This is an article/blog post by Fred Wilson who, in my mind, is one of the best VC’s out there. He’s invested in Feedburner, Tacoda, Twitter and others and i’ve found that his opinions are usually on the money.
He wrote a good post today about how his firm manages their funds and in that he shows the assumptions they have for size of investments, length, carry, etc.. During my pitching process, I found that almost all VC’s operate somewhat like this – with bigger funds having bigger investment sizes. This is great information and would have been helpful a few years ago as knowing how you fit into a VC firm’s plans helps you figure out on how best to pitch to them.
Anyway, i was amazed he’d share this info on a blog and thought it was interesting. Post is here: http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2008/08/venture-fund–1.html
The first time i heard about the upcoming movie Tropic Thunder i immediately thought it was a Three Amigos’s remake. I mean, a group of actors going on what they believe is a shoot only it isn’t a shoot, it’s actually real. It’s the exact same. Anyone else with me?
(if you haven’t seen the film, this could ruin it for you)
I saw Iron Man again last night and came away with some new thoughts:
The ending SUCKS. Ok, maybe “sucks” is a bit strong, but it is not up to the standard of the rest of the movie. Let’s look at it: Here’s a movie where the main character is one of the smartest people on the planet (or ever) and is so smart that he’s been able to develop a suit based on an energy source that nobody else can get working – not even the best scientists. So now there’s another bad-version of Iron Man in a bigger suit who apparently can do all the same things that the good one can. How does this epic battle end up? How does this super-genius who throughout the movie was able to be clever and outsmart the villian? It ends with two Iron Men who can’t get hurt punching each other in the face and slamming each other into walls. Sometimes this apparently hurts. Other times, they get right up. Nobody knows why. Then to kill the bad guy, Iron Man tells Pepper to blow up the building and just hope he survives. Now that’s a good idea.
Some movies are great because of their endings:
The Sting
The Sixth Sense
The Usual Suspects
Rocky
Some movies are great through and through and have endings that match their great stories:
The Shawshank Redemption
Se7en
Hoosiers
For a movie that is good throughout, the ending is not up to snuff for the rest of the film.
Also, i have issues with the bad Iron Man. For instance, how does bad Iron Man survive the icing? One minute he’s falling to the earth covered in ice, the next he’s recovered. How can the bad Iron Man move so well? He’s not in a suit like Robert DJ but rather he’s sitting in a seat with levers. I don’t think you could conduct hand to hand combat easily in that. Also, much of the movie showed Robert DJ practicing how to fly and move and tinkering the suit. Jeff Bridges did zero of that. He just plugged the arc reactor in and knew how to do everything immediately.
All in all, the ending let down the rest of the movie for me. It was all so buttoned-up with the exception of that duel. I’ve heard people say that Iron Man is a great movie. Not in my book.
One of the interesting things i read in Wikinomics is Coase’s Law. I had never heard of it. Here’s the deal:
Ronald Coase was a badass and won the Nobel Prize in 1991
Many companies today are turning to collaborative b2B models where consumers, employees, partners, and even competitors co-create value for a company. This is all happening due to the declining cost of collaborating.
It began in 1937 when a English socialist, Ronald Coase, published a paper called “The Nature of the Firm.” Coase was both fascinated and bewildered by american industry. He toured Ford and General Motors and wondered aloud why economists could say that Stalin and communism was mistaken to try to run the Soviet Union like one gigantic company when Henry Ford adn Sloan ran their own gigantic companies (Ford & GM) in similar ways. After all, the marketplace is the best mechanism for matching supply and demand, establishing prices, and getting maximum utility from limited resources.
He studies more the cost of information. Producing things (bread, a car, a hospital ER) involves steps where close cooperation and common purpose is essential. You can only break down day-to-day tasks so much before incurring costs that outweigh the savings of doing in under the same roof. These are called transaction costs:
search costs (finding different suppliers and determining if they are good)
contracting costs (negotiating prices and contracts)
coordination costs of meshing products and processes
Most businesses in 1937 determined it was best to do all of these in-house. All of this encompasses “Coase’s Law” which states: A firm will tend to expand until the costs of organizing an extra transaction within the firm become equal to the costs of carrying out the same transaction on the open market. Basically, as long as it’s cheaper to perform a transaction inside your firm, keep it there.
The internet makes a difference because basically now transaction costs as so low that it has become much more useful to read Coase’s Law backwards: You should shrink a company until it’s harder to do things externally than internally, then bring it in-house.
It’s interesting because Coase’s Law does both a great job of explaining why old-school corporations were so big and powerful and does an equally good job of explaining why traditional companies are on the way out and why new businesses are smaller and more nimble.
I got a new plugin that feeds me an RSS feed of my top plays of the past week into my RSS feeder. It’s interesting to see what my top artists are each week. This week i’ve got:
The Whitest Boy Alive and Born Ruffians are two of my favorite new artists. WBA are really chill and easy to listen to while Born Ruffians are a better version of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. I recommend you check both out.
Blogging has a reputation as an ego centric activity for people who want to be heard. And that is certainly true and a big motivation for many people who do it. But blogging can be valuable in many other ways.
I often get in conversations with people as to why i blog. To many it’s viewed as pure a vanity project. I’ve found that putting my ideas and thoughts down for others to read is a great way to stimulate conversation and “talk” with friends but to do so by;
allowing them to jump in at their leisure. After they see the movie or read the book that i’ve written about or if they finally get a moment when they’re bored at work.
not requiring them to participate. They can read and process but unlike email they don’t have to respond unless they want to. I’ve noticed that many of my friends will read my blog, never comment but will bring it up with me weeks or months later. I love this. We’re talking but in a turn-based way. I’m just always making the first move
making the conversation to be public – anyone can join.
I love it for these reasons. I don’t really care how many people read it or if anyone at all reads. Sometimes i like to just get my thoughts down on paper so they’re organized and stated and i can forget them.
I just downloaded the WordPress iPhone application. I’m pretty excited because now I can do some blogging from the road. I’m not exactly how it’ll work. I’m thinking I’ll send the text up from the phone and then add photos once I get back to the computer
Actually I just took a photo for the post and it worked pretty easily. I think this could dramatically increase my blogging
I went and saw Batman on Friday and loved it. First of all, let me just say that the option of choosing your seats at a movie when purchasing the tickets online is a GREAT thing. Nothing like going to a sold out show and knowing that you’re centered perfectly. Also, don’t read any more if you’re going to see the movie and don’t want a spoiler.
So, about Batman. I give it a 9 out of 10. It has some amazing parts and a few parts that could be just a little bit better. The action scenes are incredible. The Hong Kong kidnapping sequence was just a small piece of genius. The Bat Motocycle makes me want to immediately go out and ride
It’s been written everywhere that The Joker makes the movie and i completely agree. His first scene where he confronts the mob and does the magic trick or making a pencil disappear sets the tone for the entire movie. It says, “Hi i’m the joker. I’m funny, clever and i’m going to kick ass all over the place.” My man at WWTDD.com describes Heath Ledger’s performance best:
Everything Ledger did in this movie was fucking awesome. “And here we go” is not an amazing line. Picture that on the page. It’s just four little words. Ledger made it awesome. “Why so serious,” is an empty, ordinary line. Ledger made it great. This sucks. I can’t believe he’s dead. Most actors fucking suck. There’s only like 7 good ones. Now there are 6. Now pretty idiots like Channing Tatum will ruin more of my movies, reading lines like his script had the dialog written upside down and backwards. Channing, if you’re reading this, and later today you feel a pop inside your head, it’s because I just threw a rock at the back of your skull. Hey, look, over here, it’s me, Brendon, from that website. You Suck.
This movie is not as good as Batman Begins. Sequels never are. The first films build the characters and the backstory – they are more character driven. Second films usually have more villains, more blood and more action and this one is no exception, but compared to Hellboy 2, Spider-Man 2, X2, and other sequels i think it stands as the best of the bunch.
Some parts i didn’t like about the film:
When Harvey Dent goes to Two-Faced the CGI is too much. The entire movie has amazingly real ation sequences and a cartoonish face seems out of place
Batman’s voice is kind of lame. I know he has a voice changing device but still, it seemed corny
Harvey Dent’s rampage. I just didn’t believe it as much as The Joker’s cause. I can understand that he’s upset but pointing that anger towards Gordon or Batman seems ridiculous.
Maggie G. She just needed to be hotter. I mean, it’s a comic book – get some bombshell in there who can be both smart and hot. I mean they had a smokin’ hot australian computer hacker in Transformers. They can do better here.
That’s all i can think of now. What did you all like?
There was an interesting article in the NYTimes on Sunday about Billy Joel. When asked which of his songs make him think, he immediately cites two: “Vienna” (1978), a celebration of a life’s worth at every age, and “Summer, Highland Falls” (1976), a meditation on emotional extremes.
It’s a good article of his life and how he’s come to terms with his success. He seems to be much more chill now. Although i wonder what his thoughts are about Christie Brinkley’s latest divorce debacle.
