“The Truth According to Wikipedia” is an excellent documentary on truth in the digital age. Who or what is right, and who or wha is wrong? Enjoy!
An Open Letter appeared on TheFunded.com here that has five ideas on how to improve the venture capital industry. The recommendations make sense, and I recommend that both entrepreneurs and venture capitalists take a look at them. The success of TheFunded.com is evidence that changes are needed in venture capital.
So, today, I have finally made a once-and-for-all decision to abandon all bloatware, starting with the beastly suites of Microsoft software and operating systems. For a small number of really cool features, you endure (a) crashing, (b) slow performance on high-end hardware, (c) byzantine configuration menus, and (d) “the old way of doing things.” There is nothing new or cool or forward-thinking about any of the Microsoft products, and using their products feels like doing work, versus having fun – even if you are doing something on a computer that is fun.
At this point in time, you can find most of the best Microsoft tools have been replicated in a Web 2.0 incarnation, and these Web 2.0 tools are actually better that the bloatware that they replace. There are amazing project management tools, blogging tools, word processors, email solutions, etc. AND these new tools are, in most cases, free. Why would any company buy overpriced computers and software for employees that are likely to fail to store valuable data locally in bloated files and bloated applications?
Wouldn’t you rather have small computers and lightweight online applications that store data centrally, in the cloud? If an employee leaves, at least the organization retains the knowledge. Why have Outlook, when you could have SalesForce.com? Why have Project when you could have ViewPath.com? The world has changed. This is not to say that Microsoft is evil or has bad people, but they are certainly following a dead end. AND they have lost me as a customer.
Today, applications as we know them are dead. The final nail has been carefully hammered into the coffin in the same way that typewriters are dead, print newspapers are dead, glossy books are dead, the telephone land line is dead, and the gas powered car is dead. AND, may I add, good riddance to these short-lived opportunities born to the world only by the arcane medium the brought them into existence.
Many years ago, a group of unsocial and reclusive thinkers converted the binary-based languages of machine code into less complex and more abstract programming languages. These complex and often un-intuitive programming languages became the gatekeeper to a priesthood of “programmers” that built “applications” to leverage the ever increasing power of the machine. The machines and the programs grew in power and complexity as a revolution flourished to simplify the castles of power and wealth that the programming priesthood had built. The revolution has arrived. The castles are falling, and the micro-application is born.
The first major triumph of the revolution was to to create the advanced facets of HTML and CSS, allowing a first breed of “applications” to be released and distributed to anyone, anywhere, with ACCESS to, but not ownership of a computer. As the major browser suppliers of the world implemented proprietary protocols and bugs that forced these new “web applications” to be tailored to specific browsers, a consumer revolt occurred to topple new empires based on proprietary standards. In the revolution, a new browser war was waged around open standards, open source, and rich features, creating plug-ins, tabs, and AJAX.
Something else was brewing, too. The newest generation of programmers has been working to simplify the expanding complexity of traditional development by creating frameworks. These revolutionary frameworks have languages with varied syntax to reflect human speech as well as traditional programming dialects, and they include tools to automate the mundane tasks and avoid the need for traditional computer science education, giving birth to the creative programmer. Creative programmers can take an idea from concept to completion while working on their own, even in their spare time.
Tools have started to emerge to serve the creative programmer, including user-friendly development environments, interface creation environments, low-cost scalable hosting, and services to help distribute and promote the waves of new web applications as they are released. Mature web application companies are creating open protocols to let the new generation share in their work and in their success. In addition, new remote access constructs are being developed to allow web application developers to create tools that work while a user is not connected to the internet.
Here starts the birth and rise of the “micro application.” Giant, multi-function applications that try to serve all industries while mastering none will be replaced with focused and custom applications that superserve a niche. I will build my own contact manager, my own scheduling solution, etc. Companies will build specialty applications to address business needs, which, in some cases, will be disposable, and consumers will have more niche choices for desired services.
If you are at all unsure about this vision, watch how a basic contact management application is created in 5 minutes here.
Great name ideas were submitted in the comments and in emails to the last post on naming the City of the Future project. After hours and hours of searching, here is a list of the domains that are now registered:
Some of the words and fragments that I used to compile this list are: total, Wiki, Eco, Your, Our, My, Open, build, invent, plan, go, trust, hab, itate, itize, ator, topia, lab, geo, root, well, planner, Future, City, Habitat, Vision, Tomorrow, Earth, World, Project, Dream, project, plan, next, Creation, Evolution, Sacrosanct, Clean, Bio, sphere, my, mia, Renewable, Village, Global, Vision, Metro, New, i, beam, day
It would appear that most logical .COM domain names are taken. Is there any name on this list that strikes out as appropriate, or do you have any other suggestions on names? Feedback is not only welcome, but needed. Thanks!
It’s always interesting to see VC reactions to TheFunded.com. A recent VC blog post warranted a response. For less than a day, Neuhaus Partners GmbH was rated as the #1 venture firm in the entire world. However, I happened to complete programming an algorithm that removed them from the “top dog” position on a plane ride back from Europe, so their industry leadership did not last long.
Obviously, a partner at the firm is upset and feels “wronged” by the loss of status. It might seem strange that you have not heard of this fund. As it turns out, a number of funds that you have not heard about are in top positions on TheFunded.com. The site helps small, good, and unrecognized funds gain exposure. The opportunity for exposure has lead to both positive and negative abuse, and the algorithm was designed to make the ratings accurate. Read on…
TheFunded.com released an algorithm to spot any unusual activity in the numerical rating (“rating”) and written review (“review”) systems. Approximately 15% of all firms on TheFunded.com have unique content characteristics that make them different from hundreds of other firms rated and reviewed by thousands of CEOs. These firms with suspicious content include top-rated and lower-rated organizations.
What are some examples of suspicious content? Imagine if over 75% of a firm’s rating and review content was supplied by CEOs that just logged on once to write something about only that firm. Imagine if a large portion of review content contained superlatives, like “best,” “greatest,” “worst,” “horrible,” and/or exclamation points. Imagine if numerous CEOs that reviewed the firm clicked a checkbox stating that the firm asked them to write the review.
TheFunded.com created a scoring system to evaluate the level of suspicious content, and, if a firm scored beyond a certain threshold, the firm was flagged with a warning message for approximately 45 days. After the warning period, no content was deleted, but suspicious numerical ratings were eliminated from the fund average rating. The result is a more accurate system.
How can you measure if the algorithm worked? TheFunded.com rating leaderboard was previously inaccurate according to the thousands of entrepreneurs that used the free service. This hurt CEOs looking for information, since small funds with a limited operating history and no track record were listed as the best funds in the entire world. For example, Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures publicly stated that he did not deserve his place on the leaderboard. The corrections implemented by use of the algorithm have made the leaderboard much more accurate according to the broader Membership.
A friend of mine, Bradley, wrote me the following email, which I thought that I would share:
While traveling around the country by Jeep, I spent a little time listening to Trucker Radio. The current diesel costs and the impact on the economy were hot topics of discussion. I had a bit of revelation that there are probably 1000s of business models that are only viable due to cheap fuel. The interesting thing about fuel is that the costs compound for every material/ingredient in a consumer good or manufactured food.
Some questions that are stuck in my head is… How expensive does fuel have to become before locally produced goods become competitive? Will there be a return of the “family farm”? Could local micro-factories inspired by web economics and sustainable practices be profitable?
The tools that I’m missing are ones that help me as a entrepreneur identify niche goods and markets that are ready to be brought home. How do we identify the commonality of goods and services in our everyday lives? Can we use modern concepts of software engineering like DRY and YAGNI to identify potential business ideas?
If we could analyze incoming goods and their contents like data packets, we should be able to perform some interesting compression.
Just some thoughts…
The pioneering spirit upon which we built this country with property and ownership must change. We are emnarking on a grand social experiment to find a better way.
TheFunded.com released individual pages for the 17,000 people that work in venture capital as part of a major re-design, exposing the previously secret partner rating. Below is a 3 minute video that gives some behind-the-scenes insights into the new offering. The goal is to try out video as a format to address relevant topics and answer fundraising questions.
Complex problems can usually be stripped back to “core problems,” and the “problem simplification” approach holds true with energy.
Looking at energy today, there is a complex web of interwoven issues: production, storgae, transmission, consumption, efficiency, conservation, etc. At the core, there are six primary uses uses of energy:
1. Lighting: From the candles of antiquity to the LED of the modern world, energy has carried the human species out of darkness.
2. Climate: From campfires to air conditioners, energy climatizes the world for comfortable human habitation.
3. Food: From cooking pots to an electric refrigerator, energy is widely consumed for safe food storage and preparation.
4. Production: From the ox driven hoe to the robotic assembly line, energy helps humanity produce more with less effort.
5. Transportation: From the sled to the sports car, energy fuels movement around the planet and beyond.
6. Information: Most recently, from printed books to enlightened digits, energy is the backbone to an emerging information age.
When you look at the component “core problems” of energy and try to solve them directly, the daunting challenges of energy seem to go away. Let’s start with a highly inefficient category: lighting.
I am going to burn coal that has taken millions of years to form, heat some water, spin a turbine, vent excess heat into a river, create a magnetic field, electrify some metal, convert the electricity to a low voltage, send it over long wires for 60 miles, convert it back to a higher voltage, channel it through increasingly smaller wires, and then use the remaining energy to power a very small fire in a vacuum tube on my wall. Huh?
The modern day “solution” for lighting is completely counter-intuitive, unsustainable, and illogical. A more intelligent design would be lighting based on a chemical or biological process involving phosphorescence. For example, imagine a bright burning microbe that biodegraded waste products to produce light. Just a thought…
The purpose of this post is to say that solving the root problems intelligently, one-by-one will solve the many complexities of energy.
