:30] Craig Syverson
Can’t afford it and kind of don’t want to. But that need for that middle level content’s always going to be there and there’s always going to be the need for film and for the feature and for the long program, the long contained program and also the physical experience of a theater. It’s still viable to me. I think that the theaters are going to be fine if they, if they catch on.

[00:03:51] David Hornik
Well, maybe we should have, you know, Venture Cast Theater and we can get. We have a salon. Welcome to Venture Cast Theatre.

[00:03:59] Craig Syverson
It’ll be very bad.

[00:04:01] David Hornik
Oh, Mr. Bumble. No, I was thinking we could like have the salons, you know, and instead of listening to Venture Cast on your own, we could gather up, you know, like groups of people and then they could all kibbitz, like, oh, no less hornick, you know, throw stuff at the, you know.

[00:04:17] Craig Syverson
Oh, tomatoes.

[00:04:19] David Hornik
So this idea of production and kind of production quality. So one of the reasons we were distracted.

[00:04:25] Craig Syverson
Yes.

[00:04:26] David Hornik
Is that we were off at this conference that, that I hosted called Lobby. And you know, we haven’t really talked about it. And that’s because it’s been, you know, the whole definition. Yeah, it was off the record and it remains off the record. I mean, I think that the reason that it was a successful event to a certain extent is that it was a quiet little conference as I’ve described it. And Craig here was the creative director and heavily involved and the two of us Were sort of busily working on it. But one of the things that I thought totally worked was this idea that people would introduce themselves by creating these introductory videos. Right. So the idea basically was, look, if you give me an introductory video, hi, I’m David Hornik and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then in advance of the conference, everybody gets to see these videos and see everybody introduce themselves, then there’ll be more intimacy, there’ll be a sense of who everybody is when you get to the conference.

[00:05:14] Craig Syverson
Exactly.

[00:05:14] David Hornik
And what was interesting to me was so we ended up with just shy of what, like 120of the 150ish people made these videos. And they were varying degrees of production value. As a general matter, the ones that had high production value I think were compelling partially because I think people thought through them a lot. And so they were sort of, they were entertaining and they were, you know, more carefully planned and those sorts of things. But some of the ones that weren’t, some of the ones that were just someone with a, a camera and a dog and a camera and, and kids or whatever were great. They were completely compelling. And it’s exactly this point, right, that the medium can impact the message. On the other hand, the message may be important. More important than the medium.

[00:05:57] Craig Syverson
Yes.

[00:05:57] David Hornik
And so you have to pick the right medium and the right message and. Etc and so it was, it was really fascinating to watch it. But as a general matter, those of you planning events in the future, it worked. If you should. If you have a group of people who are game for creating content and making these video introductions or even audio introductions would be fine. A slideshow, whatever. Something to kind of introduce you to who is going to be there. I thought that worked really well.

[00:06:21] Craig Syverson
Sounds like you’re at my talk. I mean, one of the points I was making was, is, is this, it’s. It’s a special alchemy of how do you match the production quality with your audience, with your message, with the life of the medium itself, with the media itself. And it’s, it’s a very subtle thing and it’s not always great. Picture quality is necessary. At the same time, if your content’s really bad and you have great pictures, it’s also going to be bad.

[00:06:47] David Hornik
Yeah.

[00:06:47] Craig Syverson
So it’s really about, you know, content is still king, but we have this opportunity in this new media space that we have all these different ways we can express it and it’ll be appropriate. So that’s why in these introductory videos for the lobby is, you know, a lot of us use, I Used to a webcam on my laptop.

[00:07:03] David Hornik
Right, Totally fine.

[00:07:04] Craig Syverson
Because for the meme and for what it was, and that I had to get it out quickly as well. It was, it totally worked in that particular context.

[00:07:11] David Hornik
Yeah, well, yeah, absolutely. So this event, this thing, this thing that consumed many, many hours of, of our collective lives and, and many of the hours between sort of midnight and 3. For me, what is interesting to me really was this question of it. From the outset, it has been those attending had been told, look, the content of what is said here is for here, it’s not for elsewhere. And so even though this is a blogging world and lots of people in the blogging world were there. Right. I venture to guess that third or a half of the people there maintain some kind of blogging and, or, you know, publishing presence.

[00:07:49] Craig Syverson
Right.

[00:07:49] David Hornik
And so to tell those people, hey, while you’re here, you do me a favor.

[00:07:53] Craig Syverson
Yeah.

[00:07:54] David Hornik
Don’t be writing about. This was interesting.

[00:07:56] Craig Syverson
Yeah.

[00:07:57] David Hornik
It wasn’t without controversy, Craig, but I think it worked.

[00:08:01] Craig Syverson
I mean, I was, I was impressed with how people have really respected that. I mean, these, these are professional people, and so, you know, it’s not surprising.

[00:08:09] David Hornik
On the other hand, do you think it worked in the sense that it made it a better experience because people felt like it really wasn’t going to be blogged about, or do you think that, you know, people just sort of respected the request and said, fine?

[00:08:20] Craig Syverson
I think it was probably only 20% of the fact that it wasn’t going to be blocked. I think the actual setting of the conference itself, the idea behind it, the spirit of it, accounted for most of that openness.

[00:08:32] David Hornik
Gotcha.

[00:08:33] Craig Syverson
And so it was a small part of it, because no one’s going to spill sensitive information. They don’t want to do that, not only for themselves, but for the person listening. They don’t want them to be exposed to that information because that, you know, it burns. But.

[00:08:50] David Hornik
I hate that sensitive information, particularly in the sensitive areas, is. That’s very. I. No, I, I mean, I do think that that was the interesting question. Right. Is there this middle ground information? Right.

[00:09:00] Craig Syverson
Yeah.

[00:09:00] David Hornik
You’re not going to go there as the head of new media for, you know, some big media company, big movie studio or, or a record company, and then tell what on what terms you’d be willing to license your content in a way that you wouldn’t. That you otherwise wouldn’t.

[00:09:17] Craig Syverson
Yeah.

[00:09:17] David Hornik
So I didn’t expect those sorts of things, but I do think that there are ways of discussing things more openly. You know, session about you know, X kind of content or distribution or M and A or whatever, where people talk about things in a way where they otherwise probably wouldn’t. Right, right. Where they, if you were sitting on the stage for sure of Web 2.0 or, or demo or whatever, you know, what you’re saying is being reflected out into the world. And in this instance, the idea was to let. Make sure people knew, knew that it was, was not. And I think to a certain subtle level.

[00:09:48] Craig Syverson
Right.

[00:09:48] David Hornik
Yeah, exactly. Now I think there was some skepticism about whether that would in fact be the case. And maybe next year people will then say, oh, you know, actually people, this stuff really didn’t make its way out into the universe. And so now I can even say more. Now I can move that line even higher. And that would be cool because I do think that that was the idea. You know, the whole idea of this conference, as you know all too well, was to try and nurture that conversation that we go to these conferences because we want to have more interesting conversations and we want to build deeper relationships with people with whom we already have a relationship or people we’ve never met before but have certain affinity or whatever. So I think getting the right set of people and creating the right environment for that is crucial. And, you know, it was. I don’t think that it was perfect. On the other hand, I do think that it went a pretty, pretty good way, a goodly way towards, you know, getting people to really engage, which was cool.

[00:10:41] Craig Syverson
So in general should describe what the conference was. For those who didn’t know, in general, it was a.

[00:10:46] David Hornik
Don’t cross the line or I have to zap.

[00:10:47] Craig Syverson
You know what, I’m, I’m one of those big proponents of. I’m not gonna say who was there or anything, but it was an, it was an invite conference that you, you invited a certain crowd to come.

[00:10:57] David Hornik
Well, don’t blame me.

[00:10:58] Craig Syverson
No, no, I actually credit you because. Because it was. That was the notes of the composition. I mean, that was your thing. You were, you’re the connector, as Malcolm Gladwell would say. I mean, that’s like. You did the ultimate connector job.

[00:11:08] David Hornik
Thank you, Malcolm.

[00:11:09] Craig Syverson
Yes, but I mean, you chose this group with this idea in mind, with this idea of conversation, of sharing ideas of the industries that they’re in, of the people they are, because you know them all, you know how they would fit into this mix. And to me, that was probably the most interesting part of the whole thing was that mix, that choice that you.

[00:11:26] David Hornik
Curated as it were super tricky. And I did, you know, look, to an extent, I definitely curated it. On the other hand, I got lots of input from lots of great people. And it’s interesting actually that I think as a general matter, this was a group of impressive optimists. I think it was an incredibly optimistic crowd. And the few people who are by their nature pessimistic, when they expressed that pessimism, it was like cold water. I mean, it was just amazing. It wasn’t that people were being stupid. It’s not like we were sitting around and being unrealistic. On the other hand, as between explaining something in a positive light versus the negative light, we were way better off with people who wanted to describe things that would be great to do as opposed to hear the stupid things you should. I think that what worked was that most of the people who showed up really were of that frame of mind, like are excited about the future of media, are excited about the opportunities ahead of us for our own companies, for the connection with these other people’s companies and how we might bring those things together. And so, you know, that’s great. I think that was great. You know, originally I had envisioned this thing. I used to describe it as, hey, you get together the 30 something crowd, you know, that’d be really great. The 30 somethings, you know, maybe the 20 something, 20 and 30 somethings, whatever. So now that I’m 39, I had to abandon that because I could only go for a year.

[00:12:42] Craig Syverson
Exactly.

[00:12:43] David Hornik
You know, and then I was out.

[00:12:44] Craig Syverson
I can’t go to my own conference.

[00:12:45] David Hornik
Darn it. It was sort of the same thing when people said, you know, who should you invite? When I asked people who should I invite? And they said, well, no VCs, no lawyers, no. And I was like, well, so you’ve described me. Yeah, that’s really not that helpful.

[00:12:58] Craig Syverson
Thanks.

[00:12:59] David Hornik
I, you know, because I’m the host. How can I, I don’t get to go. That seems crazy. So, anyway, all right, enough about this conference. You know, there are other things that happen in.

[00:13:08] Craig Syverson
Yes, but I mean, to finish the.

[00:13:10] David Hornik
Description, to cut you off.

[00:13:11] Craig Syverson
No, no, no, no, it’s fine. But then this group gathered for three days, effectively in Hawaii in a spot, and we basically hung out and had a lot of unstructured conversation. There were no speakers.

[00:13:22] David Hornik
They.

[00:13:22] Craig Syverson
Nobody came and gave a presentation. I didn’t see one PowerPoint. They might have been there and they could have used it, but I don’t think it really wasn’t in the spirit. People signed up to give, quote, presentations, but it was mostly just leading a conversation that Led somewhere. And then a lot of conversations. Not in the formal structure, but just because we were in this isolated place, we weren’t surrounded by a big city, we weren’t distracted by business, as it were.

[00:13:46] David Hornik
WI Fi sucked.

[00:13:47] Craig Syverson
WI Fi sucks.

[00:13:48] David Hornik
That’s right.

[00:13:49] Craig Syverson
And it was the beach on Hawaii, and it was a beautiful spot. And hours and hours and hours of hanging out, talking, meeting people. And it’s just a very. I think it was a very successful idea, a lot of fun, and actually it was very constructive, too, for those. You know, those of you have to put this down as a expense account.

[00:14:07] David Hornik
It’s okay. I was about to say that it.

[00:14:10] Craig Syverson
Was not a boondoggle.

[00:14:11] David Hornik
Yeah. I mean, the interesting thing is. And look, I think lots of people got a bunch of grief for this, and particularly since it was the first time the event was held and, you know, it was really like, I’m not going to say a whole lot about what’s going to happen, but you really should participate. There was some heartburn in big companies, in particular, where you had to say to your boss, who was the COO of big media company X, hey, this really isn’t just me going to Hawaii. There was a lot of sensitivity around that. And the thing that I think is great is that everybody left sort of saying, this really was a business comp. I understand that. Why people can see and have a concern about the idea that sitting on the beach in Hawaii has a feel like, oh, well, we’re just going out to play. On the other hand, the set of conversations you have, yeah, we could have had them in a conference room in Akron, but they would have been different conversations, and people would have been less inclined to come, and they would have been less inclined to hang out and open up. And, you know, I’ve actually talked to lots of people who got business done, so I can say unequivocal business done. I said. I said at the outset, if deals were not done at the lobby, that I would refund everyone’s money. Now I’m grateful they were done because that would have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to refund everyone’s money. You know, I heard distribution deals that got done and content deals that got done and conversations and, you know, who knows? Maybe someone will buy or sell a company. I don’t. In the future, stuff got done. Real. Real stuff that. Real, tangible, valuable things. And the feedback I got from people was, hey, you were right. Now, look, I’m not claiming to be a genius here. This is that.

[00:15:42] Craig Syverson
No, because it’s obvious that you Right, exactly.

[00:15:45] David Hornik
You were right. Oh, that I’m a genius idea was obvious that the important part of a conference is the lobby. That the lobby is the conversation. And the conversation is what’s the valuable piece? And so cutting out, you know, Rupert Murdoch, you know, okay, is Rupert Murdoch. It’s kind of cool to be in the same room as Rupert Murdoch, but.

[00:16:05] Craig Syverson
That’S all you are.

[00:16:05] David Hornik
But did Rupert really say that much? Right. Did Rupert say that much? And wouldn’t have been more interesting now if Rupert had been in Hawaii with us and sat in a room and had a conversation.

[00:16:15] Craig Syverson
Yeah.

[00:16:16] David Hornik
You know, think about that now. That would be great.

[00:16:18] Craig Syverson
And, and we had those, I mean we had those Rupert types just there.

[00:16:22] David Hornik
And hanging out, chatting.

[00:16:24] Craig Syverson
Yeah. And even if they didn’t say a lot, they would make a point or two in a conversation that was like, wow, that’s, that’s really interesting.

[00:16:30] David Hornik
Nicely done. Yeah, yeah. So I think it’ll be interesting to see it next year if there are more, you know, if the Ruperts of this world get say, hey, okay, I’m interested. Right. But we’ll see.

[00:16:40] Craig Syverson
But I think the other part of the success was the mix of people. Wasn’t all Ruperts, that the people you brought in were from all over the map, from age and from position and from career wise. I mean, you know, I think that part was also very interesting too. It was a definitely a high end group and that was a good part of it was that you really had this sense of trust that the person there would honor the whole idea of.

[00:17:01] David Hornik
The, of not making you look stupid.

[00:17:03] Craig Syverson
Well, not making look stupid. Right, right.

[00:17:05] David Hornik
Don’t blog about what I say.

[00:17:07] Craig Syverson
Yeah.

[00:17:07] David Hornik
Don’t out me. Don’t make me look dumb. I’m here to, you know, here to engage in a conversation like everyone. Yeah. Cool.

[00:17:14] Craig Syverson
Yep. So. And there’s not much online about it because that was part of the deal. You put a post up on Venture blog that gave a text description.

[00:17:21] David Hornik
Very gentle.

[00:17:22] Craig Syverson
And then we just talked about it.

[00:17:23] David Hornik
Now I hope nobody views and see again. This is sort of the challenge of the line drawing. I hope that nobody listens to this and said, well, David, you said it was off the record and you’ve just spent however many minutes chatting about the experience.

[00:17:35] Craig Syverson
Well, it was the experience.

[00:17:36] David Hornik
Yeah.

[00:17:37] Craig Syverson
The experience can’t be off the record.

[00:17:38] David Hornik
It’s like, it’s like patent law. Right. Or copyright.

[00:17:42] Craig Syverson
Yeah.

[00:17:42] David Hornik
In copyright, it turns out you can copyright words, but you can’t copyright ideas.

[00:17:47] Craig Syverson
Right.

[00:17:48] David Hornik
So this is the idea. We’re not trying to Copyright the idea. And so therefore we’re not trying to keep it off the record. But the, but the stuff, the content of this, of these phrases and all that would have been otherwise copyright protected.

[00:17:59] Craig Syverson
Yeah.

[00:17:59] David Hornik
So maybe that’s the line. That which is protectable by copyright shall not be republished. That which is not as publishable. I’m going to think about that.

[00:18:11] Craig Syverson
That’s. That’s an interesting. Yeah. Framework to put it around.

[00:18:14] David Hornik
God, I’m an IP nerd.

[00:18:15] Craig Syverson
I love it.

[00:18:16] David Hornik
Interesting. Okay.

[00:18:17] Craig Syverson
Yeah. If you didn’t want to talk about it, then it would become this private, secretive.

[00:18:21] David Hornik
Yeah. It wasn’t a party. It wasn’t like a secret. Right. It wasn’t a club.

[00:18:25] Craig Syverson
This wasn’t like.

[00:18:26] David Hornik
Right, exactly. And nobody was spanked or like, you know, you weren’t.

[00:18:30] Craig Syverson
You weren’t there.

[00:18:31] David Hornik
I was. You know. Again, Tate, what happens in Hawaii stays in Hawaii.

[00:18:35] Craig Syverson
No, I’m joking. But yeah. How much sleep was had? For good reason.

[00:18:39] David Hornik
Because it was so much fun. Yeah. Well, it was too. Yeah.

[00:18:42] Craig Syverson
And engaging.

[00:18:43] David Hornik
There you have it.

[00:18:44] Craig Syverson
Indeed. So now we’re going to be back to our normal boring stuff. David’s going to be a vc, I’m going to be a media guy. We’re not going to be conference producer.

[00:18:53] David Hornik
Right.

[00:18:53] Craig Syverson
But also good, as you said in Venture Blog to the executive producer, like, totally kicked ass. And Leah.

[00:19:01] David Hornik
Leah. Leah Lorenzano. So any of you who don’t know Leah, you know, we bow before Leah.

[00:19:06] Craig Syverson
Totally.

[00:19:07] David Hornik
She’s just a spectacular. Both the spectacular individual and. And spectacular at what she does. And she made it happen.

[00:19:14] Craig Syverson
And her team, and they were just great.

[00:19:16] David Hornik
Yes, indeed. And. And the fact that they would even contemplate doing this with us again, it’s just like, you know, mind blowing glutton for punishment. Talk about. Because we, you know. All right, we got to move on. Enough of this open social. That’s what I have to say.

[00:19:32] Craig Syverson
That’s what you have to say?

[00:19:33] David Hornik
I don’t know. That seems to be like, are you.

[00:19:35] Craig Syverson
Open to being social? You just have been social for a long time.

[00:19:38] David Hornik
I say open social.

[00:19:39] Craig Syverson
So this is the Facebook squeeze.

[00:19:42] David Hornik
Yeah. Right. This is the smashing the walls open.

[00:19:44] Craig Syverson
You got to come in, man. You’re going to be all alone out there.

[00:19:47] David Hornik
It’s very interesting. It’s very interesting.

[00:19:49] Craig Syverson
So is it like an idea for an open API language? Is that kind of.

[00:19:54] David Hornik
Well, there is no official. There’s no official word. There are certain. There’s sort of an official word because if you go to Mark Andreessen’s blog, you can sort of See what he’s doing with Ning and how he’s participating and some of the other partners. So LinkedIn as a partner, Reid Hoffman and his team, they’re doing. They’re involved and a number of other big. Exactly. Big, open, interesting social networks are involved in this process of trying to create a joint API that allows you to build on top of the social graph. So I now I officially declare a defeat. I have tried and tried not to use this goddamn term social graph. I hate it.

[00:20:34] Craig Syverson
I’ve never heard it.

[00:20:36] David Hornik
You don’t know this awful social graph term, social graph.

[00:20:38] Craig Syverson
I guess I shouldn’t like it.

[00:20:39] David Hornik
So the goodly folk. There I am with the goodly. The fine folks of Facebook have used this term social graph to describe your relationships. These sets of relationships that are mapped out within their psychograph or a psychograph.

[00:20:53] Craig Syverson
This is a social graph.

[00:20:54] David Hornik
So social gr. As you know, you’re my friend and you’re my friend and how much of your friends, etc. And so I’ve long argued, and I hate the word. Isn’t it terrible?

[00:21:04] Craig Syverson
Yeah, social graph, terrible.

[00:21:06] David Hornik
But anyway, I’m going to use it because it has become. It has come to. I’m sorry to say, it has come to me propagating it now, the underlying social infrastructure of these social. Social networks.

[00:21:18] Craig Syverson
Okay.

[00:21:19] David Hornik
Which I have always argued for a long time I’ve argued that this idea, this social infrastructure will be an underlying aspect of broad set of applications.

[00:21:30] Craig Syverson
Yes.

[00:21:31] David Hornik
Because I’m a genius. Because it was. Because I think it was obvious. And then lots of people did it and now what they’re doing is basically exploding that idea. Basically saying, look, you should not have to recreate this social graph across multiple places. You shouldn’t have to keep recreating it and you shouldn’t. And if there’s an application that is dependent upon the social graph, you should be able to apply the social graph that you have in one location to that application by simply using this API.

[00:22:01] Craig Syverson
Well, you know, that makes sense, doesn’t it? It does. Now that I think about it, when I think about who do I have. And now that I’m just learning this term, but like who’s in my LinkedIn group and who’s in my Facebook group. And there’s been a lot of discussion how people are like, oh, I’ve been migrating, you know, from here to there. And this I do use for that. And this I use for that. And they seem real close.

[00:22:22] David Hornik
Yep.

[00:22:22] Craig Syverson
But to apply this particular set of quote standard or metrics or containers or.

[00:22:30] David Hornik
Containers, that’s what it is. Yeah, it’s, it’s, hey, let’s say, you know, so Mark Pincus, he has a number of applications that are growing quite quickly on the Facebook platform. And in particular, the. The poker one has grown really well. And the idea is, hey, why can’t I play poker with my friends? Now you can play poke with your friends. You, you install this application on Facebook, you invite your friends in, they install the application, and then you play Boom, Texas hold’ em with your friends online using this application. So now what would happen if. And if Mark wants to then have that application work on other networks? He’d have to then go negotiate a deal and figure out how to integrate that with Bebo. So say Bebo was going to have a thing, then he’d have to go to Bebo and he’d have to get their interface. And how do I find out who are your friends and all this stuff? And what OpenSocial is saying is, look, there should be a set of clear APIs that allow you to draw upon this social graph and say, who are your friends? And invite them in to play the game.

[00:23:27] Craig Syverson
Yeah.

[00:23:28] David Hornik
Now the interesting question will be, can you play across networks? Right. If someone’s sitting in LinkedIn and someone’s sitting in Facebook and someone sitting in. In a ning network, can they all be invited in in the application? And can you see the ning people within Facebook or within LinkedIn or whatever?

[00:23:44] Craig Syverson
It’s kind of the old IM issue.

[00:23:46] David Hornik
Yeah, exactly. It’s this whole, how do you create, how do you create sort of consistency and a standard and et cetera. I don’t know what the answer is to that yet. But what I believe Google is trying to do, and my understanding is, by the way, that this is Joe Krause. So Joe Krause and Graham from. From Jot Spot, they Google Bot jot. These guys came in and then this became an important initiative for the company. And those guys have headed it up, as I understand. I’ll do more reading. But if that’s the case, it’s in good hands because they’re super smart, really understand and appreciate this stuff. And the idea is, look, if Facebook has this walled garden, right, you know, it’s AOL in the sense that it’s this massive body of people and growing who are living in this platform.

[00:24:32] Craig Syverson
Right.

[00:24:33] David Hornik
And yes, they’ve opened up the application space, but they haven’t opened up the platform. They don’t allow you to export your social graph. They don’t let you take out data and use it in other contexts, it has to stay in Facebook. So I believe what, what Google has done is said, okay, if that’s what you’re going to do, fine, we’re going to do the opposite. We’re going to smash down all of the walls around everything else. And so your walled garden has a certain number of millions of users. I think it’s 40 some odd million and growing rapidly. We are everything else.

[00:25:05] Craig Syverson
Yeah.

[00:25:05] David Hornik
Now it’s not everything else because MySpace, I think, is going to create its own experience. Bebo is working on its own experience. But all these other things that add up to a whole lot are now just smashing down the walls and saying, hey, this set of joint APIs will allow you to create applications across our network. And then they’re just as big or bigger and growing just as quickly or more quickly strategically.

[00:25:28] Craig Syverson
It’s really brilliant, actually, because the whole problem with a lot of these companies and even ranted about it a few months ago, is things come and things go. I mean, Facebook is hot now. I mean, a few months ago we were talking about MySpace and you know, back in the day we’re talking about geocities or whatever, you know, I mean, Right. So, you know, how does that work? And I know companies reach a critical mass and then they sort of, you know, like Friendster, it sort of. It still lives. It’s still a viable business. Maybe it’s not huge, but it kind of lives. But it seems like a real risk. But this idea to me seems like for the companies that are existing on this platform, I think it’s really powerful because they can still maintain an identity, but they’ll have the strength of the group and it kind of in some ways will establish them as stronger players. I think it would encourage less people coming in. I have to think about this a little bit more.

[00:26:12] David Hornik
But newcomers, it absolutely should strengthen its constituent members by saying, look, as a single platform, let’s say you have 10 million users on your platform. Right. And so how many resources would an individual company commit to develop on top of that platform if you opened it up? I don’t know. But you know, 10 million is a relatively large number, but not massive. But now let’s say that you all are applying the same open API, and when you develop an application, it applies to 200 million users as opposed to the 10 million by aggregating all these up together. Now you say, gee, I think I actually will spend my resources building on set of those set of networks as opposed to Facebook.

[00:26:55] Craig Syverson
Yes. Right, right.

[00:26:56] David Hornik
And I really think that’s a little bit about what it is or as opposed to, you know, destination or build your own.

[00:27:02] Craig Syverson
Right.

[00:27:02] David Hornik
So it’s very clever, right? It’s clever. I like Google.

[00:27:06] Craig Syverson
These business people, they think of everything.

[00:27:09] David Hornik
It’s moving so quickly. We were actually meeting this afternoon with our investors, venture capitalists actually have investors. And one of our investors, a couple of the representatives of, of that fund, came to meet with us and said, you know, what trends do you see, etc. And we, you know, we basically, as a general matter, we don’t invest behind trends, we just don’t. We think that you invest in smart people who happen to be doing something interesting at a point in time. But I did discuss this idea that the exploding of the social graph to inform a set of applications and how are these applications going to grow on top of these things and will individual applications be sufficiently interesting to, to receive funding? I don’t know. Although there are plenty of venture capitalists who are funding them. You know, on the other hand, will platforms that, that live on top of these sets of applications, you know, advertising and metrics or tracking or monetization or all these things, you know, will those things thrive in this environment? Yeah, man, let me invest in those. Right? If you could create, you know, a simplified PayPal experience that lives on top of the social graph in OpenSocial and in using FBML, the Facebook markup language.

[00:28:18] Craig Syverson
Thank you.

[00:28:18] David Hornik
That’d be interesting, don’t you think? Now you’re gonna have to compete with PayPal because I’m sure PayPal’s working on it. You’re gonna have to compete with Google because Google, if they’re not working on it, you know, like crazy, what do you get on with that? That’s what you should be doing. So, so anyway, so what I said to these investors of mine said, I think this is interesting and I will be watching it and it will be evolving. And you know, we have various investments that have an impact, have been impacted and will continue to impact this ecosystem. And it’s all very exciting. Craig, it’s good to be back. We’re back.

[00:28:45] Craig Syverson
We’re back. Yeah, I think it’s great for the API writers. I mean, I don’t think, like you said, I don’t think there’s a huge business there, but there’s going to be new business there for people writing cool little like, like Mark, but they’re guys.

[00:28:55] David Hornik
You know, look, Mark, Mark would say, hey, I’m making a bunch of money and I’m going to grow a bunch of these and Then they’re going to aggregate and we’re going to have a build a big business. And if you look at I like, you know, I like says, hey, look, this is an interesting application. It’s going to be as big or bigger than Last fm. And Last FM was sold for a lot of money.

[00:29:11] Craig Syverson
Yeah.

[00:29:12] David Hornik
Right. And so now that they can go across not just Facebook, but Facebook and these sets of, of open social app platforms and then hopefully Bebo does create an Interface and hopefully MySpace does create an interface. And it’ll take some work to make them and it’ll take some work to figure out how can you monetize these experiences within other people’s experiences? Right, right. That’s an interesting challenge. It’s the same challenge we had with online video. How do you post video and still have that?

[00:29:38] Craig Syverson
Right?

[00:29:39] David Hornik
We still do. Right. That’s why Craig does product placement. If you notice in all Craig’s videos, he’s smoking cool.

[00:29:45] Craig Syverson
100 cool one.

[00:29:48] David Hornik
Can you imagine? You could say, ooh, minty fresh.

[00:29:52] Craig Syverson
About that aspect ratio.

[00:29:54] David Hornik
I’m telling you. Product placement.

[00:29:55] Craig Syverson
Yeah. French made tv.

[00:29:57] David Hornik
Two words for you. Product placement.

[00:29:59] Craig Syverson
No, no, no, no.

[00:30:01] David Hornik
Did you see Survivor? I’m a huge fan of Survivor and I’m a huge fan of, of their completely shameless product placement. And they had the best one yet. Usually it’s like Doritos and you’re like, you starve for four days, 40 days or whatever, and then they give you a bag of Doritos and it’s a sorgasmic experience as you eat the Doritos and they get on your face and go, oh, this is the best tasting snack food I’ve ever had in my life. This time, to top all others, they had Charmin and it was like, oh, a western toilet. Literally, that was the phrase you. Yay, a western toilet. And this comfy, smushy, soft Charmin for our tushes or whatever. And they were so excited about toilet paper and now here I am, I’m perpetuating this ridiculousness by saying it.

[00:30:43] Craig Syverson
Shameless.

[00:30:44] David Hornik
But it was genius. I love that.

[00:30:46] Craig Syverson
Shameless. Genius. I mean, I hate it when people do that, but I, I’m happy that I sound so great in my high LPR40 microphone.

[00:30:54] David Hornik
Yeah. And I should say, yeah, that’s a beautiful microphone.

[00:30:56] Craig Syverson
That’s a beautiful mic. This is my first time.

[00:30:58] David Hornik
Brand new.

[00:30:59] Craig Syverson
Yep. I’ve had. Actually had it all summer. We haven’t recorded. Oh, yeah, we haven’t.

[00:31:03] David Hornik
I’ve been dying talking about it. You have been telling me about this Isn’t this the microphone you’ve been telling me? So you finally invested in this microphone. And who makes this microphone?

[00:31:11] Craig Syverson
This is made by Mr. Heil himself.

[00:31:14] David Hornik
Heil.

[00:31:14] Craig Syverson
Heil. H E I L this is the PR40.

[00:31:16] David Hornik
And this is the Heil PR40. And it is. And is this a condenser microphone?

[00:31:21] Craig Syverson
This is not. It’s a dynamic.

[00:31:22] David Hornik
All dynamic. No need for a preamp. It does its thing.

[00:31:25] Craig Syverson
He’s all dynamic.

[00:31:26] David Hornik
My son got this condenser mic. He has a couple of condenser mics and they frustrate me. Yeah, great deal. I think the condenser mic is a frustrating thing.

[00:31:35] Craig Syverson
It’s, it’s. It’s wiggy. You gotta. You gotta be careful. It likes rooms. He likes to hear the rooms.

[00:31:43] David Hornik
That’s. You know, we don’t need that.

[00:31:44] Craig Syverson
Don’t need rooms.

[00:31:45] David Hornik
Here at venturecast, we’re all about the recording technology.

[00:31:48] Craig Syverson
That’s right, ladies and gentlemen, because, you.

[00:31:50] David Hornik
Know, when we sing, we want it.

[00:31:51] Craig Syverson
To be crystal clear, but we don’t. So it’s.

[00:31:54] David Hornik
What if we were to sing?

[00:31:56] Craig Syverson
We won’t say, oh, see, you sang.

[00:31:57] David Hornik
It to the new microphone. I want the new microphone next week so I can try singing.

[00:32:03] Craig Syverson
You want one of these?

[00:32:04] David Hornik
No. You’re never gonna give me.

[00:32:05] Craig Syverson
I’m not. I don’t sound.

[00:32:07] David Hornik
You’re such a pig.

[00:32:08] Craig Syverson
I don’t sound good on yours. I tried.

[00:32:10] David Hornik
I know, but look how pretty that is.

[00:32:12] Craig Syverson
I know. And it’s very impressive. You have a better.

[00:32:15] David Hornik
You have a better voice for radio, so I’ll let you have the better mic.

[00:32:17] Craig Syverson
But on that mic, I sound crappy. You sound good. It’s. It’s. It’s a very sensitive mic.

[00:32:25] David Hornik
Sensitive.

[00:32:25] Craig Syverson
Sensitive sort of thing.

[00:32:27] David Hornik
Well, what. I mean, you know, we’ve been on it. We’ve been at this a while.

[00:32:29] Craig Syverson
Everything else, we were only 30. 30 some minutes.

[00:32:33] David Hornik
Oh, really? Yeah. That’s because we were. We talked before. We shouldn’t do that.

[00:32:37] Craig Syverson
There’s.

[00:32:38] David Hornik
I think we should have no relationship off the air. When you’re done, pack up and move on. Don’t be talking to me. That’s what I’m saying.

[00:32:46] Craig Syverson
I mean, so much has happened since we were away, but we can’t cover.

[00:32:51] David Hornik
It if it’s too old. We’re just gonna move on.

[00:32:53] Craig Syverson
Yeah. I mean, the Microsoft, Facebook thing, I think that all that is. That’s just a deal.

[00:32:58] David Hornik
You’re right.

[00:32:59] Craig Syverson
They just want an ad deal. That’s all.

[00:33:01] David Hornik
That’s what it is. And. And along with it, required them to put in what couple hundred million? 250. What was it?

[00:33:07] Craig Syverson
But that’s their Pepsi. I was gonna say that budget.

[00:33:10] David Hornik
Right. You know what that is? That’s the interest on yesterday’s cash.

[00:33:14] Craig Syverson
Yeah. So it’s. I don’t think Facebook. I mean, 15 billion. Whatever. It’s not. But it’s a deal. And that’s what. That’s all it is. That’s what I’m talking about.

[00:33:22] David Hornik
So I’m. I’m. I’m on this board. I’m on this board with a. With this great venture capitalist named John Connors, and he’s with a group called Ignition Partners and Ignition Capital. Oh, sorry, John. Up in Seattle. It’s a bunch of former Microsoft guys. And so we were talking about. In this company, we’re talking about the investment policy. This is the important stuff you do at board meetings is that you have to ratify an investment policy because we just closed a big round of financing, have $25 million. What do you do with the $25 million while you’re waiting to spend it? Well, you have to have an investment policy. So John made some comment about the investment policy, to which I said, you know, rudely, give me a break. Like, John, what do you know from an investment policy? Now, I should point out that John was the former CFO of Microsoft. So I think I’m much more qualified to comment on the investment policy than John, who is. Who, like, had a trading floor in his organization. But anyway, I just, you know, once again, I thought I was hilarious.

[00:34:21] Craig Syverson
Yeah, hi.

[00:34:23] David Hornik
Hilarious. And I’m sure he was really amused.

[00:34:26] Craig Syverson
To tell by the scowl on his face and the cold shoulder and the.

[00:34:30] David Hornik
But I should point out, then I then said, I cede all authority to John to make the decision about our investment policy because, you know, if there’s an intellectual property question, I’m happy to take lead. But on an investment policy, the former CFO of Microsoft, he gets to take lead. Yeah, that’s just. That’s the kind of guy I am. I’m a sharer.

[00:34:49] Craig Syverson
Microsoft. I mean, it’s. It’s an. It’s an interesting. It’s an interesting company.

[00:34:53] David Hornik
They had a good quarter.

[00:34:54] Craig Syverson
They had a great quarter.

[00:34:56] David Hornik
And it was noticed and the price went up.

[00:34:58] Craig Syverson
Yep.

[00:34:58] David Hornik
You know, it’s been a while since Microsoft. But no, it’s been a while since Microsoft has had a quarter that did well, that caught a. Sufficient attention of the market that people actually, you know, bought based on that success. Because, I mean, such a price, such a big economy.

[00:35:13] Craig Syverson
Yeah.

[00:35:14] David Hornik
I mean, literally, the Economy of Microsoft is the economy of small nations.

[00:35:17] Craig Syverson
Yes, Right.

[00:35:18] David Hornik
It’s hard to move that. I mean, it’s easy when I have little companies and they’re making 12 cents to have a material impact. Like, hey, we made 24 cents.

[00:35:25] Craig Syverson
That’s.

[00:35:26] David Hornik
Holy crap, 200x. I mean, 200 times growth. See, again, this is why John should make the investment decision.

[00:35:31] Craig Syverson
You’re not the math guy.

[00:35:32] David Hornik
I can’t even. I can’t even do. What’s that, 2×200%?

[00:35:37] Craig Syverson
200X200X. It’s a lot more. We. We did a lot more.

[00:35:42] David Hornik
How much? What do I own? I can’t. I can’t keep track of these things.

[00:35:47] Craig Syverson
But. But, I mean. Yeah, so they did. All right, but then, like, they’re like the ketchup company. Not. Not in terms of food. But I mean, even the beginning, they were sort of. They were sort of trying to be IBM, and then, you know, then they were trying to be like Apple. Now they’re trying to be like Google, and now they’re trying to be like Facebook.

[00:36:07] David Hornik
Come off it. Everyone’s like, they created. We wouldn’t have a PC industry but for Microsoft. You remember that. Do you like your. Do you like your laptop? Do you.

[00:36:17] Craig Syverson
My laptop?

[00:36:18] David Hornik
All right, then thank Microsoft, my friend, because without them, you’d have no laptop.

[00:36:22] Craig Syverson
No, we would have had a laptop.

[00:36:23] David Hornik
Oh, please.

[00:36:24] Craig Syverson
Oh, please.

[00:36:24] David Hornik
They unified the platform and made it possible to write cool applications across a bunch. This is open social. They unified the platform. They made it possible to write to multiple hardware platforms with a single experience and therefore encourage the creation of interesting and important applications.

[00:36:44] Craig Syverson
Well, Apple did the same thing.

[00:36:46] David Hornik
No, they did it after. They were nowhere. Microsoft made it happen on a business level, on a scale level. You owe them your debt of gratitude. And I’m not just saying this because my partner Dave was the only private investor in Microsoft and still sits on their board. Although that is a perfectly good reason to say it.

[00:37:05] Craig Syverson
This segment of Entercast brought to you by Microsoft.

[00:37:07] David Hornik
That’s right. Product placement. We have put down our cigarettes and we are now. We now are holding Microsoft Vista.

[00:37:15] Craig Syverson
We’re holding Vista. Yeah, that huge success.

[00:37:18] David Hornik
All right, I shouldn’t have said that.

[00:37:19] Craig Syverson
I know, because.

[00:37:21] David Hornik
And plus, I’ve just lost all credibility because I’ve just touted Microsoft. But I should say, well, it’s an interesting.

[00:37:27] Craig Syverson
I find it interesting.

[00:37:27] David Hornik
Microsoft’s a powerful company and they’ve.

[00:37:29] Craig Syverson
No, there’s no doubt.

[00:37:30] David Hornik
Incredible. They’ve done incredibly interesting stuff. And been. You look at Excel, tell me Excel isn’t like a hugely powerful, important platform.

[00:37:37] Craig Syverson
Probably the most.

[00:37:39] David Hornik
Okay, so there you go.

[00:37:40] Craig Syverson
But that’s about.

[00:37:40] David Hornik
What about Exchange?

[00:37:42] Craig Syverson
Don’t use it. I don’t know.

[00:37:44] David Hornik
I don’t work for. You must understand the fact of the scale and power of Exchange.

[00:37:50] Craig Syverson
Yeah.

[00:37:50] David Hornik
It’s a half of all mailboxes in the world. Or something.

[00:37:53] Craig Syverson
Really?

[00:37:54] David Hornik
Or something. Yeah, I got that statistic recently, someone today, literally today, the or something part today, and I was pitched and I was told that 1.2 billion mailboxes in webmail collectively. 1.2 billion mailboxes on Exchange.

[00:38:08] Craig Syverson
Wow.

[00:38:09] David Hornik
You know, as a venture capitalist, I have to, as a general matter, take what entrepreneurs say to me as truth. So therefore, I will now express it as truth until someone tells me otherwise. Okay, but speaking just like Wikipedia. Yes.

[00:38:23] Craig Syverson
Right, right. But along the lines of platforms.

[00:38:27] David Hornik
Yes.

[00:38:28] Craig Syverson
I gotta say, I’ve been leopardized for the past.

[00:38:31] David Hornik
Oh, have you been?

[00:38:32] Craig Syverson
Holy cow. I mean, holy cow.

[00:38:35] David Hornik
All right, what is it? What is it?

[00:38:37] Craig Syverson
Freaking awesome.

[00:38:38] David Hornik
Yeah. What?

[00:38:40] Craig Syverson
I. There’s a lot underneath, I can tell you. I’m giving a minute. I’m preparing the argument. You’re so impatient. It’s been a long time coming. And it’s not.

[00:38:52] David Hornik
Not that long, though. Think about it. How long did it take them to get Leopard out?

[00:38:56] Craig Syverson
Two and a half. Was it two years?

[00:38:58] David Hornik
Was it even two years?

[00:38:59] Craig Syverson
Yeah. Longer than usual.

[00:39:01] David Hornik
Usually it’s a year. Yeah, that was longer for them, but, you know, certainly was. No, no. Vista. Yeah, that’s what I’m saying.

[00:39:09] Craig Syverson
I know. You’re saying. No.

[00:39:09] David Hornik
Longhorn.

[00:39:11] Craig Syverson
Longhorn.

[00:39:13] David Hornik
Longhorn died on the long journey across the prairie.

[00:39:17] Craig Syverson
Exactly. And it’s still.

[00:39:19] David Hornik
Oh, see, look.

[00:39:19] Craig Syverson
Still built on a house.

[00:39:20] David Hornik
First I made Microsoft friends, and now I’m making Microsoft enemies. I’m an equal opportunity kind of a guy.

[00:39:26] Craig Syverson
Yeah, you are.

[00:39:27] David Hornik
Our new sponsor is Apple. All right.

[00:39:29] Craig Syverson
So what if they need it?

[00:39:30] David Hornik
All right, I’ll stop. I’ll stop. Because, you know, you do know that I’m all Apple.

[00:39:34] Craig Syverson
I know. I know, know you are. But, you know, I had a developer copy a few months ago, back in May, actually, because I was at wwdc, et cetera, et cetera, and it was like I put it on one of my other machines. I was like, you know, that’s kind of cool. But it was, you know, beta, so it was still kind of wonky. So, you know, I was not, like, super excited because I’ve seen some of the features and whatever, but now that I’ve put it on and starting to dig into the smaller stuff, it’s really, really, really nice. The main thing that I’m using is actually thing I didn’t think I would use is Spaces, which is just different windows for different sections of your screen for different purposes.

[00:40:11] David Hornik
Okay.

[00:40:11] Craig Syverson
So, like, I can create a space of my mail.

[00:40:15] David Hornik
So is this a little. So it’s a little bit like creating VMs, virtual machines within the desktop space.

[00:40:20] Craig Syverson
Yes.

[00:40:21] David Hornik
So now the upper left corner is a virtual machine for mail. The upper right is X.

[00:40:28] Craig Syverson
Could be, yeah. Then that’s not how it’s triggered, but okay. Yes, that’s the idea.

[00:40:33] David Hornik
So you can see I haven’t yet upgraded.

[00:40:35] Craig Syverson
No, yeah, I can see that.

[00:40:36] David Hornik
William. That’s. William’s our IT guy. He’s a God.

[00:40:40] Craig Syverson
Yes.

[00:40:40] David Hornik
He has to deal with, like, such insanity in this office. Every platform, every form, every machine. It’s, like, absurd. Anyway, I’m hopeful that William will upgrade me.

[00:40:50] Craig Syverson
Yeah. Well, it’s only been a few days, but I’ve been working on a project right now that involves three or four apps that I have to monkey with at one time, which is not uncommon for a production person. This is not a video thing. This is actually. I’m writing a white paper, of all things.

[00:41:05] David Hornik
You know how to write?

[00:41:06] Craig Syverson
I can write with my fingers, though. And I can type Pencil. You don’t, but I can. I can just go from, let’s say, Photoshop, and then I want to go into Pages, let’s say, and I just go to the other space. And it’s not like I have Windows on top of each other. Like, I don’t have clutter of Windows. It’s like.

[00:41:24] David Hornik
So this is a little bit like if you created separate users on the account, you can have instant change from one user to the next.

[00:41:31] Craig Syverson
Exactly.

[00:41:32] David Hornik
And as they already have in users, when you log in as a new user, it’s the. That user’s preferences and desktop and applications that are open. And so you can do this. You can pivot on a dime because.

[00:41:43] Craig Syverson
It’S the same user. You’re the same user. It’s just now you have these sub environments.

[00:41:47] David Hornik
David A, David B, David C. Kind of.

[00:41:49] Craig Syverson
Yeah. So you can create as many as you want. I think I haven’t pushed it yet. The default is 4.

[00:41:53] David Hornik
Will become a problem.

[00:41:54] Craig Syverson
But today I’ve been experimenting and we’ll see how long it goes. But I’ve actually just created 12 spaces and I put every app on Madman, every app on a different space. So seriously, it’s totally working.

[00:42:06] David Hornik
Seriously. Now I know why you’re so Winded. You’ve gone crazy.

[00:42:13] Craig Syverson
It’s awesome. And the new Mail app is. Is really, really cool. Integrated rss.

[00:42:19] David Hornik
I do want to check that out. I do want to check out the new. I do at home here. I will admit that I run Outlook on top of Exchange. I run Parallels on one screen on my desktop and Mac running Windows and Exchange and I run Mac on the other side.

[00:42:37] Craig Syverson
Yeah.

[00:42:37] David Hornik
But at home I got the laptops. And the laptops, basically I run in and Mac I’m not. And so, so I do use the Mac mail. And I love Mac mail. I love Mac mail. Search is way better. Oh my God. Not way better, like crazy better. It’s just silly.

[00:42:53] Craig Syverson
Yeah.

[00:42:53] David Hornik
How much better it is. That’s what I’m saying.

[00:42:55] Craig Syverson
The new improvements are really subtle, but really, I mean, but really, really cool. And then there’s a built in RSS reader in Mail. So it’s kind of Mails become the, I think what you guys call Exchange or whatever that product is that it’s like where everything comes together like notes and to do lists and calendars. It’s, it’s. There’s this deep integration going on.

[00:43:16] David Hornik
Is Calendar working? I’m telling you, the one thing that Apple has failed miserably on is Calendar.

[00:43:21] Craig Syverson
I think it’s a little better. There’s. There’s one, one little interface issue, one extra click they added. It’s interesting, I mean that the things that people are talking about with Vista are pretty catastrophic. Like it doesn’t work. And all the discussions with that on the Apple podcast that I’m on or whatever. The biggest problem is they made that doc translucent. It’s too translucent. That’s like, that’s like the big issue. It’s like. I mean, people spend hours talking about these little tiny problems because there aren’t any other ones.

[00:43:52] David Hornik
The rest of it is good. That’s cool.

[00:43:54] Craig Syverson
It’s really.

[00:43:54] David Hornik
I gotta tell you, I mean, this was unbelievable. My father, My father was in Hawaii at this conference with us.

[00:44:00] Craig Syverson
Us. I swear I didn’t meet him.

[00:44:02] David Hornik
Did you meet him too? Anyway, Jerry, Jerry Hornick was there, hanging on the beach, reading Mac Mac magazine or something. What? And he was there the day that they released Leopard.

[00:44:12] Craig Syverson
Right.

[00:44:13] David Hornik
And he said to me, wasn’t. Yeah. He said, david, is. Is there an Apple store on the Big Island? And I said, no, there’s not an Apple, sir. Darn. How can I. How can I get Leopard today? I was like, you’ve got to be kidding. But you know, I understood because he, he lives in Cambridge So he was going to have a long flight back and I know that he would have played with the entire way.

[00:44:34] Craig Syverson
Oh yeah.

[00:44:34] David Hornik
And so instead he had to wait. But I know that he has already upgraded. I think he like woke up the next morning when he landed and.

[00:44:41] Craig Syverson
Yeah.

[00:44:41] David Hornik
Quickly. Must get it.

[00:44:43] Craig Syverson
Yeah.

[00:44:44] David Hornik
Must get Leopard.

[00:44:46] Craig Syverson
I know. I tried to resist because I have this deadline and a new operating system is a. Is a big investment in time no matter what, no matter how smoothly it works.

[00:44:55] David Hornik
Yes. And putting aside that it might be a distraction almost also might screw up everything in your machine and make it slightly more difficult to actually produce work product.

[00:45:05] Craig Syverson
Yes. But I hate that. I did research and I have friends and I checked it out.

[00:45:10] David Hornik
Friends in high places.

[00:45:11] Craig Syverson
Well, no, I mean I asked them are you running this and that because just the certain apps for this particular project I want to make sure. And actually I had my other machine on the beta as sort of my guinea pig. So I’d throw apps on there and see if they crashed. And they never actually did even in the old. Even the old version, so. Well, it’s cool.

[00:45:27] David Hornik
I’m getting it.

[00:45:28] Craig Syverson
Yep. You should be getting it.

[00:45:29] David Hornik
I’m getting it.

[00:45:31] Craig Syverson
All right. Are we done?

[00:45:34] David Hornik
I don’t know.

[00:45:34] Craig Syverson
You know, we’re done.

[00:45:35] David Hornik
That’s it?

[00:45:36] Craig Syverson
Yeah.

[00:45:36] David Hornik
You’re done with me.

[00:45:37] Craig Syverson
We said enough.

[00:45:38] David Hornik
All right.

[00:45:38] Craig Syverson
Well, we’ve jammered on.

[00:45:40] David Hornik
I’m glad to be back. And we are committing, right.

[00:45:43] Craig Syverson
Yeah. Yeah.

[00:45:43] David Hornik
To be back every other week. We’re back. We’re focused.

[00:45:46] Craig Syverson
Yep.

[00:45:47] David Hornik
I have. I’m going to China for 10 days in. In December.

[00:45:51] Craig Syverson
Okay.

[00:45:52] David Hornik
So we’re gonna have to. That’s the only thing I know, the only impediment I know of that should possibly get in our way. So we’ll plan around that.

[00:45:59] Craig Syverson
Okay.

[00:46:00] David Hornik
And make sure that through the new year, you know, we might miss one.

[00:46:04] Craig Syverson
I’m traveling Christmas and if anyone’s going to Blog world next week. 8th, 9th, I think. 7th. 8th, 9th. Somewhere there in Vegas.

[00:46:13] David Hornik
In Vegas. Blog World’s in Vegas?

[00:46:15] Craig Syverson
Yes, should be. It’s an.

[00:46:17] David Hornik
About it.

[00:46:17] Craig Syverson
It’s an interesting. It’s an interesting conference. Anyway, I’m speaking one of those days. I haven’t quite.

[00:46:22] David Hornik
I clearly have lost my blogging cred.

[00:46:24] Craig Syverson
Have you?

[00:46:24] David Hornik
I’m no longer asked to speak a blog. Blog events.

[00:46:27] Craig Syverson
You have too many blogs.

[00:46:28] David Hornik
It’s sad. No, I just, you know, venture blog has been neglected and I’m coming up, I think on the five year anniversary, so maybe I should. Don’t you think it’d be Good. To crescendo into five years at least so I can pretend like I’m a.

[00:46:40] Craig Syverson
Real blogger again rather than crash land through it.

[00:46:42] David Hornik
I mean, that would be sad. Yeah, that’d be sad. So I think I’ll try it. But you know, and plus the conference thing is, you know, it should be in a lull of planning now.

[00:46:52] Craig Syverson
Yeah.

[00:46:52] David Hornik
Maybe I can focus on some other things. Like, like.

[00:46:54] Craig Syverson
Oh, investments.

[00:46:56] David Hornik
Investments. Yeah, exactly. So if you have any companies out there that you think are, you know, interesting and you want me to hear about them. Hornick@augustcap.com there it is. Send me ma. Send me email hornick augustcap.com you could also send me mail within the Facebook platform. I seem to be getting pitched within Facebook with increasing frequency. But the easiest way. Hornick H O R N I K at August the month Cap.com please tell me that there are no bots that are going to like, listen to this, extract my email and spam the crap out of me.

[00:47:29] Craig Syverson
There. There aren’t.

[00:47:31] David Hornik
Right.

[00:47:31] Craig Syverson
We’re not there yet.

[00:47:32] David Hornik
Entrepreneurs. I’m happy to hear from. Bots less so.

[00:47:35] Craig Syverson
And thanks again to Cash Fly for providing bandwidth for our show. Product placement. Actually, it’s not product placement. That’s just. They don’t even ask. They didn’t even ask us.

[00:47:42] David Hornik
Right. Let’s in fact forget that. Hey, Craig.

[00:47:45] Craig Syverson
Yes.

[00:47:46] David Hornik
You’re going to put this up on Cash Fly?

[00:47:48] Craig Syverson
Why? Yes, David. Because they have an excellent content delivery network.

[00:47:52] David Hornik
You know what’s crazy is how darn reliable they are.

[00:47:55] Craig Syverson
And fast too.

[00:47:56] David Hornik
Wow. All right. I’ll be going to Cash Fly to check out Venture Cash.

[00:48:01] Craig Syverson
You might want to do that. But remember, it’s C-C-H-E F L Y dot com.

[00:48:07] David Hornik
Thanks, Greg.

[00:48:08] Craig Syverson
You’re welcome. Hawaii’s volcanoes have a fascination for all. It is quite true that the natives and tourists alike run to and not from the eruptions. Yet they all have a deep respect for the fire goddess Pele, who, according to legend, is responsible for the volcanic activities, for they will occur whenever she returns to one of her many homes on the slopes of Mauna Loa.