May 2008 Archive

VCs + Crystal Balls = Mobile Boom?

This is a little delayed, as I wasn't at the event. But here's a video Eric Savitz and I did for Tech Ticker on the Churchill Club's Top 10 Tech Trends event, held last week. Interestingly, almost half of the trends were about mobile. I've also reported on Tech Ticker that some Web entrepreneurs like Kevin Rose also thing real mobile innovation is about to happen. Here's Eric's report:

It's hard to know. Anyone who has been around the Valley has heard the mobile hype before and we have little in the name of real innovation or huge public companies to show for it. Two good things could come out of the current mobile excitement. (It's not quite hype yet.)

One: We will finally see some true innovation in mobile apps. Handsets are great and all, but software is where the magic happens. A bad UI can make the sexiest phone abominable to use. Thanks to the iPhone real software and real apps are possible for the first time on phones. Who isn't excited about that? Even I am and my fingers are too cloddy to work a touch screen keyboard!

Or, two: Companies aiming for the mobile market will get bogged down in regulation and fragmented markets, die a slow death after raising too much money, and we won't have to hear about MOBILE! for another few years.

Let's suspend reporter cynicism and hope it's different this time, that younger people and products like the iPhone will actually make us as mobile-centric as Asian markets-- hell, even European markets. I'd love to have a phone that didn't anger me at some point in the day for one reason or another.

My Own Memo to Zuckerberg: Don't Listen to Any of Us

Just wrapping up my morning of blog reading-- amid a flurry of radio interviews-- and I saw Kara's memo to Zuckerberg. I think she made some good points. Particularly about the pressure he'll get if he turns down a Microsoft offer and the point that there's nothing "basic" about whether Facebook should sell. As this news of Facebook traffic falling spreads, the "sell! sell! sell!" drumbeat Kara refers to is only going to grow louder.

So here's my own memo to Mark: On the very off chance you are reading any of this, stop. Don't listen to any of us. It's your company. It's your vision. If we knew what was best for Facebook, we wouldn't be bloggers and reporters. You've gotten this far without us.

Carl Ichan: Company Breaker or Wall Street Saviour?

I've been amazingly quiet on the latest Carl Ichan twists of the Microsoft-Yahoo saga. While the day-to-day news makes for fascinating early morning -- and increasingly weekend-- reading, I feel like we're basically saying a lot of the same things we've been saying from day one: The company belongs to the shareholders, Yahoo will eventually have to sell. I also always have to be careful reporting on this since I spend three days a week at Yahoo and want to respect the privacy of co-workers who talk about the deal as friends, not as sources. So, as I have to disclose all the time, I only report things I get from Yahoo sources, not as a Yahoo contractor.

All that said, Tech Ticker is about the view on Wall Street meeting the view in the Valley and there is no one who divides ranks more than Carl Ichan. Many people in the Valley view him as a destroyer of company value-- many people on Wall Street view him as someone who shakes management into unlocking nascent company value. (The fact that Ichan doesn't even own a computer certainly doesn't help his rep out here!) And ultimately, when you go public, the Wall Street view wins.

Here's some great analysis from Henry and Aaron today about Ichan, what his end game is and how much he's made so far. (As usual Henry can't seem to contain his excitment!) Also, they bring up a WSJ story that says Carnival has a faster growth rate than Yahoo. That might be the most damning stat I've seen. I've long argued that it was a management misstep for Yahoo to try to be Google, and continually allow itself to be compared to Google. But if you've got Yahoo's assets and can't grow faster than a cruise line that Kathy Lee Gifford used to shill for....Well, just watch because Henry says it better than I could.

Seeking My Own "Digital Wonderland"

Thought my life was calming down post-book launch? Wrong. My husband and I are also buying a house! (Thanks Web 2.0!) We should be closing on it this week. The lenders have taken their good sweet time dotting every i and crossing every t on every loan so they are just now getting to ours.

A flood of money is about to leave our bank account for the downpayment (yes, you need those again to buy a house in San Francisco) and closing costs and moving costs. But we're nestling a little away for what we hope will be our own "Digital Wonderland." The phrase is borrowed from my book, chapter 6, "Return of the King." Marc Andreessen used it to describe how he pimped out his new home last summer. Mine will obviously be nowhere near as pimp. In fact, it will likely take us a while to afford the dream.

BusinessWeek Excerpt of My Book

Here's the link, which also has a video interview with me. There's also a slide show (front page under "featured slide shows"). I don't know why BW makes it so hard to link to! Also, the link was too long to Twitter. If you want to get really old school about it, it'll be in the magazine on Friday. Was really sweet of BW to be so supportive of my book, given I quit and all to write it.

More on Larry...

Apparently Mark Veverka agrees with me. Eric Savitz of Barrons stopped by the Tech Ticker studios today and we revisited the Larry-as-CEO topic. BTW- don't I look like I'm hiding a pregnancy or something with the laptop placement??? I told the control room and they politely ignored my concerns. For the record: I am not. I need to figure out a better place to put that thing...

Also, had to throw in the Iron Man bit after seeing it this weekend. I love the press conference scene. Reminded me of my first Larry press conference, just after Oracle closed the PeopleSoft deal, when Larry nonchalantly sat on a stool and said, "What do you want to talk about?" I was not a comic kid by any stretch, but my friends I saw the movie with said they were amazed at how well Iron Man translated. I credit the film maker's inspiration. After all, Iron Man is a very Silicon Valley hero: conflicted, maverick, using technology to win, oh yeah, and having to deal with pesky boards and shareholders.

Discuss the Book: Who Is Your Favorite Mogul?

So given the Twitters from a dozen or so people who tore through the book this weekend, it's time to start a series of discussion threads. (Yay!) They'll all be tagged under "Discuss the Book" so feel free to weigh in later, if you haven't started reading or -- gasp-- haven't gotten a copy yet. ;) I promise I will read every last one, and probably comment back to all of them too.

I always like to discuss books I've read-- I was a literature major after all-- so this is just for fun or in case anyone has questions for me. A book has certain disadvantages over a blog when it comes to interaction, so this is also a somewhat clumsy attempt to skirt that. If even one person responds, I'll keep posting questions for discussion once a week. If no one does, I'll cry. JK, but I will likely focus my energies on other posts.

I'm starting with the first question I always ask readers: Who is your favorite "character"? I have to put it in quotes, because these are actually all real people and the book is not fictionalized in any way. But because it's written in a narrative style, people who don't know them tend to talk about them as "characters." You can take this question in any way: who is the most inspiring, who is the most entertaining to read about, who do you love to hate.

So far, I should say most people I've asked feel they "know" Max Levchin the best, but the favorite -- particularly for people outside the Valley-- tends to be Jay "F--- the Sweater Vests" Adelson. What do you think?

The best answer will win a prize. By best I mean either articulate, surprising or, ahem, the only one. Prize TBD.  Maybe a Tech Ticker T-shirt, maybe a signed galley, maybe one of those annoying Yahoo! buttons that yodels when you press it, maybe my sxsw speaker's badge- ha ha.

Ok, ready, set, comment!

More on that Snarky Review...

So Marcus Banks wrote up a post responding to my post responding to his review. I didn't wind up commenting, because I had to establish a commenting ID, and it crashed while I was trying. So I figured I'd respond here.

First off, this is why the blogosphere is great. Last Friday, I had an emotional-- and I think legitimate-- reaction to this graph:

"Lacy portrays Adelson and Rose's mutual "man-crush" with good humor and relish, in a way that seems possible only because she is a woman. Despite their ritualistic grumblings about the media, the numerous men Lacy interviews have no trouble opening up to her over crepes at Ti Couz or drinks at the Fly Bar."

Banks counters that he's not sexist, or not in the way I think. He prefers women and was trying to pay me a compliment. I appreciate his post, and take him at his word that it wasn't intended to be sexist. I frequently write things that come off another way-- every reporter does. In fact, I inadvertently offended Marc Andreessen in that very post! Hell, anyone with an email account knows what I'm saying!

That said, these are my final thoughts:

I Still Don't See Microsoft Buying Facebook

Or more to the point, I don't see Facebook selling. New fears by John Furrier and Robert Scoble remind me of that "Googlezon" video that was making its way around the Web several years ago. You remember, we all watched it and shuddered and thought, "That could totally happen!" It didn't. And it looks sillier the farther we get from it.

A lot of things could "totally" happen, and there's nothing particularly wrong with Scoble's logic. Except that Facebook doesn't want to sell, Mark Zuckerberg hasn't even been in the U.S. for weeks, and I'd be stunned if Facebook's end goal was really to break the Web. (Can't vouch for that EVIL EVIL Microsoft!) There are always rumors in the valley, but I simply haven't heard this from a credible source.

Just a *Little* Sad

I Twittered earlier today that I was a little sad today and assumed it was post-book launch let down. Don't get me wrong: 125 rank on amazon, great reviews, and an *amazing* party made for an unforgettable week. But as I watch my Amazon rank slide back into the 300s I can't help worrying that my book won't make that mainstream crossover that I so dearly want it to, because I think the stories in it are amazing and inspiring and so many people don't get what Web 2.0 and entrepreneurship in the Valley is really all about.

I was explaining this over brunch to Mr. Lacy and our "adopted son" Tim Briner, and I kept thinking of this passage from page 194 of my book about the early days of Slide. (For context: Max Levchin is raising money and it's going very well so this is a flashback):

"He thought back to a time when Slide had just come out of the Maxcubator and he and a small team were working day and night to get the Slideshow up and running. Back then, he was hardly thinking about pimping out MySpace pages. The word widget didn't exist, let alone the idea of taking this piece of a Web site and putting it on another Web site without knowing how to code. So when Slide launched, the idea was people would download it to their desktop, like a screensaver. Max took a deep breath and released it into the Internet wild. And then heard nothing.

No one was downloading it! Max couldn't believe it. For years, he'd been so focused on brining a new idea to life, it had never occurred to him that maybe people just wouldn't want it. As he watched the stats go nowhere, he realized that it didn't matter he was Max Levchin, millionaire, dotcom success, founder of PayPal. All at once it hit him: No matter how hard he worked, he simply couldn't will people to use his product. They didn't care who the great Max Levchin was or what he'd done. Even worse, they didn't care about his Slideshow. It was crushing."