Generated Transcript

[00:00:15] David Hornik
Hello, Are we ready?

[00:00:18] Howard Hartenbaum
I’m ready.

[00:00:19] David Hornik
All right, good. Hello and welcome to VentureCast. I am David Hornik of August Capital.

[00:00:25] Howard Hartenbaum
This is Howard Hartenbaum of August Capital, who is also ready.

[00:00:28] David Hornik
Good. He was born ready. Howard was born ready.

[00:00:32] Howard Hartenbaum
I want to talk about superpowers.

[00:00:34] David Hornik
All right. What superpowers do you have?

[00:00:36] Howard Hartenbaum
No, we had that discussion the other night at dinner and I tried to get David to trade his superpower for me. So I have a superpower which is I can eat as much as I want, as often as I want, and I don’t gain any weight. And David has a superpower where he only needs to sleep four hours a night to be completely well rested and then energetic and active the other 20 hours. And I offered to train with him and he said, no, no, I like.

[00:01:04] David Hornik
Food, but I’d be a dead man if I needed to sleep.

[00:01:09] Howard Hartenbaum
You would just change your cycle.

[00:01:10] David Hornik
I need those four hours. Yeah, I get stuff to do. In fact. In fact, I’ve been traveling so much that I’m on. I’ve been on weird time zones, right. So I was in England for a week and so then I got on that and then that was what, nine hours difference or eight hours difference? And then I was back here for a couple weeks and then I went to Paris for a week. And so last couple of nights I’ve actually had to go to bed at a reasonable hour.

[00:01:32] Howard Hartenbaum
Yeah, but you got up at 3:00am well, yeah.

[00:01:35] David Hornik
So what happened is I’d fall asleep at midnight and then I’d wake up at 5:30 because my body was still in like weird, weird mode. But it’s been super annoying because I have stuff to get done at 5:30. And here’s why it’s better. This is, this is important why it’s better to stay up late than to get up early. Because if you stay up late, you keep going until you’re done with the stuff that you need to be done with and then you sleep however much time you have left over. Right. But if you go to bed and then you wake up early, you have a specific amount of time before the kids wake up or you have to go to work or whatever. And so if you miscalculate, there’s nothing you can do. You can’t claim back the, oh, whoops, I slept a half hour more than I should have. So I hate when I wake up early as opposed to stay up late. It’s been making me crazy.

[00:02:20] Howard Hartenbaum
Do you want to trade superpowers?

[00:02:22] David Hornik
How about for the holidays? Because then I could eat Whatever I wanted for the next two weeks.

[00:02:26] Howard Hartenbaum
So I had just read Tony Hsieh’s founder, CEO of Zappos book on happiness, Delivering Happiness. Delivering Happiness, which was a great book. And when I realized I had a superpower, my happiness quotient went up a little bit. And I actually emailed Tony last week and said, hey, I realized that there’s another side to happiness, which is identifying your superpower. But another piece is, if you can identify what things make you unhappy and you remove them from your life, it’s a lot easier than trying to become fulfilled. So I emailed him and said, hey, do you want to get together and talk about unhappiness? And his response was, if you’re ever in Vegas.

[00:03:04] David Hornik
Sweet. Let’s fly to Vegas. Actually, I had a conversation. I was walking the Dish. So those of you who are not from Silicon Valley, the Dish is basically this giant dish antenna that sits up in the hills. I may have mentioned this in Avenger Cast in the past. Anyway, it’s up in the hills outside of Stanford, and you can walk on this path. And there’s a path that’s about kind of hour, hour and a half, loop. And so whenever possible, I like to take meetings walking the Dish. So I was walking with.

[00:03:32] Howard Hartenbaum
So you say an entrepreneur. Bring your laptop and, like, pitch me while you’re walking.

[00:03:36] David Hornik
It has to be a conversation. But Rene Lacert, the founder of Bill.com before that pay cycle, he and I have taken to walking the Dish. And I can’t remember the context of why I got into this. What were we talking about? Tony Hsieh, delivering happiness.

[00:03:52] Howard Hartenbaum
Washing the Dish.

[00:03:53] David Hornik
Oh, Vegas. And so the very first. So rene Lacert’s company, PayCycle, was my very first investment. And they had a trade show, the aicpa, the, like seat, the Certified Public Accountant Tech show in Vegas. And I went and I went to the show, and I put on a pay cycle shirt, and I kind of worked the booth for about an hour before it became completely exhausted and left the team to work for the next 10 hours or whatever. And then we have a dinner. And so. So I was talking to Renee, and I said, I want to come to a trade show for bill.com right. His next company, and experience it. And so they’re having the. The organization of franchises in Las Vegas. And so I told him I’d come out. So why don’t we go. Why don’t you come with me and we can go work the booth for Bill.com for a little bit and then we’ll go out to Zappos. Because I’ve never toured that facility. That must be super fun.

[00:04:51] Howard Hartenbaum
Yeah, I’ll do it.

[00:04:52] David Hornik
All right, so I’ll let you know.

[00:04:53] Howard Hartenbaum
Okay. Touring Zappos. Happiness.

[00:04:56] David Hornik
Happiness. The Happiness Tour. So Tony’s been driving around. He bought this bus. Turns out the bus, I think was the bus of the bass player from the Dave Matthews Band. It was one of those, like, touring buses that you turn around with your band. So Tony bought it and then they retrofitted it for the Delivering Happiness tour. And they’d been driving around the country promoting the book and talking about happiness. And they just finished their tour, which I think is too bad, because it was sound. It seemed like. It seemed like they were having a great time. Super fun. And I never managed to catch up with the bus. So now I just have to go to Vegas.

[00:05:33] Howard Hartenbaum
Alright, let’s start Venture Cast. Now.

[00:05:34] David Hornik
That wasn’t Venture Cast.

[00:05:36] Howard Hartenbaum
I just suddenly remembered about my superpower and I was happy.

[00:05:43] David Hornik
It’s a pretty minor superpower.

[00:05:45] Howard Hartenbaum
Come on. How many people I.

[00:05:46] David Hornik
Which would you rather? Would you rather have that or invisibility?

[00:05:52] Howard Hartenbaum
If you’re invisible, you can eat as much as you want. Nobody could see how big you got.

[00:05:57] David Hornik
Yeah.

[00:05:58] Howard Hartenbaum
Except your wife, I think. Invisibility.

[00:06:00] David Hornik
Yeah. Invisible, but I can feel this giant stomach of yours.

[00:06:04] Howard Hartenbaum
Invisibility would be kind of fun.

[00:06:05] David Hornik
The problem with invisibility is that you would actually get to find out what people really think about you.

[00:06:09] Howard Hartenbaum
Yeah. And you don’t really want to know.

[00:06:11] David Hornik
I so don’t want to know.

[00:06:12] Howard Hartenbaum
Yeah, I’ll tell you, but I’d like to fly.

[00:06:15] David Hornik
I know you would. That’s. It’s the good news. Bad news about Howard Hardenbaum is that you know, you know where you stand. Warnick, you’re short and you smell. Thank you for nothing.

[00:06:26] Howard Hartenbaum
Well, you don’t smell.

[00:06:30] David Hornik
I was hanging out. No, I was hanging out at the Lewip concert. No. Conference with. With Mike Arrington. And. And he said to me at one point during the conversation, you’re really short. How short are you?

[00:06:45] Howard Hartenbaum
He’s really tall, though.

[00:06:46] David Hornik
He’s a big guy. And so when I. When I’m next to him, it’s like, you know, this ridiculous, like a freakish difference. So I told him that I was 5 foot 4. And he was like, oh, my God, that’s so short. He said, I thought you were taller. You’re sort of loud and, you know, you seem taller than that. Which seemed fine to me.

[00:07:04] Howard Hartenbaum
It’s just one of those things you’re not supposed to say.

[00:07:06] David Hornik
Well, that’s in fact Tony Conrad from, from True Ventures was sitting there and he said the same thing. He’s like, this is making me very uncomfortable. And I said, I don’t care. It’s fine. I don’t. I am short. It’s hard to talk to me and not go, well, I got short. That’s what I’m saying.

[00:07:24] Howard Hartenbaum
Yeah, but would you trade with somebody height? You are what you are.

[00:07:27] David Hornik
Not at all. Oh my God. This is what I keep saying to my wife because she’s like, oh, our kids are gonna be so short. And I say, who cares? You know what? Like, intellect is not measured by height. If I was a football player. Yeah. If we were a football playing family, maybe we’d have issues.

[00:07:41] Howard Hartenbaum
Yeah. Whenever you trade something, you know, you think the grass is greener on the other side, but then you learn it’s not. We talked about trading superpowers or trading height. What about venture capitalists have their worst company in their portfolio and they find a buddy at another venture firm and they say, I’ll trade you.

[00:07:58] David Hornik
I’ll take you. I’ll take your worst one for my worst one. No, it’d be misery. It doesn’t matter.

[00:08:03] Howard Hartenbaum
Yeah, it doesn’t matter.

[00:08:04] David Hornik
How about your best one though? I’ll trade you.

[00:08:06] Howard Hartenbaum
No way. Nobody would ever trade. Well, it depends what the other guy’s best one is. If it’s Groupon, I’ll trade.

[00:08:11] David Hornik
I’ll trade for Facebook.

[00:08:13] Howard Hartenbaum
Yeah.

[00:08:14] David Hornik
At which price I’m happy to trade.

[00:08:17] Howard Hartenbaum
It would have to be at the current price. So then.

[00:08:19] David Hornik
Oh, not forgetting. Right. There you go. Which would you trade? Like, I don’t know, I have a couple companies that are great, but I wouldn’t trade for a Facebook at a 50 billion dollar price.

[00:08:27] Howard Hartenbaum
It’s seems to me like it’s public already.

[00:08:30] David Hornik
Yeah, I think there’s. I actually think that there’s more upside in.

[00:08:35] Howard Hartenbaum
But if you get Facebook now, then you could be friends with times man of the year.

[00:08:40] David Hornik
That’s pretty awesome. That’s pretty. I mean, Mark Zuckerberg named today Time man of the year.

[00:08:46] Howard Hartenbaum
So by the time you hear this, it will be yesterday.

[00:08:48] David Hornik
Yeah, whatever. Whenever this gets up. But what do you think about that? Like usually it’s some political person or whatever. Wasn’t the Internet the Time man of the year or something? One year.

[00:09:00] Howard Hartenbaum
That’s because they couldn’t find any other real men.

[00:09:02] David Hornik
So this year they have Zuckerberg, which.

[00:09:04] Howard Hartenbaum
Is sort of like the Internet because he is the Internet now.

[00:09:06] David Hornik
Right. One in four page views in America. Is Facebook. That’s unbelievable. And why is it that when these guys come to take do photo shoots of tech companies, they go to Antonio’s Nuthouse in Palo Alto? Does anyone actually go to Antonio’s Nuthouse? There’s a skanky bar on California Ave. And in fact, I remember this was a number of years ago, I was having dinner on California Ave. And Matt Sanchez, CEO of Same Media, was at the time doing a photo shoot with a bunch of other young CEOs at Antonio’s Nuthouse for Rolling Stone. And then he came and had dinner with us, with me and my kids. But I missed. I didn’t have dinner with Zuckerberg and with me and my kids because he. He didn’t drop by.

[00:09:55] Howard Hartenbaum
Does he know who you are?

[00:09:57] David Hornik
I don’t know, Mark. If you’re listening to this, you know, let me know. Yeah, anyway, but I think it’s pretty interesting. Like man of the Year. That’s huge.

[00:10:05] Howard Hartenbaum
It must be tough to be, you know, such a young guy and kind of achieve so much by the right. Was he 24 now?

[00:10:11] David Hornik
23.

[00:10:11] Howard Hartenbaum
23. 24. Where do you go from here? I mean, he might well be the richest man in the world in a few years, which is kind of a good measuring yardstick.

[00:10:22] David Hornik
Yeah, well, no, he’s. I mean, he’s at 6 billion now.

[00:10:25] Howard Hartenbaum
And he could be the richest.

[00:10:27] David Hornik
I mean, how much would. How big would Facebook have to get?

[00:10:29] Howard Hartenbaum
10X.

[00:10:30] David Hornik
Okay. So it has to be worth 500 billion. 500 billion.

[00:10:35] Howard Hartenbaum
Microsoft was worth more than that at one point. Was it really worth 600?

[00:10:39] David Hornik
Holy crap. Anyway, what I will give Zuckerberg credit for. Did you see that he. He signed on to this pledge to give away the majority of his wealth in his lifetime?

[00:10:49] Howard Hartenbaum
I didn’t see that. Yeah, I have a lot of respect for that.

[00:10:51] David Hornik
Huge respect. Like, you know, he signed on as did. Is it Brent. Brandon Moskowitz, his early co. One of his. I don’t know if they’re co founders, whatever, but another one who’s made just a huge amount of money by being early. And he also committed to giving away the majority of his wealth in his lifetime. For someone to be. To have made so much money and be so young and then make that commitment so early on, I have. I think that’s amazing. So more power to you, Mr. Zuckerberg.

[00:11:22] Howard Hartenbaum
Have you signed on?

[00:11:24] David Hornik
Yeah. Nobody. Yeah, you know what? Bill Gates did not come chatting with me about it. Hey, David, I need you to sign on to the. To the pledge to give half of your half Your wealth and their lifetime.

[00:11:33] Howard Hartenbaum
Yeah, I pledged to spend half of my wealth during my lifetime, depending on.

[00:11:38] David Hornik
The amount of money. You know, it’s like. And then I bought hamburgers and I bought a grill and that was it. There was half of my. Half of my wealth.

[00:11:47] Howard Hartenbaum
Yeah.

[00:11:48] David Hornik
I could say this actually, with. I think in all fairness, that if I ever have a bunch of wealth that, you know, that would be meaningful, that I clearly will give away the majority of it in my lifetime, that as a philosophy, I think that’s completely appropriate. I was watching this biography of Warren Buffett as I was flying back from Paris, and he gave, what, $37 billion to the bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. So not only did he give away massive amounts of money, he didn’t even give it in his own name. He was willing to give it up to the people who he believed would put it to the best work. And he said, look, I never. I like making money. It’s what I do, and I enjoy it. But I never had as a goal, dynastic wealth. I didn’t want my kids, I didn’t want to create a dynasty. I didn’t want my kids to be wealthy by virtue of merely being my kids. And so this is an appropriate use of my money to give it away. Meanwhile, I intend to go make a lot more and then I’ll give that away too. Pretty amazing, right?

[00:12:51] Howard Hartenbaum
Yeah. For when you do give money away, it actually feels good.

[00:12:54] David Hornik
I love giving money away.

[00:12:56] Howard Hartenbaum
Yeah. It’s not too much?

[00:12:58] David Hornik
No, no. I love giving. Truthfully, I love giving money away. It’s like a little bit of attention in my house. I’m happy to give money away, but.

[00:13:07] Howard Hartenbaum
Which would you rather have?

[00:13:08] David Hornik
Yeah, well, there you go. That’s why I can’t give it all away. So I saw a thing today after they announced that Zuckerberg was the man of the Year, someone was saying, gee, you know, the WikiLeaks thing was snubbed. And what’s his name?

[00:13:25] Howard Hartenbaum
Assange.

[00:13:26] David Hornik
Yeah, that he was. That he. That he’s really the man of the Year, whatever. But you know what, I don’t know about that. I think that that WikiLeaks thing is sort of a point in time. I think it’s an important political question, etc. But when you looked at the leaked data, eh, you know, it wasn’t like it didn’t change the nature of how everybody thought of world powers or world leaders or any of those things. And so, you know. Yeah, WikiLeaks is certainly an interesting story for the year but one in four US page views, that seems to me more important. Maybe I’m wrong.

[00:13:57] Howard Hartenbaum
Yeah. I think that a lot of different people could have done what Julian Assange did. I mean, if the. The access to the information and the guy who stole the information and passed it to Julian could have passed it to somebody else just as easily. And it wasn’t Julian who actually did anything other than take somebody else’s information and put it on the Web. And so. But what Zuckerberg did was pretty important, frankly. I think what Assange did was what he wanted to do, but it wasn’t that unique or that interesting or that important.

[00:14:25] David Hornik
What’s interesting is the technology that enabled it. That’s important.

[00:14:28] Howard Hartenbaum
Did he build that technology?

[00:14:29] David Hornik
No, but I’m just saying. No, I’m saying the web, that. The web.

[00:14:32] Howard Hartenbaum
No, no, but that’s the point.

[00:14:33] David Hornik
That’s the whole point.

[00:14:33] Howard Hartenbaum
Had he built the technology, it would be a lot more interesting process.

[00:14:37] David Hornik
I agree. So. So we still give it to Zuckerberg, and then, as if it weren’t enough.

[00:14:41] Howard Hartenbaum
I wonder what Zuckerberg would have done with all that info if somebody gave it to him.

[00:14:44] David Hornik
I don’t know. That’s a good question, right? Whether you sit on it or whether you put it out there. And I don’t have a problem with making it public. And, you know, I. I didn’t see anything that was wildly damning or dangerous or whatever else, but I can’t say that I read. You know, can’t say I’ve read the documents myself.

[00:15:03] Howard Hartenbaum
I think it’s probably illegal to read them. No, I wouldn’t be surprised.

[00:15:07] David Hornik
Can’t be illegal to read them.

[00:15:11] Howard Hartenbaum
And US Law may change.

[00:15:13] David Hornik
Maybe they’ll change that. My son has a test on the. On the Bill of Rights today. So I can tell you that at.

[00:15:22] Howard Hartenbaum
The moment, it says freedom of speech, but it doesn’t say freedom of consumption.

[00:15:27] David Hornik
I’m no lawyer, Howard, but those things might be related.

[00:15:30] Howard Hartenbaum
You’re no lawyer.

[00:15:35] David Hornik
So Facebook also wins today. Best place to work in the country, according to Glass House.

[00:15:44] Howard Hartenbaum
They turned me down. I applied for a job. I did a reference for somebody that I worked with before by Facebook. Yesterday they called me up and did a very methodical reference, and I hope he gets the job. I think he’d be a good fit.

[00:15:58] David Hornik
Really? I mean, why does Bill Draper need a job?

[00:16:03] Howard Hartenbaum
Because he heard there was a lot of beautiful young women working at Facebook.

[00:16:07] David Hornik
I mean, at age 80, whatever bill is, you’d think he could just retire already.

[00:16:12] Howard Hartenbaum
One would think.

[00:16:13] David Hornik
But that’s not the guy.

[00:16:14] Howard Hartenbaum
When you get to that age, you won’t want to retire either.

[00:16:17] David Hornik
So he’s not the guy applying to.

[00:16:18] Howard Hartenbaum
I can’t say his name because he’s still working somewhere.

[00:16:22] David Hornik
Anyway, I think it’s probably enough to say it’s the best place to work. Why? Because it’s. Because everybody wants to work here. You get a good hoodie and have I mentioned that if you got in in the first thousand people, you’re a multi millionaire. Is that enough? Is that enough reason to be?

[00:16:40] Howard Hartenbaum
I think it’s a fascinating thing that that’s. This is what Google was five years ago.

[00:16:44] David Hornik
Yeah.

[00:16:44] Howard Hartenbaum
And five years from now it’ll be somebody else.

[00:16:47] David Hornik
Good, let’s fund that. If you are that somebody else, please come see us. We have some money for you. What do you think that is?

[00:16:57] Howard Hartenbaum
I mean, I commented before, if you’re another iPhone app or you’re another technology to help people optimize advertising, it probably isn’t. Probably isn’t that. And we just invested in a resource sharing company called Relay Rides, which you may have seen in the press recently. They launched in San Francisco. And it’s a little bit wacko that if you look outside and you see all these cars parked up and down the streets. Imagine if you needed to borrow one of those cars and you could just make a reservation online like it’s a rental car company and then walk up to whatever car it is and take out your little RFID card and get in and drive away and then bring it back later. And you got the benefit of using a car. And while you were using the car, the guy who wasn’t using his car anyway was making money at it. It’s interesting and it’s brilliant. And if it works, it’s one of those companies where it can have a very low cost to run their business and provide a service. Stuff like, I mean, that’s one that we just invested in, which is interesting. I like stuff like that.

[00:18:02] David Hornik
So the guy across the street from me has big pickup truck right now. If I needed to get pick up some stuff. Yeah, pickup truck, I would, you know, and I knew him better, I might say, hey, can I borrow your pickup truck? But if you. But you don’t need to know him, right.

[00:18:17] Howard Hartenbaum
You don’t even need to know 25.

[00:18:19] David Hornik
Bucks for an hour of the pickup truck.

[00:18:21] Howard Hartenbaum
And It’s a crossover, 10 bucks an hour. Insurance is included and it removes the risk. So if he lends you his car, he’s taking a risk on insurance because if you crash the Car. You run over some little kid and he might be on the hook for being sued. But if you do it through a company like Relay Rides, then there’s insurance included with the rental. And if you run over a kid, then Relay Rides insurance takes over, so it’s safe for the guy to do it. I think it’s just a brilliant company.

[00:18:47] David Hornik
Yeah.

[00:18:47] Howard Hartenbaum
I mean, there’s these trends in resource sharing. If you’ve read Gansky’s book called the Mesh, she talks about a variety of different stuff like that. I think it’s just a really fascinating time. This word share. I mean, 10 years ago, whoever used the word share, it’s like share with your sister, but share with a stranger, it didn’t even exist. And now there’s share buttons all over the web, and people use share as if it’s a common thing to do.

[00:19:15] David Hornik
Car share and ride share, share pictures.

[00:19:18] Howard Hartenbaum
And share your private moments and share all your data. And there’s a lot of sharing out there right now. There’s companies. What’s the one where you. Where you share the kids clothes? I mean, your kid bars in the clothes. You throw it in the wash. You share it with your neighbor.

[00:19:32] David Hornik
Yep. Yep. Well, I was. So I was at the Le Web conference in Paris. This conference is unbelievable. So the web actually started outside of Paris? No, it’s. I mean, it felt like it. That’s how far. How far in the edge of Paris it was. But this conference actually started as the LE Blog and it was part of Six Apart. And this is when we. We merged Six Apart, Louis Lemur’s company with Six Apart. And Loic had started this company. And then he ended up taking. Taking on the conference. Loic and Geraldine Lemur to build it up. And it became Le Web. Not just Le Blog. Le Web. Anyway, Mike. And this year they had 3,000 people register for the conference difference. It’s just. I mean, that’s just a ton of people in there from all over the place to talk if.

[00:20:23] Howard Hartenbaum
Is Luigi still running it?

[00:20:24] David Hornik
Yeah.

[00:20:24] Howard Hartenbaum
So is that money flowing into his company, or is he taking that personally on the side?

[00:20:28] David Hornik
No, no, it’s not part of. It’s not part of seismic. It’s part of. It’s part of Lemure Enterprises. I think Geraldine runs it. Louis is just. Loic is the face of it.

[00:20:39] Howard Hartenbaum
Yeah.

[00:20:40] David Hornik
I don’t mean I’m sure, Luik, you do a ton. I’m not. But it’s a huge event. So anyway, I helped them out this year by helping to kind of run at a minimum MC the startup competition. So they had 500 startup supply. We got it down to 100 that were interesting. We then brought it down to 16 that presented on stage. And of those 16, we had three finalists on and one of the finalists was this company called Super Marmeet. And apparently Marmite is a big pot in France. And Super Marmite is Super pot is super. It’s not that, that’s not. That one’s in Amsterdam, this one is in Paris. And it’s about food sharing. Right? So it’s basically the same kind of resource sharing where you say, what meals are my neighbors making? And do they have extra portions? I’ll go buy and pick up a portion of, you know, ratatouille or lasagna or whatever. And it’s up and running in Paris. So if you wanted to go try it out, you could say, gee, can.

[00:21:45] Howard Hartenbaum
You eat at the person’s house?

[00:21:47] David Hornik
So right now it’s not set up like, oh, you go and have dinner with them, it’s go pick up the food. But it could easily be you have dinner with them, or it could be that they deliver it to you. But the idea is if it’s cheaper for you to make double the amount and then sell half of it and pay for your meal, then you know, the amount of added effort to cook twice as much is pretty small. And so if you could create a marketplace of hey, and also the other thing that the web has that’s really awesome is this kind of feedback cycle that says this person’s a really good cook, or like Airbnb, this is a really comfortable bed, or this person was a really hospitable host. And so suddenly you can figure out what’s the greatest. What’s. Who is a particularly good Turkish cook who has a particularly comfortable couch or whatever. So I’m, I’m, I’m incredibly bullish on this kind of resource sharing stuff. And, and like you said, Lisa Gansky’s book on, on the Mesh is, is really, is really right on the money. And so I’m psyched. Good job on relay rides. Let’s go, let’s go borrow some cars.

[00:22:50] Howard Hartenbaum
One of the cars that we started off in San Francisco with is Joe Krause from Google Ventures, is also an investor and on the board there. And he put his supercharged Mini.

[00:23:01] David Hornik
Did he? It’s available.

[00:23:03] Howard Hartenbaum
It’s available. If you want to drive Joe’s car, go right onto relay rides.

[00:23:08] David Hornik
I know where it is. I know where it’s sitting.

[00:23:11] Howard Hartenbaum
Well, you have to sign up for relay rides. Because they do a check on your driver’s license to make sure you’re a good driver, that you have a license and you’re a good driver before they set you up.

[00:23:20] David Hornik
I think it’s awesome, right? Because you say, okay, here’s where I am. Show me all the cars within X amount of space. And then what are they? Oh, I could. I want a Prius, A minivan or a Prius or. Or, like, you know, oh, gee, I want to. I’m considering buying a Prius. I think I’ll go drive one. I’m considering buying. Yeah, right. 10. 10 bucks. You drive a smart car around for an hour and go, no, I don’t want to buy it. And you’ve saved yourself a fortune. Or, man, I love that car.

[00:23:47] Howard Hartenbaum
And you didn’t have to deal with.

[00:23:48] David Hornik
A car dealer, which is huge, right? Anything to save me. Dealing with a car dealer is good.

[00:23:52] Howard Hartenbaum
Those guys talking when, you know, you just want to drive the car, and they’re telling you, like, all the features.

[00:23:58] David Hornik
I read about the features. That’s why I’m interested in your dumb car.

[00:24:01] Howard Hartenbaum
Can you please be quiet? If you don’t say a word, I will buy the car. He says, what? That’s too late.

[00:24:09] David Hornik
See, it would be rude to see. Say to them as you got in the car, I’m just gonna drive the car. Please don’t say a word. That would be considered rude, despite the fact that you would be helping them, which is like, if you’re silent, I might be more inclined to buy this car, but there are all sorts of things where we’re not allowed to say so.

[00:24:28] Howard Hartenbaum
Or you say, if you don’t say a word, I’ll buy this car. And then you’re driving and you ask them a question.

[00:24:34] David Hornik
Well, then that’s your problem. If you’re. If that’s how you’re gonna be, you know, they’d be like, you’re a jerk. Like, seriously, which is it? You can’t have it both ways.

[00:24:45] Howard Hartenbaum
What’s your point?

[00:24:48] David Hornik
You want it both ways, don’t you, Howard? You want to have it all. Howard and I were in a meeting the other day with an.

[00:24:54] Howard Hartenbaum
What I do this time, I don’t.

[00:24:55] David Hornik
Know, with a great entrepreneur. And we got into a conversation that I’ve. I had as a child, But I was amazed that we’re having this, which was around about the guy’s ring. Now, men don’t wear rings, right? I mean, as a general matter, some men wear wedding rings. You’re not wearing a wedding ring. You don’t wear wedding ring.

[00:25:12] Howard Hartenbaum
I do generally, but I have this bad habit of spinning it a lot.

[00:25:15] David Hornik
So I take it off every night, play with it. It’s terrible. But anyway, so. But, but usually other than a wedding ring, men don’t tend to wear rings. Or at least the men in our cultural circles don’t. With one exception. And what is that exception?

[00:25:31] Howard Hartenbaum
MIT ring.

[00:25:32] David Hornik
MIT ring. That is literally the exception. The exception is what you MIT people called the brass rat, which I don’t know if you’ve seen anyone listening, but if you’ve seen it, you know, it’s quite a distinctive ring. It’s kind of got a rectangular front to it and it has a beaver on it.

[00:25:49] Howard Hartenbaum
Beaver is nature’s engineer.

[00:25:51] David Hornik
Exactly, exactly. So nature’s engineer is on the MIT ring and then it carved in the, the side is the little MIT dome. And then it has all sorts of special stuff. And so we were meeting with this entrepreneur who went to MIT and he had, he had, he was wearing the MIT ring and we started chatting about the different features that his ring had and your ring had.

[00:26:11] Howard Hartenbaum
And I have one, I just don’t wear it.

[00:26:14] David Hornik
I was saying my dad is an MIT guy and when my brother. I’m pretty sure that when my brother graduated from mit, my father insisted on buying the. Mom and dad insisted on buying him an MIT ring because like it really is the one school where it’s this unique ring. It doesn’t look like everybody else’s, but I don’t know that I’ve ever. I don’t think he ever wore it.

[00:26:33] Howard Hartenbaum
And you can tell if somebody’s graduated or not because of how they wear the ring. So depending on the direction the beaver is facing, if, if you guy holds up his hand and the beaver shits on him, he’s still a student and when he graduates, he turns it around. So the beaver shits on the way world. So that’s the way that it was explained to me. And when I, I wore it a little bit like in my senior year. And then I looked around and realized this just wasn’t for me. And I don’t have my beaver shit on the world. That was, that was that. I put it away, but I thought.

[00:27:01] David Hornik
It was fun conversation.

[00:27:02] Howard Hartenbaum
I like when gold is up. I guess I could sell it now.

[00:27:05] David Hornik
It’s gold.

[00:27:06] Howard Hartenbaum
Yeah.

[00:27:07] David Hornik
Seriously. No wonder they’re so expensive.

[00:27:09] Howard Hartenbaum
Yeah, when I bought it, gold is probably a third the price. But I bought the cheap one, the 10 karat one. They had 10 and 14.

[00:27:15] David Hornik
Yeah, he figures Howard cheap 10 is.

[00:27:18] Howard Hartenbaum
Harder you’re less likely to damage it. Very practical.

[00:27:21] David Hornik
They were talking in this. In this Buffett movie about how careful he was with money, right? That he just, like, wasting money to him was, you know, you don’t waste money, period. And then I was at. I was at. And.

[00:27:36] Howard Hartenbaum
And I give it away, but I don’t waste.

[00:27:38] David Hornik
Oh, that’s right. Right. So, you know, you get your change.

[00:27:41] Howard Hartenbaum
Right?

[00:27:41] David Hornik
So the description was. I’m pretty sure this was. The description was that he needed to make a phone call, and it was a dime. This was, you know, obviously some time ago, but he was still already a million multi millionaire, and all he had was a quarter. And he was running around looking for someone who would give him change for his quarter so he could put in the dime and keep his 15 cents, which is sort of amazing. So I was. I was. I was chatting with someone last night at a school event. And I won’t say who, but this is some. You know, this is a person who’s part of a truly dynastic family. And he said he was over at his dad’s house, and his dad no longer drinks wine, but he went downstairs to get a bottle of wine, and he ended up. And he sort of did the math and figured that every. That there were enough people that they probably drank two bottles of wine. And so he got two bottles of wine from his dad’s cellar and brought them up, and he opened them both, and his dad yelled at him, what are you doing? I told you you could get a bottle of wine. Why’d you open two? And he was like, well, dad, you don’t even. You don’t even drink wine anymore. So what’s the big deal? You have a whole cellar full of it. He’s like, no, no, we talked about a bottle of wine. Bring up a bottle of wine.

[00:28:51] Howard Hartenbaum
Okay, son, you opened that second bottle, you better drink it.

[00:28:54] David Hornik
You owe me. No, you elect. Don’t drink. Yeah, don’t be. I tell you, a bottle of wine.

[00:28:59] Howard Hartenbaum
That doesn’t mean you’ve got two hands. Two hands doesn’t mean two bottles.

[00:29:03] David Hornik
Yeah. What is that? You know, and it’s just an interesting point of view, right? Because, hey, I guess. And often they say, well, that’s because people who are truly rich have. Have. Have that point of view. That’s how you get wealthy, is that you understand that every penny matters, and then it compounds. So you shouldn’t be giving away all that money. Yeah, I still will.

[00:29:28] Howard Hartenbaum
I mean, this came up this morning because I’m getting on a plane with my family in a few days to go to some very far away place. And I said to David, what are some really good iPad apps I can download? You know, maybe spend 10 or 20 bucks or something like that? And David’s like, well, you’re flying economy again. I’m like, yep, exactly. And I’m flying halfway around the world. Whether or not I could afford business class doesn’t matter. There’s no way I would pay for. Because four people. The price difference for business class is probably $10,000.

[00:29:57] David Hornik
I have this. I have six people in my family. We flew to Europe, and I did a red eye in coach on, you know, some airline. And my wife was like, oh, it’s going to be such misery. And I said, well, we here. So here’s the price difference, right? It was already $6,000 to fly coach. I said, you know, instead of 50,000.

[00:30:19] Howard Hartenbaum
Yeah.

[00:30:19] David Hornik
And she was like, oh, my God. Well, we’ll sleep in.

[00:30:22] Howard Hartenbaum
I don’t know how you can be comfortable in business class knowing that. Knowing that you’d spent that every extra minute you’re sitting there is like, $18.

[00:30:29] David Hornik
Or some ridiculous thing. No, it’s crazy.

[00:30:31] Howard Hartenbaum
It’s like, oh, another $18.

[00:30:33] David Hornik
Meanwhile. So. So, yeah. So you needed to download movies for your iPad so that. Because you don’t have movies on demand in the back of the bus.

[00:30:41] Howard Hartenbaum
Yeah.

[00:30:42] David Hornik
But I will say the iPad is the perfect device for traveling with kids. It is. It’s. The movie viewing experience is fantastic.

[00:30:52] Howard Hartenbaum
Kind of heavy.

[00:30:53] David Hornik
Games are great.

[00:30:54] Howard Hartenbaum
I’m wondering when they’re gonna come out with a new one that’s thinner and lighter.

[00:30:57] David Hornik
You’re. Are you one of these Kindle people?

[00:31:00] Howard Hartenbaum
No, no. I just, like.

[00:31:01] David Hornik
You just want.

[00:31:02] Howard Hartenbaum
I don’t like to carry stuff. Yeah.

[00:31:03] David Hornik
I don’t think it’s that heavy, but you’re right, it’s not. It’s not feather light. We’re sitting here weighing our.

[00:31:08] Howard Hartenbaum
Are there any games we have where we could, like, like, whack each other with?

[00:31:11] David Hornik
That’d be cool, right? Lightsaber games.

[00:31:13] Howard Hartenbaum
This is. Wait, this is radio.

[00:31:15] David Hornik
Oh, yeah. So you don’t.

[00:31:16] Howard Hartenbaum
It’s not television. We’re sitting here fighting with our iPad.

[00:31:18] David Hornik
We’re waving around our iPads. Our respective iPads.

[00:31:21] Howard Hartenbaum
Howard Stern can get away with it, but we can’t.

[00:31:23] David Hornik
So the other. So yesterday in our partner meeting, we were discussing Angry Birds, and then I had. And then I told my partner Dave that he should download. Did he download Angry Birds or Cut the rope?

[00:31:35] Howard Hartenbaum
Cut the rope.

[00:31:35] David Hornik
So download’s got the rope. But he doesn’t turn off the music. So we’re there. Trying to have our partner. Meeting ends. Doo doo, doo doo, Whatever day.

[00:31:42] Howard Hartenbaum
I was like Dave, for like, three minutes.

[00:31:44] David Hornik
Yeah, like, turn it off. Yeah, it’s a great game, but we’re having a partner meeting.

[00:31:47] Howard Hartenbaum
But wait, I just have to cut one more rope.

[00:31:49] David Hornik
Yeah, right. This is so cool. It is. I love that game. So these are the games I love, Howard. Angry Birds. You know it.

[00:31:56] Howard Hartenbaum
You said cut the rope. Train Yard, Fruit Ninja, Plants versus Zombies, and Doodle Jump.

[00:32:02] David Hornik
Those are. Yep. They’re all good. So you better go download. And I bet you.

[00:32:06] Howard Hartenbaum
How much do they cost? Are there free versions?

[00:32:09] David Hornik
Yeah, the free versions you’ll be done with in six seconds. Yeah, but how many are those? Is that five or six?

[00:32:13] Howard Hartenbaum
Yeah, six.

[00:32:14] David Hornik
Can’t be more than. It’s less than 30 bucks. Yeah, it’s probably. Probably 20. That’s unbelievable. You know how much Enter. How many hours of entertainment that is right there, sitting on that pad with two kids.

[00:32:27] Howard Hartenbaum
Yeah, but then they’ll be fighting over it.

[00:32:29] David Hornik
Better get another.

[00:32:29] Howard Hartenbaum
No.

[00:32:30] David Hornik
Do you want to borrow one?

[00:32:31] Howard Hartenbaum
Nope, one’s enough.

[00:32:33] David Hornik
But they’ll be fighting over it.

[00:32:35] Howard Hartenbaum
Yeah, it’s fun to watch your kids fight.

[00:32:38] David Hornik
There’s a iPad right here. It’s my office iPad. You can take it.

[00:32:41] Howard Hartenbaum
No, one is plenty. Thank you for offering, though.

[00:32:45] David Hornik
All right, what else? Anything else you care to discuss in this end of year Venture Cast?

[00:32:51] Howard Hartenbaum
We were going to suck up.

[00:32:54] David Hornik
We do have a suck up before, but sucking up is our. We forgot to do that last week, as my mother did.

[00:32:58] Howard Hartenbaum
We have to suck up twice this week.

[00:33:00] David Hornik
We should.

[00:33:01] Howard Hartenbaum
Your mother pointed out that we didn’t suck up.

[00:33:03] David Hornik
She said, I enjoyed Venture Cast, but you guys forgot to have the sucking up. Who did? You. You didn’t suck up.

[00:33:09] Howard Hartenbaum
We’re gonna do two suck ups today, and one is gonna be to your mother.

[00:33:12] David Hornik
To my mother.

[00:33:12] Howard Hartenbaum
All right, so she is awesome.

[00:33:15] David Hornik
She is a devoted fan. I will say that. She does. Listen, and here’s the thing, Howard. I think she finds you more entertaining than she finds me, which, you know, like.

[00:33:24] Howard Hartenbaum
That doesn’t say very much.

[00:33:25] David Hornik
No, she enjoys. She enjoys you. She enjoys the banter.

[00:33:29] Howard Hartenbaum
I’m looking for a new mom.

[00:33:34] David Hornik
Look, I gotta. You know, my parents flew out from Boston to watch my kids for a week while we were at the web, and it turns out that our.

[00:33:44] Howard Hartenbaum
Did you make them pay for the flight?

[00:33:46] David Hornik
Our lives are pretty hectic. No, I use frequent flyer miles. I’m bad, but I’m not that bad. But, yeah, you know, by the end of the week, you get these messages back like, your life is kind of crazy.

[00:34:01] Howard Hartenbaum
You have too many children and too many activities.

[00:34:05] David Hornik
Too much going on. But anyway, so my. So we’re sucking up to my. We. We can include my dad. We’ll suck up to my parents because I appreciate that they. They listen. When I write new blog posts, I always get corrections. I get edits from my mom and dad.

[00:34:18] Howard Hartenbaum
You.

[00:34:19] David Hornik
This time I had European Entrepreneur, and I had Entrepreneur in Capital E and European Smalley. As my mom pointed out, switch those capitals. And that’s pretty helpful. So who else should we suck up to? You know who we should suck up to? We should suck up to Dick Costolo. Dick Costello. It is unbelievable. Well, Dick is. He’s, like, the king of the world now. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:34:42] Howard Hartenbaum
How much has the value of Twitter gone up since Dick joined?

[00:34:46] David Hornik
Oh, it meant, you know, like, infinite.

[00:34:48] Howard Hartenbaum
When did he join?

[00:34:50] David Hornik
He joined after the benchmark round. So that was 230 million, and now.

[00:34:55] Howard Hartenbaum
They’Re worth, what, 15, 20 times that?

[00:34:57] David Hornik
There are arguably rumors that they’re gonna trade at 4 billion.

[00:35:01] Howard Hartenbaum
Good for you, Dick. You raised the value 6.

[00:35:04] David Hornik
Serious hardcore. Now you’re this. Now he’s the CEO and he’s running around. And my understanding is, like, if you want Dick Costello to speak at an event or whatever, you better be scheduling out into 2012, because at this point, he’s under such immense demand. This is the thing about being in that position. I mean, I think it’s amazing. And I’m a huge. You know, Dick and I have known each other for a long time, since the days when I. When I foolishly didn’t fund feedburner. And the great thing about Dick is he’s a wonderful guy. He’s funny, he’s smart. He’s this family guy. Family man, loves his family, whatever. Now he’s stuck in this position where he’s the CEO of an extremely important company. And suddenly, I bet the tension of where you’re traveling, how often you’re home, getting to go to kid stuff or whatever is just. It must just be daunting.

[00:35:59] Howard Hartenbaum
Yeah. You think your life is bad.

[00:36:00] David Hornik
Yeah, right. We whine. But, like, forget about that. You know, they want. I bet you anything Dick’s gonna be at. At Davos this year. He’s gonna be at. What’s the dld, at the DLD conference or whatever. But he’ll also be at. At an Aspen at this and at Bob. You know, I mean, he’ll be at all these things right? Because it’s important for him to be there. And he’s now. He now is an important part of that conversation. But it’s just, it’s pretty daunting to think about. So anyway, so, Mr. Costello, we suck up to you. You are, you are man among men.

[00:36:38] Howard Hartenbaum
And please answer my email next time I email you.

[00:36:41] David Hornik
Yeah, don’t answer Howard’s email. You know, what’s he, what’s he bugging you about? So that’s it. I think that’s it for Venturecast for 2010. What’d you think of this year? Did you. A good year, bad year?

[00:36:57] Howard Hartenbaum
It seemed. You know, I tend to judge years at the end by how quickly they went by.

[00:37:01] David Hornik
Yeah.

[00:37:01] Howard Hartenbaum
And if they went by too quickly, I feel like I’ve been gypped. And this year, I think was kind of like a lot of stuff happened. It was an interesting year. Companies, you know, working very hard. A lot, lot of really cool entrepreneurs with innovative ideas. A lot of surprises and how fast companies are growing. New experiences. I would say 2010. Oh my God, we’re already 10 years into the new millennium.

[00:37:29] David Hornik
Technically, we’re only nine years, whatever. But it is amazing. I mean, 10 years have passed so quickly. This, this was my 10th anniversary of joining the venture business. I’ve been a VC now for more than 10 years. And it’s astonishing, the growth and how quickly things are moving, how much you have to work to stay on top of what’s the latest and most interesting. And all that this year, I agree, was just rapid fire. It’s just amazing to me that this year has already passed. We’ll see how 2011 goes.

[00:38:05] Howard Hartenbaum
Happy New Year.

[00:38:06] David Hornik
Here’s my prediction. I know, I know I said we’re going to be done, but we’re not.

[00:38:09] Howard Hartenbaum
But you can’t help yourself.

[00:38:10] David Hornik
Here’s my prediction. And this may just be wishful thinking and I’m about to post a venture blog post on this topic, but I think next year is the year of the tech ipo. I think that there are, there are six, maybe more meaningfully large, important companies that are poised to go public. Facebook, LinkedIn, Groupon, Zynga, Twitter, Gilt Group. I’m sure there are others, but those already, those are many hundreds of millions of dollar businesses, with the possible exception of Twitter, which is many hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue in waiting. But still, everybody respects it as one.

[00:38:51] Howard Hartenbaum
They may have it. They’re just not telling them.

[00:38:52] David Hornik
That’s totally true. In fact, they’re just launching their portal to like do ads, direct ads. So anyway, some number of those companies will go public in 2011 and that’ll be a stampede. Massive.

[00:39:05] Howard Hartenbaum
Yeah.

[00:39:05] David Hornik
And by the way, they’ll be great IPOs. Those are very serious businesses. They’re legitimate contenders that have more revenue than a huge percentage of the public markets now, etc. So I think next year, 2011, we’re going to have some, have some big public offerings.

[00:39:23] Howard Hartenbaum
All right, next year I’m going to ask you how it went.

[00:39:25] David Hornik
All right, all right.

[00:39:26] Howard Hartenbaum
What’s your other, what’s your other forecast for the new year?

[00:39:29] David Hornik
Right. My other prediction. Well, this one, I mean, this one sort of runs contrary to that to a certain extent, which is, I think that these secondary markets, these markets where people are buying private company stock as if it’s trading as a public company without information that there’s going to be a big blow, blow up in that market and it’s going to be based on something or other. But some, there’s going to, there’s going to be some big lawsuit and, and, and, and, and it’s gonna think that.

[00:39:58] Howard Hartenbaum
Lucid lawsuit is going to come from a buyer or a seller.

[00:40:02] David Hornik
It’s gonna come from. Oh, that’s a very interesting question. It’s going to come from a buyer. Some buyer is gonna.

[00:40:07] Howard Hartenbaum
You dupe me into buying this without giving me.

[00:40:10] David Hornik
Yeah, you had reports or whatever. You pretended that this was an appointment appropriate. And it doesn’t even have to be like, oh, you told me. I think it’s. How about just enough to say like, how are you selling shares in an open market without any information? Right, that’s. Oh, well, you’re an accredited investor. Oh, right, I’m an accredited investor because I’m a dentist from Duluth. Like that can’t be it. Right.

[00:40:31] Howard Hartenbaum
So are you picking on Duluth?

[00:40:34] David Hornik
It just came up. It’s just a thought.

[00:40:37] Howard Hartenbaum
Okay.

[00:40:38] David Hornik
All right. So anyway, do you have any predictions, any thoughts for the new year?

[00:40:41] Howard Hartenbaum
No.

[00:40:42] David Hornik
It’s going to be an I will predict. This is going to be a great year for August Capital and it’s going to be a great year for Howard Hartman. That is my prediction.

[00:40:48] Howard Hartenbaum
Good. I’ll accept that forecast.

[00:40:50] David Hornik
All right, there you go. Just a mini final suck up to Howard. Thank you for suffering through the venture cast with me. Howard, you’re a good supporter.

[00:40:58] Howard Hartenbaum
As long as your mother keeps listening, I’m happy.

[00:41:00] David Hornik
All right, Mom. Betsy Hornick, this venture cast is for you. Have a great new year.