Posts that are about a special place
I thought it was the bay area but looking at this chart below it makes more sense why I feel like it costs much more to live these days. Sure my television is larger, my car is faster and my shoes are better but everything else is much more pricey.
Oh, and I do know that it’s ALSO because I live in the Bay Area. Even though all prices are on the up, the prices here are beyond ridiculous now. See how crazy they are here.
Some things I’ll remember about 2016…
Time disappearing
I thought we were time constrained when Hunter came along. Well, with two little ones this year, aged 1 and 3, time really got sucked away from me. Less sleep, fewer workouts, fewer books read. All the things I like to do just for me basically went out the door this year. But, they were replaced with more time with my family, which was just fantastic.
Hunter
He really became a full fledged person this year. He’s now funny and clever. He has a bit of trickery and deviousness in him, but he’s shaping up to be a very kind person. His teachers at school regularly remark about how genuine and kind he is. Also, his super power this year is his drawing. He’s very creative and can draw ridiculously well. Continue reading “The Lewhouses in 2016”
This is post #11 about the Qloud experience. The previous post was about about the launch of Qloud. You can read that here.
Once we launched, we grew extremely fast. I have to say that being part of a company that is blowing up is really really fun. Everyone is constantly happy. As a product person, this is what you work for and when it happens, it feels great.
We did some things that were shady and other things were legit and very smart. Some things we did:
I give Noah R-S (now Chief Product Officer at DailyMail) a lot of credit for hacking Facebook. He understood it at a level that probably only a few dozen in the world did.
We also started exploring a business model by selling links to ringtones.
Our growth was so fast that we’d get lots of calls from record labels and lawyers asking to shut us down. They saw the streams happening on Qloud and wanted it to stop. It took them a while to realize that we had co-opted YouTube for the streams.
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The next post is about how we sold to Buzznet. Read it here.
This is post #2 about the Qloud experience. The previous post was about jumping ship and starting the company.
Once we started Qloud, we started building the product and also started fundraising. From day one, looking at our finances, we knew that we had 6 months to get the company to a place where we could raise outside capital. Not only did we need to get the product built and working but we needed to hone our pitch. We came up with what we thought was a compelling vision and set out to talk to investors.
Our pitch was that what we learned at Ruckus was that music discovery was a huge problem. Talking to students it was clear that all discovery was word-of-mouth. Qloud was going to be a way to allow people to find new music without having to ask your friend down the hall. We were going to do that in 2 ways:
Continue reading “Qloud Fundraising: Striking out in Silicon Valley (Part 2 of 14)”
The season starts tonight for the Timberwolves. As part of that, this will be a defining year for Ricky Rubio.
His contract is up at the end of the year and he has already rejected a 4 year $48m offer. For the other positions they have:
Ricky is supposedly the leader of that group. Looking at that lineup, if they don’t do well, it’s probably his fault and his inability to impact games. If they do well, it’s likely because he has a great season. As Rubio goes, so do the Wolves.
They way I figure this goes is one of two directions:
Direction ONE: the Wolves do well, i.e. approach 35 wins and compete for a playoff spot. In this scenario, I think they pony up and pay Rubio more money
Direction TWO: the Wolves are a lottery team. In this scenario, they don’t resign Ricky and draft a point guard in the lottery.
That’s my guess. Any thoughts?
I’m excited for the NBA season to start. On Monday night the Twolves had their first pre-season game and it looks like Andrew Wiggins could be the real deal. A summary of his performance from the blog post:
Andrew Wiggins. There is obviously a player here. He led the team in minutes (32) and points (18). He took some poor 20 footers and wound up shooting 4-11 overall, but got to the line 10 times and made both of his threes. He also blocked 3 shots and grabbed 3 offensive boards. There is obviously stuff to work on, including getting stronger around the rim and ball handling, but there was a lot to like.
There’s also a good YouTube video of his action here:
As we do every year, we place a friendly bet in the office for the season. This year it’s between Niraj and Ian. Here is how our teams are projected to do:
The bet we’re making with each other is whichever teams performs the worst relative to their projected win count, the loser buys the winners a lunch of their choice at Rio Grande. Now, let’s get it started!
Niraj and I just made a bet. The Lions are projected to win 9 games this season and the Vikings are projected to win 6. We have a bet to see who wins more and he is spotting me 3 wins. The loser buys the winner some football paraphernalia (max price $30)
Bring it on!
On a related note, I really want a website to exist that allows you to enter in a bet, a prize for the winner and a date for it to be resolved and then this app notifies you when that date comes. I have so many little bets placed but I need something to keep track of them. Somebody please build this.
Also related: the new Vikings stadium looks amazing.
Here’s something I think is cool.
The Denver Broncos shattered records this year as the most dominant offensive team in NFL history. They scored 38 points per game this year, an NFL record. Their QB, Peyton Manning, also set records for most passing yards and touchdowns by a QB in a season. They play Seattle whose defense was the best in the league and is the fifth-best overall statistical performance of any team since 1989.
So, it will be an epic showdown of a historical great offense against a historically great defense.
If that hasn’t blown you mind enough, check this out…. the difference between the Broncos’ average-points-scored and the Seahawks average-points-allowed this season is the widest in the history of the Super Bown. It is what one website found to be “the greatest offense/defense showdown in Super Bowl history.”
So there’s that. Let’s go Broncos!
We had another great year in 2013 and here’s the video to prove it. We wish everyone a great 2013 and hope to spend lots of time with you all.
Lots of love from Mike, Diane and Hunter (now ~16 months)
PS: If you like the song it’s “Baby” from Devendra Banhart and you get it here.
One of my new favorite things to do is watch the PandoMonthly videos. They are really long – usually over 90 minutes – but it is a super in-depth interview with one of the internet’s big dogs. My favorite one so far is a 2-hour video with John Doerr who worked early on at Intel and sits on the board of Google and Amazon.
Last night i watched Fred Wilson’s interview. Some highlights:
All in all, some good stuff. The full video is here: