Sarah Lacy has reported on startups and venture capital in Silicon Valley for nearly a decade. She writes Valley Girl, a biweekly column for BusinessWeek and co-hosts Tech Ticker on Yahoo! Finance. She lives in San Francisco. Learn more
"By tunneling deep into their pasts, their paranoias and anxieties, their troubled romantic relationships, their outsize dreams...Lacy delivers a sophisticated psychological study of an ascendant economic class."
While we had Mr. Matt Galligan in front of us, we decided to fill him up with beer and then pump him for some information- namely, Social Thing's recent sale to AOL. Sarah adores AOL because it makes Yahoo look like a sexy young thing. However, all snark aside, a huge platform is still a huge platform. Or at least that's what an AOL sell-out (Matt) and a Yahoo sell-out (Sarah) discuss in this clip...
Yeah, so yesterday's trek to Boulder could have been a recipe for disaster:
-Waking up at 4:30 am for an early morning flight (woof) - Wandering aimlessly around the confusing Denver airport (two levels and four "islands" for passenger pick-up? seriously?) - Walking in circles for 30 minutes in search of a burger joint. That was 300 feet away (left means right at 5400 feet apparently) - Waiting on the street corner like idiots for a taxi cab that was dispatched to Denver by mistake (and accidentally clotheslining a monk with a heavy bag of books...yay karma)
Mix in some preconceived notions (which Sarah touched on here) and things were not looking so good. That is, until Matt Galligan changed our minds and stepped up to bat for a little one on one with the Sarahcuda (video after the jump)
Om and I seem to be of the same mind. Biggest gamble on this deal: What the currency of Facebook stock is worth. That, and I take Evan at his word that he wants to keep building Twitter. After all, it's not all about money, particularly for people who've already made money. Twitter is a one of the biggest ideas in Web 2.0 and the team knows that doesn't just come around because you decide, "Ok we sold that one, what next?"
I think they made the right call. More in my Dirt segment on TechTicker today below:
It may not sound like a relaxing way to end a vacation to you, but believe me, the closer I come to working through a back-log of Flipcam footage from the last month, the weight is just lifting off my shoulders. Now if I could only finish that BusinessWeek column and other secret project....ah well, that's what a long plane ride is for, right?
Among Flipcam gems I've found today are these two clips from London, featuring two of my favorite people Robert Loch and Paul Carr. In both, the guys have to hide how nice they're actually being to me, by kinda acting like jerks. But I see through it. They love me.
Pets.com may have been one of the most wasteful and frivolous of dot com companies, but Dogster is one of the most disciplined of the Web 2.0 generation. It's interesting since Pets.com had a clearer business model, and satisfied a more obvious need. Just goes to show execution wins, in a downturn or no. While a lot of Dogster's smart moves were made in the company's early days, there are plenty of tips in my TechTicker interview with Dogster CEO Ted Rheingold for cash-strapped entrepreneurs worried about 2009.
After three takes we decided we just had nothing very interesting to say, but we wanted to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving anyway! Especially those of you who read, comment, buy books, buy geoff's photos or in any other ways have helped make 2008 an amazing, amazing year for us!
Signs that we're back to the daily grind in dear old San Francisco:
- Sarah is MIA because she has sequestered herself to write the last chapter for the paperback/ added on extra days down at Yahoo/ is writing something, for someone, somewhere - Mr. Lacy has downloaded 15 different bootleg Lil' Wayne albums onto the rap ipod, which we bump in the car like the gangsters we are - I wake up with a crumpled Sunday Times beneath the sheets and a cat wrapped around my head like a football helmet - the blog has been overrun with videos (substantive reporting to return soon)
This past week has been so busy, our London trip seems like a dream; a haze of bubbly Brits, the longest book title ever conceived, and an out of this world, six-day pub crawl. Oh, but how quickly that dream snaps into reality when scouring over the thirty plus videos of Flip footage. I mean, did we really....? Yes, yes we did.
In this case, I really taught London's Hugh Hefner how to dance like a Memphis girl. Sarah is making me post it. Otherwise, I'd hit delete. So, enjoy or "Njoy." Whatever you prefer.
Sarah couldn't have said it better early this morning. It seems we keep looking at each other with watery eyes that say "It's just this month that's so crazy, not next month right? RIGHT?" She's quite the trooper. I just attempt to keep up with her, which undoubtedly involves a lot of focus, drive, caffeine, and alcohol.
Coincidently, that last one is very apparent, given that I came home yesterday to a giftbox of lovely martini glasses resting on the coffee table. Thus, we just want to let Erica O'Grady and Matthew Wettergreen of Caroline Collective, and the rest of the folks in Houston know that they are not forgotten! We have some great footage on the way! It's just being tackled in a foggy, sleep-deprived, round-about manner. Kind of like the cab ride below.
Quick Disclaimer: now, we've had some wackadoodle taxi experiences on this UGBT tour. Austin? I think I groped a pedi-cabber the first night, and decided it was appropriate to recount the story to Earl, our driver the next day, who then laughed so hard he got lost in the AMD parking garage. Whoops. And there was the Memphis cabbie, who tried to kill us by going 80 mph down the quiet neighborhood street we grew up on, and then refused to help with our bags. Typical. And who can forget our Toronto taxi experience? I believe the seats were upholstered to look like Winnie the Pooh, complete with ears. And the West African driver kept shouting "MAMMA MIA" and giggling. Weird.
And yet, they all knew where they were going. Which is more than I can say for the new guy below... ah bless his heart (said through gritted teeth).
My sympathies go out to the people behind the shows canceled on Revision3 last week. Clearly, a lot of fans were upset. You could see it in the comments on CEO Jim Louderback's blog: People loved the shows that were canceled and outraged that Rev3 would do such a thing. That outrage fed itself as they read each others comments. "See! Other people loved these shows too! How could you cancel them?!?!?!"
I have no doubt they were loved and no doubt Jim did the right thing. And that weird dichotomy shows why we still don't have full-fledged original content channels online: Video is hard to do well and video is expensive.
That causes two problems that are still hurting original video content online especially as we enter a protracted downturn: Audience and money.
