The Venture Capital Blog

Why Reddit needs tags, tabs or topics

2006-04-20T00:19:00.000-07:00

I love Reddit. My affection for it has to do with the fact that I was at Startupschool and saw/heard the YCombinator founders talk about their experience - I feel a personal connection with Reddit, even though it may be a weak one. Therefore, as is the want of all love, I must poke my nose into their affairs and ask them to change.

Reddit, like Slashdot, depends on the "wisdom of the masses". Like Slashdot and Kuro5hin and their ilk - this has the effect of, early on, drawing a small tight community of people interested in similar things to the site. Sure there is some variation in the interests of the readers, and they may have opinions at the opposite ends of the spectrum on the same issues, but they are interested in similar things. As the number of readers grow however, their combined interests become less homogenous. At this point, the site has an option of allowing users to form separate subcommunities by allowing tags, tabs or topics. There is still a single front page where everyone can get together. But if you are only interested in the anti-bush stories, you don't have to read about what Paul Graham ate for breakfast. Reddit already did this to an extent by creating nsfw.reddit.com and Joel.reddit.com (Not Safe For Work). I reckon it should not be hard for them to create more. [Runs to check if there are more]

Dammit, of course they have - subreddits. Thusly we teach ourselves that we must look before we leap and check if the basic premise of an article we are about to write is still valid, before we start typing.

Startup Rant!

2006-03-31T11:39:00.000-08:00

You know a profession just went from extraordinary to run-of-the-mill when someone starts a blog just to rant about it. Presenting StartupRant. Like waiterrant without the restaurant. Plus Ajax.

Startup Lessons

2006-03-27T10:22:00.000-08:00

I've wanted to start a company since I was 17 and the dot coms were still booming. Having just acquired my very first computer then, freshly addicted to slashdot and enamoured by the Internet - I whipped up a business plan with plans to present it to the only V.C. I fortuitously knew. Then the skeptic inside my head kicked in. I had just finished high school and not done that well, I had acquired my first computer a couple of months ago, I was a freshman in college and a few thousand miles away from where all the action was - who was I kidding? Myself, maybe - as Paul Graham would convince me and someone would actually implement my idea - both 5 years too late .

Since then, I've become an engineer, interned at one great startup and started working full time for another, worked in the valley, attended startup school and almost finished grad school. Over these years I've learnt a few more lessons from various sources. Here are the ones I've found to be the most valuable

1) The only value of an idea that has not been implemented is the excitement it generates inside your head

2) Before you pitch an idea, even to your friends or potential partners - do your groundwork.

Think about the idea, it's potential and it's drawbacks on your own for a couple of days before you talk to others about it. When you try to convince your first 'audience' about your idea, you are also trying to convince yourself about it and they'll be tougher critics than you. The best way to prematurely kill a smart idea is to not analyze and refine it before you pitch it and have someone, even worse yourself - give up on the idea because you couldn't counter a basic argument on the spot . If you have done your groundwork the first pitch and the ensuing discussion becomes a tool to sharpen the idea, to make it better.

3) Ideas morph, even after you start working on them - especially after you start working on them.

Flickr was born out of an online games company, Paypal was originally an app that let you send or receive money on your mobile device (and they implemented this now, several years later) and Craiglist actually started off as a weekly email to Craig's friends.

4) Getting VC funding does not mean you've succeeded - it means the stakes just got bigger for you.

This is something my CTO Paul Judge taught me. Say you are just a two person startup - at that point your investment in the startup is the effort you've put into it, the opportunity cost in an engineer's salary that you may have let go while working on it and your emotional investment in the idea. If for some reason it doesn't work out, you can still walk off with what may be a fair trade in the knowledge you've acquired trying to make the idea work. The moment you get X million in VC funding - that is a debt that you've taken on. Your responsibilities just rocketed the moment you got that money. This may not be the dominant reaction to receiving funding but it is neverthless true. If you don't recognize this and don't spend every dollar of this money more responsibly than if it were your own - you'll lose not just the time and effort you invest in the idea but also your credibility to future investors in your future ideas, an opportunity cost of millions of dollars in profits, if not more and perhaps your confidence in yourself as an entrepreneur.

5) Everything Olin Shivers said in this presentation at Startup School. Seriously.

(This will be a continuing series as I add more and more ideas that I find valuable here)

Google's Job Search

2006-03-27T07:58:00.000-08:00

Google just launched a job search engine! In a continuing quest to keep an eye on what the big idea factory Google is doing by checking what posts they are hiring for, I found what looks like Google's very own job search engine and guess what, it has a GMaps mashup! Just search for jobs google and it should pop up. (At least for a few of you, if not all)

Update: Seems like they ~~are~~ aren't aggregating other job sites just like Indeed.com. They are ~~also~~ using Google Base as the tool allowing users to upload their own job ads. Seems like Base is going to be a base for several other Google offerings in the future. Added a better screenshot.