Judging with Aditya, Dustin & Somesh at the d.school for the GoodJobs challenge. (at Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford (d.School))
Playing around with the new RX-1. So far, pretty nice pictures. :-)
Life is good.
We’re not thinking about, ‘Wow, we have this need out there. We need trained professionals to help fill it. We’re thinking, ‘Oh yeah, someone’s got to watch the kids. Let’s pay ‘em like babysitters.
Picture says it all. We should be better than this. Shameful is the right word. We need to fix our government. (via The New York Times - Breaking News, World News & Multimedia)
Source: The New York Times
Timehop has become one of my very favorite things about digital life lately. We’re not investors, but I love what their team has built, because it’s so essentially human.
As I described to Jonathan, what happens about every other day, sometime in the morning, is that my wife or I sees a note/picture/tweet from a few years ago — when our son was 2 or 3 or 4 — and we send it to the other. In that way, Timehop is helping us connect with each other to remember some of our fondest memories together.
It’s emblematic of why I love this wave of mobile technology, too — because we have our devices with us all the time, and they can capture images and feelings so quickly and thoughtlessly, they’re becoming more human, and helping us connect.
I do worry some about how technology yanks us out of our present contexts, and I think it’s important to be intentional about issues like that, but these moments of connection, as more and more of our artifacts are digital — and therefore ubiquitous, retrievable, searchable & shareable — well, that’s a pretty special thing for sure.
Thanks so much to Jonathan & folks at Timehop — you’ve helped us to remember and talk about and laugh about and cry about many of the most important moments over the last few years.
DJ's Stanford Talk This Friday
If you’re near Palo Alto this Friday, make sure to go see DJ’s CS547 (HCI) talk at 12:50p in Gates B01.
DJ’s incredible, of course, and this lecture series has been unbelievable over a period of 20 years now. I saw the web demoed for the first time on a NeXT machine in 1993/94 there. Many giants of thinking about how humans interact with computing have spoken in the series, and I’m very happy that DJ’s name will be added to the list. Go see him.
So the next time you read about an overnight success, or a billion-dollar exit, think about what went into that story. Think about the amazing teamwork that it took to will nothing into something. Think about whether you are building a team that can do that. Think about whether you are just trying to replicate the latest and greatest success story…if you are, stop. You can’t believe everything you read in the newspaper. So write your own story.
The Finish Line
So far, everyone that I think I know who’s in Boston or was running in the race today, is safe & sound, so I’m grateful for that.
But what I keep thinking about is that the blasts were at the finish line. Where husbands and wives and kids and parents and friends were waiting, watching, cheering. I’ve run a few half marathons and the thought of my family — of any family — waiting to catch a glimpse of the runner they’re cheering for — the culmination of so much hard work — it makes my heart catch in my throat. Awful. Senseless.
Why: Why do you take a stand? We are moral actors in this world, and we should be conscious about the reasons we take a stand. If you treat this as an unconscious, unshapeable thing, that’s bad for the world. The “Why” of your identity is something that binds all of your choices together, and frequently comes down to a statement of principle. I believe in a number of key principles that I apply to myself and the world at large: A world of diminished violence, reaching human potential, getting to truth through intellectual discourse, and universal civil rights that apply to all people, all cultures, and all societies.
Shape Your Identity Or It Will Shape You | LinkedIn
One of the reasons I love working with and being friends with Reid. We’ve been so lined up on these things since the very first day we met. Understanding the “why” of yourself and those in your tribe — it’s what makes a life of meaning, and what makes it easy to work and live together over years and decades.
Invisible Waves
I spend a lot of time thinking about how we communicate with each other — at work, at play, at home, at school — everywhere. Our communication modes are changing pretty quickly — more and more short burst conversations, more and more context switching. Texts from family during meetings. Messages from co-workers during kids’ soccer games. Everything piling up on top of each other, as we’re expected to be always on, anywhere.
One of the great pleasures of my life is communicating, at high fidelity, with my kids. As they develop, they learn new & different ways to communicate and connect. Just lately, our 10 month old son has learned to wave, which is just a joyous thing to behold when you get home from work, or even in the inky darkness of a 4 am wake up — you see the little guy, and he starts waving at you. It’s a connection, and human and wonderful.
But it’s sort of a sometimes thing. He’s still learning to do the physical motions. And how to aim it. And when to use it. So sometimes he’ll wave at himself unintentionally (I suppose). Sometimes he’ll sort of scrunch up his hand instead of opening and closing it. And a lot of times he’ll wave to you when you’re not really looking.
It’s those invisible waves — the ones he’s making but we don’t always see — that I’ve been thinking a lot about lately. In my work as a VC, we have lots and lots and lots of meetings, often with folks we’re just getting introduced to for the first time. That’s in contrast with operating relationships that span years and years. Those operating relationships are neat because you develop an intuition about things, and a sense for when communication is happening or not. But with lots of these first, second, third time interactions — with entrepreneurs or reporters or other investors — well, with those, I think there are lots of invisible waves happening. Where one party thinks they’re communicating in a crystal clear way, but the other party might not be picking up on it.
I think about this a lot. One of my favorite sayings that I’ve heard about this is that the biggest misconception about communication is that it actually happened. How we communicate, and how we understand, plays a big part in how we see the world.
For myself, I’m trying hard to make sure that I’m as clear & direct in my communications as possible, but also trying harder than ever to watch for an notice the invisible waves all around me. Pretty nice to learn lessons from your 10 month old. :-)
This afternoon’s office hours. (at Hog Island Oyster Co.)
Foursquare
I was really happy to hear the details of Foursquare’s financing this morning, but a little bummed to see how my conversation with Businessweek came out in the article, just saying that I thought the $600M price was too high.
What I spent probably 95% of my conversation with Businessweek saying (and why I was happy to speak with them when they called) is that I think what Dennis and Evan and the team there have done is amazing, and I think they have a real shot at building something meaningful and durable — a trick not a lot of companies ever get, and especially not companies who had such a meteoric rise at the beginning before getting down to business.
I said that I was blown away by the 2 of them, and have high confidence that what they’re doing now will work very well (exhibit A: new iPhone app that dropped last night).
I also said that at the end of the day I didn’t think I was going to be able to get to a price that would have worked for us and for the company, so didn’t press it — it was just very hard for me to think about valuation given the turns the company is making.
That was before I knew about the specifics of the convertible round, but sounds to me like others came to the same conclusion. Interesting to hear that, since feedback loops in this industry are so often incomplete.
But no matter. What does matter is that they raised the money they need to give this a real go. I have high confidence in these guys that they’ll do well and build interesting products and a great business for a long time.
