Generated Transcript

[00:00:15] Craig Syverson
Welcome to venture cast number 31. I’m Craig Syverson of Menlo Park.

[00:00:21] David Hornik
And I am David Hornik from August Capital.

[00:00:24] Howard Hartenbaum
And I’m Howard Hartenbaum, also from August Capital.

[00:00:28] David Hornik
That’s right, Howard Hardenbound.

[00:00:29] Craig Syverson
What’s he doing here?

[00:00:31] David Hornik
Snuck in.

[00:00:32] Craig Syverson
I know. Well, I’m gonna pass the baton to Howard, the co host. Baton?

[00:00:37] David Hornik
You’re done with us. I’ve had it.

[00:00:40] Craig Syverson
Well, you know, our last recording, what, over a year ago?

[00:00:42] David Hornik
It’s been a long time.

[00:00:43] Craig Syverson
And besides, you know, what? Plague and ruin, nothing much has happened.

[00:00:48] David Hornik
Yeah, right, Exactly. We’ve had an economic apocalypse. We’ve been very. The rye. Well, we’ve had the rise of Twitter since last week. I’d like to say Twitter as many times as possible in this return podcast. Would that be okay with you?

[00:01:02] Howard Hartenbaum
I’ve decided you cannot look at the news without seeing Twitter on the homepage.

[00:01:06] David Hornik
Yeah, can’t, because all news is Twitter. All news is good news on Twitter.

[00:01:14] Craig Syverson
So you thought about let’s have Howard on the show, and I said, let’s have Howard co host the show because I think two of you, it’s gonna be more interesting than me kind of wondering why the world’s in collapse. So I actually. This is a show I want to listen to.

[00:01:27] David Hornik
Let me understand this. So you basically are curled up on your couch in a fetal position and. Yeah. You think Howard and I should just move on with our lives?

[00:01:34] Craig Syverson
Just move on? You know. No, no, no. I mean, you know, help explain. Help explain to us. You know, you guys are still here, the office is still there, venture capital is possibly still working, you know, so.

[00:01:47] David Hornik
Far as I could tell. So, Howard, welcome.

[00:01:50] Craig Syverson
Welcome.

[00:01:50] Howard Hartenbaum
Thanks for the invitation. Take care of him. You say pass the baton, but that looks like a big, ugly mic.

[00:01:55] Craig Syverson
Yeah, well, David wants to use this omni mic in the middle of the room, and so that’s what we’re doing. That’s why it sounds a little different. Not a reflection on.

[00:02:03] David Hornik
Not a reflection on. Craig’s incredible audio prowess. If he had chosen how to record this session, it would be entirely hiss and room noise free.

[00:02:13] Craig Syverson
We’d be in dark rooms. Hey, someone’s got a phone. I hear the buzz. We’d be in dark rooms.

[00:02:17] David Hornik
Howard.

[00:02:18] Craig Syverson
That’s probably me. Yes. We’d be in whisper rooms with, you know, perfect audio.

[00:02:23] David Hornik
So how long has it been?

[00:02:24] Craig Syverson
Been like the 31st of January or something. Last 2008.

[00:02:28] David Hornik
Seriously?

[00:02:29] Craig Syverson
Yeah.

[00:02:30] David Hornik
That’s crazy.

[00:02:31] Craig Syverson
We took a year off.

[00:02:31] David Hornik
We took a year off and more.

[00:02:34] Craig Syverson
And then it took us. Took Us until now, for the three of us to have some time to actually reschedule it. Yeah.

[00:02:38] Howard Hartenbaum
And in that time frame, I met August, I got a job, I moved in here, and now I’m told that my real job is hosting David on a show.

[00:02:44] Craig Syverson
Yeah, exactly.

[00:02:46] David Hornik
We didn’t tell you that. That’s the reality.

[00:02:48] Howard Hartenbaum
At least I know who I work for now.

[00:02:50] David Hornik
That’s right, Howard. You are my whipping boy.

[00:02:53] Howard Hartenbaum
Thank you. I have another.

[00:02:56] Craig Syverson
But, I mean, I saw you guys actually invested in a company recently, which I thought, hey, so it’s not. It’s not all that bad.

[00:03:03] David Hornik
Oh, Howard and I have been busy. Right.

[00:03:05] Craig Syverson
I mean, but on your blog, you talked about StumbleUpon most recently.

[00:03:09] David Hornik
Right.

[00:03:10] Craig Syverson
And then Aardvark.

[00:03:11] David Hornik
Aardvark before that. Howard, what have you been up to?

[00:03:13] Howard Hartenbaum
And we put some money in a company in Germany, a first for us to invest in Europe called Swoopo.

[00:03:20] David Hornik
Swoopo. W O O, P O. Swoopo. Does that mean anything in German?

[00:03:28] Howard Hartenbaum
I should have asked, but I don’t know.

[00:03:30] David Hornik
That wasn’t part of our diligence process. Howard, I want our money back. If we don’t know what the name came from. So I also invest in a company called Ojai Ohai. Do you know what that comes from?

[00:03:41] Craig Syverson
From the city, I think.

[00:03:43] David Hornik
No. Ojai. Within. The city’s like within J. I know, right?

[00:03:46] Howard Hartenbaum
O H A, I. Howard, it’s some gamer talk.

[00:03:50] David Hornik
Gamer talk. You’re very close. It’s even more troubling than that.

[00:03:55] Craig Syverson
It’s Twitter talk.

[00:03:56] David Hornik
It’s from Lolcats.

[00:03:57] Craig Syverson
Oh, my God.

[00:03:59] David Hornik
And it’s sort of like, oh, hi, how you doing? Literally, I’m not even making this up.

[00:04:05] Howard Hartenbaum
Can I have my money back?

[00:04:06] David Hornik
I know which is where. Swoopo or Ojai.

[00:04:10] Craig Syverson
Wow.

[00:04:11] Howard Hartenbaum
And don’t forget Pixaza.

[00:04:13] David Hornik
Yes, that’s true.

[00:04:14] Howard Hartenbaum
We have one answer.

[00:04:15] David Hornik
Pixaza. How do you spell that?

[00:04:17] Howard Hartenbaum
P I, X, A, Z, Z, A. I had trouble remembering that name at first, so I don’t like the name.

[00:04:22] David Hornik
No time to. Time to change it to Swoopo, do you think? To Smoopo. And then we could have. Howard, you could be an investor in Swoopo and Smoopo.

[00:04:33] Craig Syverson
Excellent.

[00:04:33] David Hornik
So Howard loves Swoopo. So I’m gonna let you to explain Swoopo for us. Tell us about Swoopo Harrod.

[00:04:42] Howard Hartenbaum
So Swoopo is technically, its real name is entertainment shopping. And most of the time, when you want to go shopping online, it’s all about save time, save money. But that’s not Swoopo. Swoopo is spend time, spend money.

[00:04:57] David Hornik
I like it.

[00:04:59] Howard Hartenbaum
And that’s good if that’s your business. What they do is an auction that ends when people stop bidding. So it’s not like ebay. It’s more like Sotheby’s. And every time you bid, it costs you 75 cents to bid. And it increments the price by a fixed amount, like a penny, for example.

[00:05:17] Craig Syverson
A proportional amount to whatever was set right.

[00:05:20] Howard Hartenbaum
So they can sell a $2,000 television for $50 and make money because they’ll lose $1,950 on the TV, but they’ll make $3,750 in bidding fees. And so if you go to their website, everything sells for somewhere between 65 and 99% off. And it is great fun.

[00:05:42] Craig Syverson
So the winner here’s 20 bucks. How much? What cut can I get in that company?

[00:05:46] Howard Hartenbaum
Probably nothing. So to get you to think about it, so you put two things up that are identical. Two iPhones, and one sells for 15 cents, and they lose a fortune on it, and the other sells for 50 bucks, and they make a fortune on it. So on average, are a great deal.

[00:06:01] David Hornik
For the guys who win.

[00:06:03] Howard Hartenbaum
Correct. And it’s fun.

[00:06:04] Craig Syverson
Wow. I like it.

[00:06:06] David Hornik
It is fun, though. The problem that Howard has, unfortunately, is that he went to Swoopo. He was looking at checking out, and he was playing, like, play, okay, I’m gonna bid on stuff. But now that we’ve invested in Swooplo, none of us are allowed to bid on Swoopo. So whatever fun there was, we’re out. We’re not allowed to.

[00:06:22] Craig Syverson
Sorry.

[00:06:22] David Hornik
You’re allowed.

[00:06:23] Craig Syverson
You guys. You guys have lead such a difficult life.

[00:06:25] David Hornik
I know. How can we buy a $57 big screen TV? So you’re gonna fly to Munich, Germany?

[00:06:33] Howard Hartenbaum
Yes.

[00:06:33] David Hornik
How often are they gonna have board meetings over there?

[00:06:35] Howard Hartenbaum
Every quarter. I will be having a very large glass of beer.

[00:06:40] David Hornik
Very nice. Would that be on the plane or when you get there?

[00:06:43] Howard Hartenbaum
No, when I get there, I’ll go to the most touristy beer house they have.

[00:06:47] David Hornik
And don’t you love. I love flying into. You fly into Germany and you with Lufthansa, and you go into their. Their. What are they? The lounge area. And it doesn’t matter what time of day it is. They are serving beer and pretzels, and people are eating them. Oh, I like the pretzel. I’m psyched about the pretzels, but just like the idea. I watch these German families and the parents get beer and it’s ten in the morning and you think there’s orange and soft. Perhaps you would. That was for my children. My children think that the only German word I know is orange. And that’s absurd because I also know schwarzebonen, black beans.

[00:07:28] Craig Syverson
See?

[00:07:29] Howard Hartenbaum
And being a German name, Hartenbaum, gets me in a lot of trouble in Germany. Whenever I come in, they say sprechen Sie Deutsch? And I say nein, nein. And they say hable espanol and I say no. They say, parlez vous francais? And I say no.

[00:07:43] David Hornik
Did they ever say in Japanese at.

[00:07:45] Howard Hartenbaum
One time the guy said, nihongo hanase ruka. And I said, hai. We started speaking and he spoke perfect Japanese.

[00:07:52] David Hornik
Really?

[00:07:52] Craig Syverson
And he was a German guy.

[00:07:53] Howard Hartenbaum
He was the immigration officer. And I figured if he could speak that good in Japanese and it was like the fifth language he tried on me, he probably can speak them all. You ever hear somebody who can speak three languages, Trilingual and two languages bilingual and one language is American.

[00:08:11] David Hornik
But seriously, folks. But your kids are growing up speaking Japanese, right?

[00:08:15] Howard Hartenbaum
Yeah.

[00:08:16] David Hornik
That’s pretty good. My kids are growing up speaking like.

[00:08:19] Howard Hartenbaum
The language of music.

[00:08:20] David Hornik
Pigeon. Yiddish. What are you. Oi. That’s what I’m. They’re learning East Coast. It’s useful. So.

[00:08:31] Craig Syverson
So it’s not all dire.

[00:08:33] David Hornik
It’s not all. No. We’ve. We’ve invested in seven companies since. In the last six months.

[00:08:39] Howard Hartenbaum
I don’t think our pace has changed over the time frame. It certainly hasn’t gone up, but it hasn’t gone down. And we’re just looking for great companies and it’s a little bit easier to sift through them because there’s fewer and they tend to be better when the times are down. You don’t have crazy people who shouldn’t be in the business jumping up and saying, give me money.

[00:08:58] Craig Syverson
Somewhat self selecting.

[00:08:59] David Hornik
Yeah, exactly.

[00:09:00] Craig Syverson
And you guys did raise a fund, which helps. Are other firms having trouble?

[00:09:04] Howard Hartenbaum
But most of the deals we did were before the fund, just before the fund was raised, or five out of.

[00:09:08] David Hornik
The seven, half or something. But yeah, it’s tough. Is it?

[00:09:12] Craig Syverson
To raise money.

[00:09:13] David Hornik
There were only two new funds raised in. In Q1, August Capital and Bane Capital. By the way, shout out to the Bane guys. They’re awesome. Love. I love Bane. We love working with them. They’re smart, good guys. So they were able to raise money.

[00:09:29] Howard Hartenbaum
Wasn’t Trinity’s in the first quarter?

[00:09:30] David Hornik
Nope. Q2.

[00:09:31] Howard Hartenbaum
Q2, Q2. They may have done it in Q1. They just didn’t tell anybody.

[00:09:34] David Hornik
Well, Twin. Twinity. Twinity is wasting capital in Q2. Yeah. 20 on Twitter. That’s Baby Bale on Sesame Street. I’m not singing.

[00:09:51] Craig Syverson
No, I know. But when it’s up to Howard whether you can sing, you know.

[00:09:55] Howard Hartenbaum
Oh, I’ve heard him sing.

[00:09:57] Craig Syverson
Yeah, right.

[00:09:59] Howard Hartenbaum
Yeah. For $20, you can sing.

[00:10:02] David Hornik
$20. I could buy a big screen TV on swoopo. So we know which is worth more.

[00:10:09] Howard Hartenbaum
So one of the big concerns about fundraising was people who raised money. Last year, maybe there were some investors who put money in who have since changed their mind because times have gotten tough. And for us, we’re quite pleased to have raised it kind of in the new year because the people who committed to the fund mean it. Mean it. They know the position they’re in and they’re very comfortable with moving forward. So we don’t have that concern. That some other places might have.

[00:10:33] Craig Syverson
Have firms taken a different strategic approach, like focus on their previous investments or can you even take a fund money from a fund and put it to a pre existing investment?

[00:10:44] David Hornik
You can’t, you can’t monkey around, you mean within it. So if we have money in one fund, move it to another fund to.

[00:10:49] Craig Syverson
Back up a company, like so.

[00:10:51] David Hornik
Not really. Yeah, they’re, they’re very, very, you know. Right. They’re very clear rules about how cross fund investing, what you’re supposed to do. And I think, I don’t know specifically what our rules are. I think our rules basically require that we. And we do it, that we inform our, our limited partners that we’re doing it and they could object. And if they object in sufficient scale, then we wouldn’t do it. But the reality is the only reason we would do it is because we believe that there’s a real opportunity for the new fund.

[00:11:20] Craig Syverson
Yeah.

[00:11:20] David Hornik
And one of the other advantages we have is that there’s a huge consistency between funds. So the lion’s share of our investors in fund one were the investors in fund two or the investors in fund five. And so.

[00:11:32] Craig Syverson
But I guess what I. The scenario I would describe would be more of that. The company who might need more money just raises another round. Right. That’s what normally happens.

[00:11:40] David Hornik
Yep.

[00:11:41] Howard Hartenbaum
And generally you have enough money in the fund, in the prior fund, wherever you put money in before, to keep following. But there are some cases where you see other funds where they run out of money in that fund and they want to put more money, and in some cases they do take it out of the new fund. In some cases they don’t yeah, no.

[00:11:56] David Hornik
In fact, I’ve been talking to entrepreneurs. It’s a real concern is if you’re getting towards the end of your investor’s fund and they need to have sufficient capital to continue to support you, does it result in you selling the company or it’s harder to raise money, et cetera. So the good news is as we look and as we march down, we reserve a bunch of money every time we invest that says, okay, we’ll be able to continue to support this deal later and then we stop, hopefully in time in a fund so that we can raise a new fund and invest out of it so that we don’t have these kinds of pressures. But it is way more art than science, right? Because you know, you can imagine if I invest $2 million in some early stage company that in the software space and then we invest $2 million in a chip business, we can guess that the chip investment will require a lot more capital than the software investment. But not necessarily. You just never know. So anyway, I think it will be interesting. The good news for us was that we were able to kind of get a group of people who were happy to continue to invest. The bad news is that there were a number of foundations that were perfectly happy with us and the performance, etc, they just didn’t have the money. And that was pretty amazing. I mean, big foundations that you’ve heard about, think NPR supporters, Right, Exactly. Who just said, look, you’ve made us a lot of money historically and we’d love to invest, but we literally have no liquidity, so forget it.

[00:13:26] Craig Syverson
Were they with Madoff?

[00:13:28] David Hornik
No. I mean most. I don’t think it was made off. I think it’s just when the market, you know, when the market decreases at its height, what, 40%, then you can imagine that it creates real liquidity crunches. And then the second thing that it creates is this proportional problem, what had been called the denominator problem, which is to say that if funds wanted to, if an endowment wanted to have 10% in venture capital and the venture capital valuation stayed consistent, but the public markets dropped 40% then they were now 40% overweighted in venture capital. Right. Suddenly they have way More than 10% in venture capital and they didn’t want to then invest more in venture capital until those disproportionate relationships were sorted out. So we bumped into that.

[00:14:17] Howard Hartenbaum
Or they have a model where they’re expecting to get money from distributions based on IPOs or other things happening and they look at the market now and that’s going to Be slower for a while. So they’re afraid that they won’t have that money coming out. So they get conservative.

[00:14:31] Craig Syverson
Yeah.

[00:14:31] David Hornik
Yeah. But it worked out. It was all good.

[00:14:33] Craig Syverson
Yeah, it’s all good. Craig and I would think maybe, like, the activity for new companies might be increasing in some way or smaller companies because there’s more people looking for work and creating.

[00:14:47] David Hornik
That’s true. Right? It’s a great. I mean, exactly. It’s a great strategy when. When you no longer have a job and you’re looking to then create your own. We see plenty of those. I think Howard got it right, that ultimately smart entrepreneurs hunker down and focus on building businesses in tough times. And what you don’t have are the people who would otherwise say, oh, I looked at the market and I, you know, I did an assessment of the market and here’s the little bit of white space. And I’m going to build a business in that space. It’s kitty cats dot com. And it’s going to be awesome because there’s doggies dot com, whatever. But there’s no kitty cats dot com.

[00:15:23] Howard Hartenbaum
And there’s a cats dot com. But those are for bigger cats.

[00:15:26] David Hornik
Yeah, exactly. But this is for the kitty cats. And then, you know, you end up with these kind of people. Don’t. You don’t believe in the business. You’re not driven by the passion to either build. Build a big company or to build this particular thing that you’ve always want. Build. And those are the best entrepreneurs, the ones who are driven, you know, it’s. Who are. Who are, you know, internally driven. It’s also known as mental illness. They can’t help themselves. Those are the best ones. You know, like, I just can’t help myself. I have to build this business. I realize that this is the crappiest time to build.

[00:15:56] Howard Hartenbaum
It’s going to be hard to raise money. The customers are not going to want to pay. But I can’t help myself.

[00:16:01] Craig Syverson
Yeah, it’s awesome.

[00:16:02] David Hornik
I’m in. We fund and we funded a bunch of that. That’s good.

[00:16:07] Craig Syverson
You’re not really looking for companies that might be trying to have a business that might address a downturn. Is that too trendy?

[00:16:14] David Hornik
Well, the problem with it is that. What if there’s an upturn? Yes.

[00:16:17] Howard Hartenbaum
I mean, the trick is to find a company that’s just a needed product or service that doesn’t really matter if it’s up or down.

[00:16:23] Craig Syverson
Yep.

[00:16:25] David Hornik
Like porn, for example.

[00:16:27] Craig Syverson
It kind of matters if. Oh, never mind.

[00:16:31] David Hornik
Where were you going with that? I’m curious. Oh, yes.

[00:16:37] Craig Syverson
But Stumble Upon. I know. I remember many moons ago, you were. You liked that company.

[00:16:43] David Hornik
I was excited.

[00:16:43] Craig Syverson
And then they got acquired by some clowns or something.

[00:16:46] David Hornik
That made me sad. Yes, right. I was talking with them, and they were interested, an interesting company, and then they got an offer, and eBay paid $75 million for the company. And I said, really? Well, you know, on the one hand, I don’t understand the fit, but, hey, you know, good for you.

[00:17:04] Howard Hartenbaum
On the other hand, that’s money, right?

[00:17:05] David Hornik
Well, exactly. They had raised very little money, and they had an opportunity to make quite a bit as individuals, and so they took it. But what they realized over time was, hey, there isn’t a great fit between eBay and StumbleUpon. And there’s an opportunity to say, let’s continue to build an interesting independent business. And so the founders actually said, all right, we’ll spin this company out, we’ll invest some of the money that we made and we’ll bring in new investors to fund the company, and let’s build a big business. And so August came in and Excel Partners, and the two of us, along with Ram Sriram, who sits on the Google board and was an investor and on the board of StumbleUpon before, and said, okay, we understand that there weren’t synergies. Let’s, you know, let’s go back to the basics of building a big company.

[00:17:56] Craig Syverson
So you bought it from ebay?

[00:17:57] David Hornik
So we bought it from ebay. We paid them some money and we took it private, and now it’s a private company again. And I’m on the board and it’s. I’ve always liked Stumble Upon. The reason I’ve always liked StumbleUpon is that I think that the web is. Is a big place now. You know, it’s a big, dark, angry, dangerous place. And it’s hard to find new, fun stuff that’s interesting to you. And yet StumbleUpon has such a huge quantity of information about what people think, what sites people think are interesting throughout the web that it gives you the opportunity to browse the web in ways that aren’t possible through a Google or a Yahoo search, etc. I think there’s a real place for that. So they’ve continued to do a good job while they were at ebay. They increased the scale of the company up to 7 and a half million registered users. So instead of sort of dying on the vine, they continued to grow. They just didn’t focus on a bunch of things interesting product and partnerships and monetization.

[00:18:57] Howard Hartenbaum
And now we have a better situation that from our perspective, which is the founders have some money and the next time somebody offers to buy them for 75 million, the answer is going to be no. They want to build a big business now, and maybe this will be a long term freestanding company that we can all be proud of.

[00:19:13] Craig Syverson
Yeah. It’s an interesting design problem because the thing I miss, thing great about magazines and newspapers, is that randomness. You know, in the online world, it’s so targeted and so focused that, you know, we all kind of become narrower in our minds.

[00:19:26] David Hornik
Yeah.

[00:19:26] Craig Syverson
You know, I like the Atlantic and I like the New Yorker because of that randomness. So if someone can pull it off on the web, which is what they’re.

[00:19:32] David Hornik
Trying to do, that describes it in my, in my, my venture blog post about it as sort of like, you know, the Dewey Decimal System. Right, Right. If you’re a kid and you’re out looking in a library at books about snakes. Hey there, snakes. They’re books about lizards. Right?

[00:19:46] Craig Syverson
Right.

[00:19:46] David Hornik
And you didn’t go out looking for the books about lizards, but they just happen to be next to it and. Oh, those are pretty cool. And then if you keep. Oh, books about dinosaurs, like. Oh, that’s cool. And then books about dinosaurs lead to, you know, books about centipedes and it’s.

[00:19:57] Howard Hartenbaum
Like my wife shopping. I need some shoes. Look at that hat over there. Hey, there’s a car dealer across the street.

[00:20:04] David Hornik
I was actually, I was. That is troubling, Howard. I was talking with my wife about the, about the Dewey Decimal System. She, she is like the, the works at the library. She loves the library. She loves the Dewey Decimal system. And she was explaining to me how next year when she runs the book sale at the school.

[00:20:20] Craig Syverson
Yeah.

[00:20:20] David Hornik
That she is going to make the books in the book sale be by the Dewey Decimal system so that she knows when someone says, I’m looking for a book on snakes. Oh, that’s, you know, HK blah, blah, blah. Which I thought that explains so much. That’s therein lies my life. The Dewey Decimal System will rule the book sale. So there. That’s it. I think this show is pretty much going to be about our wives.

[00:20:44] Howard Hartenbaum
We won’t need the Dewey Decimal System anymore because Google’s going to scan all the books in the world and then.

[00:20:49] David Hornik
You could just search arbitrarily by word. But they’re being investigated. Did you, I mean, did you hear. I mean, the antitrust department of the United States government is reviewing this deal that they have with the publishing industry.

[00:21:06] Howard Hartenbaum
I have a big problem with this opt in, opt out stuff like the government can say to a marketer, sure, they can send you whatever crap they want, but if you don’t like it, then you can opt out. And I’m a big believer, if I wanted it in the first place, I would opt in. And that’s what Google’s trying to claim with the book thing. Like, oh, yeah, we’ll just scan everything, and if you own that book and you happen to know what we’re doing, then you can opt out.

[00:21:29] David Hornik
Well, there are two problems. Like, so first of all, they were going to do it with all books that were no longer on, you know, under copyright. And as far as I’m concerned, they have absolutely the right to do that. You know, the, the publishing industry freaked out about it, but there isn’t any, you know, if it is no longer protected by copyright, then it’s no longer protected by copyright.

[00:21:48] Craig Syverson
And that’s like, in print, it’s in like 1917. I mean, it’s way back. It’s not like.

[00:21:53] David Hornik
So it depends, you know, it’s, you know, Exactly. Life. Life of the author, plus some number of years. So it depends on the author. Right. So, for example, my son has been writing the musical of the Diary of Anne Frank, which, you know, let’s put aside.

[00:22:08] Howard Hartenbaum
It’s about our wives now it’s about our kids.

[00:22:10] David Hornik
Yeah, exactly. Let’s put aside how commercial a musical about the Holocaust is. I mean, the Diary of Anne Frank was written. I mean, you know, this one’s pretty easy. We can go back and say, when was the Holocaust? We know when Anne Frank actually put. Passed away. And we can figure out that the copyright is coming up. Right. And so there was actually a musical, believe it or not, written in Spain on the Diary of Anne Frank, and the family objected. They said, absolutely not. It’s not in the spirit of the diary, etc. And it was still protected by copyright. And so to the extent that it was more than just factual information, they could say, you know, we’ll put the kabosh on it. But by the time Julian gets done with his musical, it will no longer be in copyright. So. Hey. So anyway. But I digress.

[00:22:55] Craig Syverson
It never happens.

[00:22:56] David Hornik
Yeah, exactly. Howard will stop that, right? Howard will keep me from. Howard, by the way, keeps checking his phone to see what time it is. He’s like, done already. Are you tired of this already?

[00:23:05] Howard Hartenbaum
No, I’m actually enjoying it.

[00:23:06] David Hornik
We’re gonna do this for years to come. Howard.

[00:23:09] Howard Hartenbaum
I have this problem, like, I don’t wear A watch. So I never know what time it is. So this goddamn iPhone I have, excuse my language. Every time I push the button, I see the time and my 10 year old daughter’s picture smiles, which is very.

[00:23:22] David Hornik
Sweet, but you have two daughters.

[00:23:25] Howard Hartenbaum
She likes this one best, right?

[00:23:26] David Hornik
Exactly.

[00:23:27] Howard Hartenbaum
The younger one’s cuter.

[00:23:28] David Hornik
Exactly. Once they get into high school. Yeah.

[00:23:31] Craig Syverson
Hey, start talking about my dog.

[00:23:34] David Hornik
You have a senior? Do you have a senior? June? Oh, I was thinking she was senior. All right, so you have another year of another year. But it’s coming up, it’s coming up. Tick, tick, tick.

[00:23:42] Craig Syverson
College searches.

[00:23:43] David Hornik
Wow. Fun.

[00:23:45] Craig Syverson
Totally.

[00:23:45] David Hornik
Okay, so the second problem, the second problem with, with the book search thing is that is this is what I think call I think of as the Larry Lessig problem. Larry Lessig pointed out, which is that there are huge, there are huge amounts of, of orphaned information where you know, it’s still protected by copyright, but nobody couldn’t find the copyright. Even if you wanted to find the copyright owner, you couldn’t find them. And so it’s information that’s, that’s captive, that is, that can’t be free and it can’t be spread and it can’t be built upon. And, and so as.

[00:24:16] Howard Hartenbaum
Why is it everybody’s right to expect that they should get it?

[00:24:19] David Hornik
Well, Lessig would argue. Well, the government says it’s not right. Government says copyright protection. Of copyright protection. And if it’s still protected by copyright, that, excuse me, not to become Mr. IP Attorney Lecturer, but it’s an exclusive right and you have the right to control it. And so you can’t just say, oh, I’m going to use it. Lessig says that’s a bad choice for, for society. Right, that society, that in order to move society forward and to expand and grow culture in ways that will advantage all of us, Howard, even you, that you need to make those things available.

[00:24:53] Howard Hartenbaum
They’re good. So let Google pay for it and then put it all on Wikipedia.

[00:24:57] David Hornik
But they can’t. They will. Even if, let’s say they could, who do they pay? They don’t know who to pay. This is the problem.

[00:25:02] Howard Hartenbaum
They’ll pay the costs of doing it.

[00:25:04] David Hornik
Oh, they’ll pay the cost and then.

[00:25:05] Howard Hartenbaum
Put it all on Wikipedia. So they get no benefit from it.

[00:25:08] David Hornik
Oh, I would argue that they get immense benefit from everything that’s on Wikipedia because what’s the primary search interface for Wikipedia? It’s not Wikipedia, it’s Google. I once wanted to figure out that in fact, anyone who’s listening, if you want to do the math. How much money does Google make on AdWords served up to searches that go. That are primarily to find information on Wikipedia? Wikipedia missed this unbelievable opportunity because it was a not for profit that they can’t monetize it. So Google is the real winner in the Wikipedia race. They owe Jimmy Wales a big nice T shirt.

[00:25:42] Howard Hartenbaum
Yeah, but the reason that Wikipedia is so great is because they weren’t trying to make money from it. So everybody put the information up if Google would try to do it.

[00:25:49] David Hornik
Well, Google has tried. Right? Don’t they have their own version? They got their. They have a thing. They have a googly thing. That is Wikipedia.

[00:25:56] Craig Syverson
Ish.

[00:25:57] Howard Hartenbaum
We’re starting to see a lot of those. Wiki this, wiki that, Wiki target wikifocus.

[00:26:01] David Hornik
And answer, Wiki Mad and Wiki sweater.

[00:26:05] Howard Hartenbaum
That’s usually, like, right before it ends. Right. You start seeing, like, little targeted verticals on everything. Copying. Well, it worked for Wikipedia and they didn’t make any money from it. So we’re going to do Wiki shoes.

[00:26:16] Craig Syverson
Exactly.

[00:26:17] David Hornik
Well, and you can add your own shoes. I would. I’d update the Converse section. There’s a lot of history, by the way, around the Chuck Taylor Converse shoes.

[00:26:27] Craig Syverson
Don’t get them started.

[00:26:28] Howard Hartenbaum
But that’s a subject for another day.

[00:26:33] David Hornik
This is gonna work fine, Howard. This is gonna go well.

[00:26:37] Howard Hartenbaum
So you don’t want my participation. You just want me to control Dave.

[00:26:41] Craig Syverson
You’re the babysitter. I didn’t really say that, but that’s. That’s kind of what it’s all about.

[00:26:45] Howard Hartenbaum
It’s getting clearer.

[00:26:46] Craig Syverson
Okay, good.

[00:26:47] David Hornik
You know what? I appreciate that we have. How long have we been going? Anyone have a sense? I do.

[00:26:51] Howard Hartenbaum
I’ve been watching the whole time.

[00:26:54] Craig Syverson
20 some minutes.

[00:26:55] David Hornik
20 some odd minutes. And we haven’t mentioned the swine flu once?

[00:26:57] Craig Syverson
No.

[00:26:57] David Hornik
Well, we have mentioned Twitter. We have mentioned Twitter, but we haven’t.

[00:27:00] Craig Syverson
We talked about plague at the beginning.

[00:27:02] David Hornik
Right, you did. I’m sorry. Oh, my bad. You alluded to the.

[00:27:06] Craig Syverson
I alluded to it.

[00:27:07] David Hornik
Which is no longer the swine flu. It’s the 12743 flu.

[00:27:11] Howard Hartenbaum
I was living in Europe when SARS hit, and I was doing quite a bit of traveling, and I went into India one day and they had. At the border, they were funneling everybody down to thermal sensors so that they had guys sitting behind them looking for people with fevers. And if somebody’s face came up red, they pulled them out of the line. I canceled the trip to China because the rumor was out, which ended up being True that. If you were trying to get into China, you’d already landed there and you had a fever and you walked through the thermal sensors. They effectively imprisoned you for two weeks. They took you out of the city, they put you in these cinder block hospitals that had been erected very quickly to hold people for containment. And they basically locked you in your room until you either got over it or you died. Which is, you know, most people got over it. But yeah, I would rather stay home healthy and watch TV with my family than die in a concrete.

[00:28:02] David Hornik
Really?

[00:28:02] Craig Syverson
You’re so fussy.

[00:28:03] David Hornik
You obviously weren’t committed to your job.

[00:28:05] Craig Syverson
Yeah.

[00:28:05] Howard Hartenbaum
But they.

[00:28:06] David Hornik
Cuz I at the same time was asked to go teach a class in South Korea and I went with a group, people to South Korea. Now mind you, there were no instances of SARS in South Korea, but it was.

[00:28:18] Howard Hartenbaum
And there was no hospital prisons either.

[00:28:19] David Hornik
No hospital prison in South Korea. We flew through, we threw, flew through Tokyo and there was a fair amount. Amount of people wearing masks. People wearing masks. But then they’d like take down the mask to drink their drink until I.

[00:28:31] Howard Hartenbaum
Kiss or somebody take it off and then they’re coughing. Put it back on.

[00:28:34] David Hornik
Yeah, right. I don’t want to trap the cough around my face. That would be.

[00:28:38] Howard Hartenbaum
So I think the big issue about that was is that the reason SARS got to be such a problem was because the Chinese government unfortunately wasn’t releasing the information when it was early on. And we learned a big lesson from that. Hopefully the case now is that we’re much more transparent with information. It will help the situation.

[00:28:55] David Hornik
I just heard someone on the seat from the CDC saying that one of the reasons that this is going well is that the Mexican government immediately contacted the U.S. and Canadian governments and said, here’s what’s going on. How do we fix this?

[00:29:07] Craig Syverson
Yep.

[00:29:08] Howard Hartenbaum
So therefore we will no longer call it the Mexican flu.

[00:29:11] David Hornik
Exactly. Because that would be rude. We will call it the 7246 flu.

[00:29:18] Howard Hartenbaum
The S Wine flu.

[00:29:20] David Hornik
Did you see though? Actually I sort of enjoyed the. This is a, this is a great example. Speaking of Twitter, which I have been of, you know, sort of where Twitter goes awry. I mean, the second there’s a crisis, then suddenly swine flu becomes a hashtag. And if you search swine flu hashtag, it’s just the amount of information and misinformation that’s spewed on Twitter about, about the swine flu is just awesome. My cat has swine flu. Like, how’d your cat get that swine flu?

[00:29:48] Craig Syverson
Eating bacon Making out with a pig.

[00:29:51] David Hornik
Right?

[00:29:51] Craig Syverson
That’s more like it.

[00:29:52] Howard Hartenbaum
So what about this blog? If you go to swine flu dot com, somebody’s making a lot of money from that. But for the fun of it, I typed in swine flew. Flew to see what I would get. And I got a Japanese golfing site. I’m thinking like a bad golfing site.

[00:30:06] David Hornik
Really?

[00:30:07] Howard Hartenbaum
They should have changed it to some blog. They’d be making a lot of money because I’m sure there’s people typing in swine flu flew.

[00:30:14] David Hornik
Yeah, I would.

[00:30:15] Craig Syverson
I’d make flying pigs like little, little.

[00:30:17] Howard Hartenbaum
Stickers.Com now worth $1.4 million.

[00:30:22] David Hornik
There was a. There is a little purpose built site that on, that just searches for the swine flu hashtag on Twitter and updates. So you can go to. I forget what it is. You can go to Michael Sippy’s blog. That’s how I saw it. And I love Michael Sippy’s blog, so you should go there. Anyway.

[00:30:38] Howard Hartenbaum
My daughter was playing a game on the web the other night called Pandemic, where basically it has a map of the world and then all you see are like boats moving across the ocean and planes flying through the air. And you can set all sorts of things like, like is this an airborne disease? Is this a waterborne disease? Is this a person to person transmission?

[00:30:56] David Hornik
So is the goal to spread or stop?

[00:30:59] Howard Hartenbaum
No, the goal is to simply adjust all of the parameters and see what happens. And so it’s kind of. It’s to teach about what happens in a pandemic. And I’m watching her do this and you’re watching the numbers, and the numbers start going up. She goes, oh, look, Madagascar just closed its ports and now it’s fine, it has no cases. And then yesterday I was driving her to school and we hear on the radio and Cuba has just stopped all flights going to and from Mexico. She goes, see, dad, I told you that was a good game. Pandemic. Find it on the web.

[00:31:30] David Hornik
It’s an educational game. It really isn’t about mass destruction and fear. I like it.

[00:31:38] Craig Syverson
So is ebay in the business of creating businesses to lay or sell?

[00:31:43] David Hornik
Well, they should. I mean, it would be good if they created them and then sold them because they could get some value. And I can tell you that we’ve been talking with really smart, interesting people in other companies who have literally created businesses in those companies that may be interesting and, and grow and be more valuable independent from the original business.

[00:31:59] Howard Hartenbaum
Right.

[00:32:00] David Hornik
So, yeah, but ebay, unfortunately, except for acquired a couple of Businesses that didn’t have a whole lot of synergies and now are being divested in ways that are interesting.

[00:32:10] Craig Syverson
So, yes, Skype is gonna.

[00:32:12] Howard Hartenbaum
Skype is. They’re never gonna get rid of PayPal, but Skype will be an interesting one to see how that plays out. I mean, they’re filing to take it public, and we’ll see how that goes.

[00:32:21] David Hornik
So, Howard, I mean, those of you listening, Howard was the very first investor in Skype. You helped them write the business plan and gave him the first. What, however many dollars.

[00:32:29] Howard Hartenbaum
But they did all the hard work. I was just along for the ride.

[00:32:32] David Hornik
I know, but it was an awesome ride. That’s all I’m saying.

[00:32:35] Howard Hartenbaum
It’s like you’re hanging out by the street corner and some really beautiful girl comes and picks you up in her Ferrari Testaross and says, you want to go around the block. But that never actually happened. That was a dream when I was 17.

[00:32:49] David Hornik
Let’s hope that Junko is not, in fact, listening to this.

[00:32:54] Craig Syverson
We gotta resurrect the audience.

[00:32:56] David Hornik
Yeah, right. Who’s. I know. Exactly.

[00:32:58] Howard Hartenbaum
I have a feeling nobody is listening.

[00:32:59] David Hornik
No. The beauty is that I just have to tweet it.

[00:33:02] Craig Syverson
Ew.

[00:33:02] David Hornik
Aren’t you.

[00:33:03] Craig Syverson
Aren’t you.

[00:33:04] David Hornik
Isn’t that the promise of Twitter? I just say adventure Cast is back. Get a link and people go to it.

[00:33:10] Craig Syverson
We’ll see.

[00:33:11] Howard Hartenbaum
Or we can find people. Find people at even bigger followers and ask them to. We’ll say nice things about you.

[00:33:17] David Hornik
If Chris Saka.

[00:33:19] Howard Hartenbaum
Chris Sack is a guy.

[00:33:20] David Hornik
Billion people.

[00:33:22] Howard Hartenbaum
I’m sure he’ll tweet this.

[00:33:23] David Hornik
How many do you think he’s being. I think Sack is now being followed by like 400 or 500,000 people. He’s like half. He’s. Chris Sacca is half of Ashton Kutcher. How awesome is that?

[00:33:36] Howard Hartenbaum
I hear Chris has two ghost riders.

[00:33:40] David Hornik
No, Chris is. I mean, Chris is just always doing interesting stuff and he loves to tweet about it. So. So, yes. So we love Chris Sack and we sure hope that he enjoys Venture Cast because you know, what would be better than mentioning Venture Cast on your. On the Chris Sacca Twitter feed? Wouldn’t that be awesome? Howard?

[00:33:58] Howard Hartenbaum
Chris is the coolest guy I ever met.

[00:34:00] David Hornik
He’s awesome.

[00:34:00] Craig Syverson
I think that here he’s really good looking too.

[00:34:02] David Hornik
He’s a beautiful man.

[00:34:03] Craig Syverson
Yeah.

[00:34:04] David Hornik
Chris Sacca. Those of you who don’t know Sack, he’s a great guy. He’s. Well, anyway, enough of that. Yeah, we’ve sucked up to Chris Sack enough. Who else is in the top hundred. Jason Calcanis. You know that Jason Calcanis.

[00:34:18] Howard Hartenbaum
Jack Dorsey. That Jack Dorsey. He’s a good guy.

[00:34:20] David Hornik
Jack and Ev. They. I mean, you know, where would Twitter be without them? Look at now. Now, Evan Biz. Who are the top 100 most important people according to tonight? Time in the World.

[00:34:33] Craig Syverson
Amazing.

[00:34:34] David Hornik
How sweet is that?

[00:34:35] Howard Hartenbaum
Didn’t Jack just go to Iraq to teach them about Twitter?

[00:34:39] David Hornik
Did he? Was that.

[00:34:39] Howard Hartenbaum
He did. I think he was on there. Young technology businessmen going to Iraq to talk about technology companies. And I was following his tweets.

[00:34:47] David Hornik
See, this is what I’m saying.

[00:34:48] Howard Hartenbaum
Twitter just lost our security detail. And I was thinking, does that mean they were killed? You ditched them, or you left the country.

[00:34:56] David Hornik
Either way, it sucks.

[00:34:58] Howard Hartenbaum
Cool tweet. I never had a security detail.

[00:35:00] David Hornik
Meanwhile, Chris Sacca was in Ethiopia. I was reading his tweets from Ethiopia. Maybe in order to have a bunch of people following, you have to go to cool places. Where’s Ashton Kutcher going? Nowhere.

[00:35:10] Craig Syverson
San Diego.

[00:35:11] David Hornik
Oh, Went to San Diego. Went. Went to Legoland. What’s. What’s he doing?

[00:35:17] Howard Hartenbaum
Tried to get across the border. They wouldn’t let me.

[00:35:20] David Hornik
Yeah, exactly. The real Shaq. I mean, he’s doing some things. That’s what I’m saying. He. You know, But Ashton Kutcher. Come on. And then Oprah did. You see, Oprah tried to tweet, and she failed.

[00:35:34] Craig Syverson
She.

[00:35:35] David Hornik
She literally, like, typed it in, was all set to tweet, and then, like, hit refresh instead of hitting. You know, instead of hitting said. So her very first effort at tweeting was, in fact, not. That’s just sad. That’s just sad. I mean, you know, it’s the world simp. The whole point of it is it’s the world’s simplest technology.

[00:35:54] Howard Hartenbaum
Yeah, well, it’s evidently not simple enough yet.

[00:35:57] David Hornik
Let’s make it simpler. You just think it, and it’s instantly sent to all of your contacts. But I don’t understand.

[00:36:04] Craig Syverson
If she’s tweeting for the first time, it’s like a tree falling in the forest, right?

[00:36:09] Howard Hartenbaum
No, because she already got a million people to sign up. She says, I’m about to tweet.

[00:36:14] David Hornik
Totally. A tree falling in the forest, right? Not if you’re Oprah, I’m here.

[00:36:18] Howard Hartenbaum
No, because she said, I’m about to tweet. Sign up. And then she yells, okay, that’s different.

[00:36:22] David Hornik
If you create the account and say, you know, twitter.com backslash Oprah or the.

[00:36:27] Howard Hartenbaum
Real Oprah or somebody else probably owns it already.

[00:36:30] David Hornik
She must have been something. I don’t know what she was. I knew this would happen. I knew that fucking venture cast would become Twitter cast.

[00:36:37] Craig Syverson
No, come on, you’re the one who brought it up.

[00:36:41] David Hornik
I can’t help it. I can’t help myself.

[00:36:43] Howard Hartenbaum
That’s just because we feel bad we didn’t invest.

[00:36:45] Craig Syverson
Well, that. Okay, now, Howard, you’re obsessing about it.

[00:36:49] Howard Hartenbaum
Two years ago I was nice.

[00:36:51] David Hornik
Oh, you’re killing us. We got to talk about something else. What else have we got?

[00:36:56] Craig Syverson
What’s been successful? Come on, come on.

[00:36:58] David Hornik
All right, we’re all up. Did I mention my partner Dave invested in Microsoft?

[00:37:04] Craig Syverson
Yes. 100 years ago.

[00:37:07] David Hornik
How many times? Oh, but this is unbelievable.

[00:37:09] Craig Syverson
Seagate.

[00:37:10] David Hornik
So Microsoft just had the first sequentially down quarter, I think, in the history of the firm. But my partner Dave, who sits on the board, said that he’s been on the board for 28 years and this is the first time he’s seen a down quarter. Can you imagine Howard investing in a company that had. What does that mean? That’s 112 sequential growth. Quarters of growth. Holy macanoly, that would be awesome.

[00:37:38] Howard Hartenbaum
That’s why we’re all in the venture business, is to get that company or something half as well.

[00:37:44] David Hornik
Keep trying.

[00:37:45] Howard Hartenbaum
Or something that goes only sequentially for 60 quarters.

[00:37:48] David Hornik
That’s good enough for me. I will settle for 60 quarters of revenue growth. Sequential revenue growth.

[00:37:54] Howard Hartenbaum
So I met with an entrepreneur this morning who was at sgi and we were talking about how SGI was recently sold for. Was it $24 million or something like that?

[00:38:03] David Hornik
25. 24 something.

[00:38:05] Howard Hartenbaum
And when he left the company many years ago, it was after the stock had hit its peak and was down 25%. And when he left, he decided to sell all his stock because he figured he wasn’t going to be working there anymore and he might as well sell it because he wouldn’t be able to assess if the stock was good or more anymore.

[00:38:20] David Hornik
And so the price was.

[00:38:22] Howard Hartenbaum
I didn’t ask him the exact price, but it was in the billions, of course, in value. And so then we got into a discussion. I said, well, if you really wanted to sell it, why didn’t you short it too? And then he would have made money all the way down.

[00:38:32] David Hornik
Well, he didn’t say that he thought they were complete idiots. He just said he wouldn’t know if they were complete idiots.

[00:38:37] Howard Hartenbaum
Yeah.

[00:38:38] David Hornik
You know, I once had shot. I had shock. I had stock in a company I had represented that got sold to a company that could sold to excite. At home. And so I got Excite stock, but it was in my 401k because I had bought these shares, original shares in the private company from my 401k. And by the time I remembered that those shares were in my 401k, they had gone to zero.

[00:39:01] Craig Syverson
Yeah.

[00:39:01] David Hornik
Not like, you know, oh good, I’ll sell them for a buck fifty.

[00:39:04] Craig Syverson
Right.

[00:39:05] David Hornik
They literally were zero. And then I had a problem because I had to prove to the four. In order to have them removed from my 401k, I had to prove that they were zero. Well, how do you prove that you.

[00:39:14] Howard Hartenbaum
Don’T get any tax benefit from a 0 and a 401k either.

[00:39:18] David Hornik
Exactly. They don’t. You don’t get any tax benefit. They don’t send you a document that says, I am sorry, your stock is worth.

[00:39:27] Howard Hartenbaum
So the lesson here is you have some great high flying stock that you feel so good about, the price goes down a little bit and you think, I’ll buy some more. Or somebody else says, I think I’m going to jump in. Now it’s off 25%. It may go to nothing or it.

[00:39:40] David Hornik
May go way back up.

[00:39:42] Howard Hartenbaum
But it could be a cycle. Doesn’t always cycle back.

[00:39:45] David Hornik
We don’t need your damn pessimism. We need some positivity here in the markets. That’s what I’m saying.

[00:39:50] Howard Hartenbaum
Buy stock. I realize I can’t say which one to buy because then there’s some, always some comment about that.

[00:39:59] Craig Syverson
Yeah.

[00:40:00] David Hornik
There are laws that preclude us.

[00:40:02] Howard Hartenbaum
I own, I own like some index funds. So I’m sure if I say buy some stock, I probably own it.

[00:40:06] Craig Syverson
Well, you guys can’t give a recommendation.

[00:40:09] Howard Hartenbaum
You can, but you shouldn’t.

[00:40:10] Craig Syverson
Okay. You’re like a broker.

[00:40:11] David Hornik
No, no, I was just kidding.

[00:40:12] Craig Syverson
Okay.

[00:40:12] David Hornik
We don’t have anything. I mean, unless our companies are on file to go public already and then it’s a, you know, a quiet period.

[00:40:19] Craig Syverson
Yeah.

[00:40:20] David Hornik
Then, then we can’t talk about them.

[00:40:22] Howard Hartenbaum
I can say buy whatever stock I have.

[00:40:25] David Hornik
You clearly should want anything we have.

[00:40:29] Craig Syverson
Yes.

[00:40:29] David Hornik
Just broadly speaking. For sure. Our startups are the most beautiful and. But possibly.

[00:40:37] Craig Syverson
But they’re not, they’re not, they’re not public.

[00:40:39] David Hornik
No. But just stay waiting.

[00:40:41] Craig Syverson
Oh, and just admire them from afar.

[00:40:43] David Hornik
When that time comes. Bye, bye. Bye.

[00:40:46] Craig Syverson
With all the IPOs that are you.

[00:40:49] David Hornik
Think, do you think OpenTable is gonna get public? They’re on file. They filed, you know, in the heart of darkness and.

[00:40:55] Craig Syverson
Right.

[00:40:55] David Hornik
What do you think?

[00:40:56] Craig Syverson
It’s a good company.

[00:40:58] Howard Hartenbaum
I enjoy the Service, general purpose, mainstream company. I think they’ll go public. It’s just maybe it’s not tomorrow, maybe it’s next week or next month, but they’re a good company. Let’s talk about Facebook instead.

[00:41:10] David Hornik
Well, we’ve already talked about Twitter. We might as well.

[00:41:12] Howard Hartenbaum
I was just reading all the news about how different pricing on the company and the big private investors want to come in at what they deem a fair price. And the sellers don’t want to sell at what’s deemed a fair price, which.

[00:41:25] David Hornik
Of course is also known as not selling.

[00:41:27] Howard Hartenbaum
Yeah, it’s always fun to see the differential, but it just sometimes never meets in the middle, which I think is interesting.

[00:41:33] Craig Syverson
What’s the current perception of the sellers?

[00:41:36] Howard Hartenbaum
Well, I mean, just from reading wonderful blogs like TechCrunch, you’ll see, you know, offers at 2 billion to buy and offers at 5 to 6 billion to sell. So I’d say split the baby down.

[00:41:47] David Hornik
The middle and call it way too much money. Right.

[00:41:50] Howard Hartenbaum
Call it a deal.

[00:41:52] David Hornik
Speaking of TechCrunch, they also are in the top hundred most traffic Twitter accounts. And so they should for sure mention how great VentureCast is on its return and see that.

[00:42:00] Howard Hartenbaum
And I said how great they were before we pandered.

[00:42:02] David Hornik
Exactly. That’s just teamwork right there. That’s what that.

[00:42:07] Howard Hartenbaum
Wait, I’m not supposed to do this. I’m just supposed to keep you in check, right?

[00:42:10] Craig Syverson
No, you can contribute. No, no, this time.

[00:42:13] David Hornik
No, no. This is a David show adventure cast. The David Hornik Show. Yeah.

[00:42:18] Howard Hartenbaum
Sorry.

[00:42:19] David Hornik
With a.k.a.

[00:42:20] Craig Syverson
Howard. Other people.

[00:42:22] David Hornik
Yeah. Greg has been visiting for a couple years. How long do we do it?

[00:42:27] Craig Syverson
A couple years.

[00:42:28] David Hornik
Couple years.

[00:42:28] Craig Syverson
Well, if you don’t count the year off.

[00:42:31] David Hornik
Yeah. No forgetting the year. But like, when we did it, how long we did it for? A couple years or.

[00:42:34] Craig Syverson
Yeah, a year and a half.

[00:42:35] David Hornik
Year and a half or something.

[00:42:36] Craig Syverson
Right.

[00:42:36] David Hornik
That was good.

[00:42:37] Craig Syverson
You’re regular.

[00:42:38] David Hornik
Good. Good for you, Fortnite. Thank you. Thank you for doing that.

[00:42:41] Craig Syverson
I’ve learned a lot.

[00:42:43] David Hornik
Well, you should come back.

[00:42:44] Craig Syverson
I met a friend. Yeah, I reserve the right to barge in any time and ask any questions.

[00:42:51] David Hornik
All right, well, we’ll make sure that Mary includes you on the VentureCast scheduling list.

[00:42:56] Howard Hartenbaum
Are you following David Hornik on Twitter?

[00:42:58] Craig Syverson
What’s Twitter?

[00:42:59] Howard Hartenbaum
If so, then you’ll know and you can listen to the first show where you’re not on it and you can say, boy, it was so much better before.

[00:43:05] Craig Syverson
I know.

[00:43:05] David Hornik
You should probably say that. You should probably tweet. That sucks. Now that Craig Seberson’s not on Reg. Seberson says I don’t know what. Are you on Twitter?

[00:43:16] Craig Syverson
No.

[00:43:17] David Hornik
You’re not on Twitter?

[00:43:18] Craig Syverson
Well, I, I think I have an account. I think I sent a few.

[00:43:21] David Hornik
I just read this thing, speaking of Twitter, that. All right, forget it. No, I’m not even gonna mention it.

[00:43:26] Craig Syverson
Just the time suck. I said this even two years ago when you were going off on how great Twitter was. Like, what a waste.

[00:43:33] David Hornik
Just gonna waste her.

[00:43:34] Craig Syverson
Two years ago I was going, waste of time.

[00:43:37] David Hornik
Well, what am I, stupid?

[00:43:39] Craig Syverson
No, you’re not stupid. No, you’re. I’m saying you’re smart. You saw it long time ago.

[00:43:45] David Hornik
So, Howard, do you have an account?

[00:43:47] Howard Hartenbaum
I do.

[00:43:47] David Hornik
What are you. Howard H. Oh, very nice. That’s a good one, Howardh.

[00:43:54] Howard Hartenbaum
And I don’t tweet all that much except when I’m doing some shameless self promotion of my companies.

[00:43:59] David Hornik
You do a lot of that? It’s pretty awesome.

[00:44:02] Howard Hartenbaum
My job.

[00:44:02] David Hornik
You should get on Howard’s mailing list and you can find out about all the new he’s put his money into, because that’s all he emails you about. Like, hey, if you checked out Swoopo, get yourself a $273, you know, TV for a dollar. I just entered a, A. What are they called where you buy a ticket and. And you might win a thing?

[00:44:22] Craig Syverson
Lottery.

[00:44:24] David Hornik
It’s not the lottery though. What is it called when they have a private thing, you know, whatever.

[00:44:28] Howard Hartenbaum
An auction.

[00:44:29] David Hornik
It’s. I can’t believe it.

[00:44:32] Craig Syverson
A raffle.

[00:44:32] David Hornik
Raffle. Thank you.

[00:44:33] Howard Hartenbaum
No, no, let’s talk about games of skill.

[00:44:36] David Hornik
I just did. Yeah, exactly like Swoopo. No, I just entered a raffle for the Ronald McDonald House. Yeah, 100 bucks a ticket. They’re selling 2500 tickets and the top prize is a Maserat.

[00:44:50] Howard Hartenbaum
How many tickets did you buy?

[00:44:51] Craig Syverson
I bought one.

[00:44:53] David Hornik
So I have a 1 in 2,500.

[00:44:54] Howard Hartenbaum
Chance of winning a 2400 had I died. And if you win that, I’m gonna be really bad.

[00:45:01] David Hornik
You are a big supporter of the Ronald McDonald House, but I should point out to you that it is not tax deductible when you buy a ticket in a raffle, which is a shame, because otherwise the expected value would be about the tax adjusted price of buying all of the tickets. How sweet would that be?

[00:45:19] Craig Syverson
I know, but you have to pay.

[00:45:21] Howard Hartenbaum
Taxes on the value of the car.

[00:45:24] Craig Syverson
So if you’re like, oh yeah, of course, yeah.

[00:45:26] Howard Hartenbaum
If you’re like 22 and you don’t have a job and you win that, it sucks, because the first thing you got to do is sell the Maserati.

[00:45:31] David Hornik
Ah. But if you don’t want the Maserati, you can take $60,000 in cash. So you can have $30, $30,000 in cash, or you can have $120,000 car and pay $60,000 in taxes. So once again, if you don’t have the money, you’re screwed. I’m hoping to win it because, you know, I think it would be a nice compliment to my Mini.

[00:45:51] Craig Syverson
Mm. Oh, that’s your Mini up there.

[00:45:53] David Hornik
Oh, did you see that? Matches your car.

[00:45:57] Howard Hartenbaum
You have an orange car, too.

[00:45:58] Craig Syverson
I have an orange car. I got it first, though. He copied me.

[00:46:02] Howard Hartenbaum
So do I have to have an orange car to be on the show?

[00:46:04] David Hornik
Is it time for you to buy a new car?

[00:46:06] Howard Hartenbaum
It’s getting there.

[00:46:07] David Hornik
You can buy it online.

[00:46:08] Howard Hartenbaum
I think I’m gonna buy an orange Honda Element.

[00:46:10] Craig Syverson
There you go. There you go.

[00:46:13] David Hornik
That’s exactly what he has.

[00:46:14] Howard Hartenbaum
Oh, you’re a badass.

[00:46:15] Craig Syverson
Exactly, man.

[00:46:16] Howard Hartenbaum
How much for the car?

[00:46:18] Craig Syverson
Well, we’ll talk.

[00:46:19] Howard Hartenbaum
No, I was thinking about buying an Element because I have a big dog I gotta put in the back, and as long as I gotta get an orange car, might as well be. How many cars sell that are orange? Well, the Element sells an Orange.

[00:46:27] David Hornik
It does, because Craig has it. That’s exactly his car.

[00:46:30] Howard Hartenbaum
How much for the car? How much for the car?

[00:46:33] Craig Syverson
67.

[00:46:34] Howard Hartenbaum
100. I’ll take it.

[00:46:38] Craig Syverson
I love it. It’s a great car. It’s so much fun. So goofy.

[00:46:43] David Hornik
What about Howard? Why don’t you get the Tesla? Or better yet, why don’t you wait and get the Tesla S?

[00:46:51] Craig Syverson
Right. Get the Tesla, and I’ll trade you.

[00:46:53] David Hornik
Did you put down 5,000 bucks on a Tesla S?

[00:46:55] Howard Hartenbaum
I used to work for Honda, so I like. I like Hondas. I like Japanese cars.

[00:47:00] Craig Syverson
Yes, they do, too.

[00:47:01] Howard Hartenbaum
Tesla. I mean, when it comes out, it’s going to look really nice. Sounds Japanese. Tesla. When it comes out, it’s going to be really cool, but it’s going to break all the time. I mean, that’s what new cars do.

[00:47:13] David Hornik
I know.

[00:47:14] Howard Hartenbaum
Want a good car? Buy a Honda.

[00:47:15] David Hornik
Our partner Andy said, I refuse to buy a car in its first. First, you know, year of production. I totally agree with you. My Toyota minivan is, you know, infinitely better than my stupid German cars that I end up buying.

[00:47:32] Craig Syverson
Yeah.

[00:47:33] Howard Hartenbaum
Hey, I have a German last name.

[00:47:36] David Hornik
Sprechen Deutsch.

[00:47:37] Howard Hartenbaum
Bren no speak. No speaky. No speaky.

[00:47:42] David Hornik
Sprechen Z Orangensoft. See, my parent, my kids are right. I can only say orange juice in Germany.

[00:47:52] Craig Syverson
Well, on that note, what else you guys got?

[00:47:54] David Hornik
I think.

[00:47:54] Craig Syverson
I think you’re a wrap it.

[00:47:56] David Hornik
I think that’s it. I think that was good.

[00:47:57] Craig Syverson
Hey, I do have a website.

[00:47:59] David Hornik
Oh, good.

[00:48:00] Craig Syverson
Old, old school website.

[00:48:01] David Hornik
Really?

[00:48:02] Craig Syverson
Yeah. Craigseverson.com http://www.craigseverson don’t even need the W.

[00:48:09] David Hornik
S Y-V-E-R s o n.com craigseverson. Do you know if you do augustcap.com without the W’s, it says it asks you for access permission and it doesn’t get you into the site. We gotta fix that.

[00:48:19] Craig Syverson
You gotta fix that. It’s a simple problem. Yeah.

[00:48:22] Howard Hartenbaum
Have you tried the typo of craigseverson.com and see if you get like porno sites and stuff?

[00:48:28] Craig Syverson
No, I actually also own S E V E R S O N. Do.

[00:48:31] David Hornik
You know that I own crankseversonsucks.com?

[00:48:33] Craig Syverson
You’Re the one.

[00:48:34] David Hornik
I’m waiting. I’m waiting to put it up until there’s some good.

[00:48:38] Howard Hartenbaum
Cause when you’re the next Ashton Kutcher, he’s going to sell it back to you for a lot of money.

[00:48:42] David Hornik
I have twitter.com craigseeversonsucks.

[00:48:47] Craig Syverson
But for a final plug, it’s what I’ve been doing lately is a lot of presentation design for people. So, you know, you see. You guys see hundreds and hundreds of terrible PowerPoints.

[00:48:55] David Hornik
Yeah.

[00:48:56] Craig Syverson
So send them to me. I’ll heal them.

[00:48:58] David Hornik
You. You are the doctor. I will.

[00:49:00] Craig Syverson
Mr. Keynote.

[00:49:02] David Hornik
If we’re. If we’re pitching you, Craig, I just would say that you are. You are a brilliant designer. You always.

[00:49:08] Craig Syverson
Thank you.

[00:49:08] David Hornik
Craig is the creative director of the lobby conference, my conference. And I’m looking at my table full of Craig’s work, literally. There’s the newspaper that Greg created for the thing. There’s the deck of cards crai.

[00:49:21] Howard Hartenbaum
There’s a lobby. Orange. Orange wristband and an orange ipod and.

[00:49:26] David Hornik
That’s right, exactly.

[00:49:27] Howard Hartenbaum
Orange watch band. Orange is the color.

[00:49:31] David Hornik
So craigseverson.com can get Craig’s assistance. That’d be awesome. And we hope you’ll come back.

[00:49:37] Craig Syverson
I will indeed. I’ll give you pointers.

[00:49:39] David Hornik
All right. And Howard, welcome to the David Hornik Show.

[00:49:44] Howard Hartenbaum
My pleasure.

[00:49:44] Craig Syverson
Are you guys gonna be fortnightly, you.

[00:49:46] David Hornik
Think at least, don’t you think every other week? Can we master this every other week, Howard?

[00:49:50] Howard Hartenbaum
Sure, why not? And if we have less than a few hundred people listening, we won’t bother anymore.

[00:49:56] David Hornik
Uh. Oh, we won’t. Thousands. Ashton Kutcher’s gonna tweet it, and we have little hundreds of thousands. And if he doesn’t, there’s always that incredibly awesome Chris Zuckerberg.

[00:50:13] Craig Syverson
All right, good luck and Godspeed.