Quick quiz: Who are the three largest Internet companies in the world by market capitalization?
If you guessed Google and Amazon you got two right, but I’m betting few of our American readers guessed the third. I certainly wouldn’t have a year ago. It’s not eBay or Yahoo; it’s Tencent. If you are in the Web space and haven’t heard of them, read this post, because Tencent’s cutesy penguin mascot is only going to cast a larger shadow in the global Web world in coming years.
Low-key Tencent is the largest, most profitable Internet company in China and it has just under 400 million active users–comfortably bigger than the population of the United States. Tencent recently bought 10% of Digital Sky Technology, which in turn owns huge chunks of Zynga and Facebook.
Pick your 2% and own it
19 June 2010
Freaking wordpress video embed doesn’t work so click here to watch this interesting interview to Brad Feld
Tom’s Kitchen, Chelsea, SW3 3QP
18 June 2010
One more from Sinan
I am a big supporter of the weekend breakfast. Even if I can’t wake up early, I still make the occasion to turn the breakfast into a brunch of breads, eggs, jams, tomatoes, cold meats, milk and cheese. This hobby is one of the biggest reasons why I became a big fan of Tom’s Kitchen during my stay in London. This cozy, high-ceiling bistro serves one of the most fulfilling, fun and delicious brunches in the city. From eggs, pancakes to hamburgers everything here is worth trying.
27 Cale Street, SW3 3QP, London; +44 (0) 207 349 0202; tomskitchen.co.uk
Some more goodies for foodies in London
The anatomy of an english breakfast
The Eagle, Farringdon
Village East, Bermondsey
Cafe’ Pellicci, Bethnal Green
The Easton, Farringdon
Key Words
16 June 2010
Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who could not hear the music.
The trouble with trying to spot a winner
14 June 2010
As published by Luke Johnson
Amazing sixth sense
12 June 2010
There are three New York Cities
9 June 2010
As published on Chris Dixon’s blog
There are roughly three New Yorks.
There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born here, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size and turbulence as natural and inevitable.
Second, there is the New York of the commuter—the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night.
Third, there is the New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something. Of these three trembling cities the greatest is the last—the city of final destination, the city that is a goal. It is this third city that accounts for New York’s high-strung disposition, its poetical deportment, its dedication to the arts, and its incomparable achievements. Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness; natives give it solidity and continuity; but the settlers give it passion. And whether it is a farmer arriving from Italy to set up a small grocery store in a slum, or a young girl arriving from a small town in Mississippi to escape the indignity of being observed by her neighbors, or a boy arriving from the Corn Belt with a manuscript in his suitcase and a pain in his heart, it makes no difference: each embraces New York with the intense excitement of first love, each absorbs New York with the fresh eyes of an adventurer, each generates heat and light to dwarf the Consolidated Edison Company.
Here is New York, E. B. White, 1949
Why I sold Zappos
7 June 2010
A very interesting account from Zappos’ founder and CEO Tony Hsieh and yet another proof of why Amazon is a great company.
The first time Amazon.com tried to buy Zappos, we said no without even thinking.
It was the summer of 2005, and Zappos, the start-up into which I’d poured the past five years of my life (and almost all of my money), finally seemed to be on the right track.
Zappos sells shoes and apparel online, but what distinguished us from our competitors was that we’d put our company culture above all else. We’d bet that by being good to our employees — for instance, by paying for 100 percent of health care premiums, spending heavily on personal development, and giving customer service reps more freedom than at a typical call center — we would be able to offer better service than our competitors. Better service would translate into lots of repeat customers, which would mean low marketing expenses, long-term profits, and fast growth. Amazingly, it all seemed to be working. By 2005, gross merchandise sales were $370 million, and we made the Inc. 500. We weren’t profitable yet, but we were close to breaking even, and our revenue was growing quickly.
SunbrellaWeb: we got funding!
7 June 2010
I wrote in the past about my friend Francesco and his startup. You can read about it here: A place in the shade.
The good news is that a couple of weeks ago we closed our first round of funding and we are marching full steam, and on schedule, to deliver the first solutions just in time for summer 2010. We are of course very excited and confident that this summer will be a blast.
We have 10 beach resorts for which we are implementing the full solution (SunbrellaWeb + SunbrellaMobile) and countless more for SunbrellaWeb only. If you want to know more about either solution click on the link above or get in touch with me: here.
So, what now? while we are working to deliver the first devices on time, we are starting a broad marketing campaign both to the beach resort owners and to the beach goers. We are also slightly revamping the site to make it fresher and easier to use.
We’ll also soon be integrating the Sunbrellaweb booking widget into CityandOut so you’ll be able to reserve your place in the shade from there as well, at the same time as booking your flights and hotels.
If you are in the summer holidays business, if you enjoy going to the beach or are interested in getting involved, just give us a shout.
Location 2012
4 June 2010
As originally published by Robert Scoble on TechCrunch
It’s January 2012 and you’ve just gotten your new Android 3.0-based phone. You’re going on a road trip so you start up the newly-released Foursquare. Gone are the checkins of 2010. Now you tell it where you’re going. This time we’re headed to Harrah’s at Stateline, Nevada. But this is no Foursquare you’ve ever seen before. They’ve finally integrated Waze, Tungle.me, and Yelp information into it. So, let’s discover more of what happens on our trip.
How Andreessen Horowitz Evaluates CEOs
31 May 2010
Great advice from a great entrepreneur
“I mean damn, did you even see the test
You got D’s, motherf*$@%&, D’s! Rosie Perez”
—Kanye West
No position in a company is more important than the CEO and, as a result, no job gets more scrutiny. Sadly, little of this analysis benefits CEOs as most of the discussions happen behind their backs. This post is a step in the opposite direction. By describing how Andreessen Horowitz evaluates CEOs, I am at the same time describing what I think the job of the CEO is. Here are the key questions we ask:
- Does the CEO know what to do?
- Can the CEO get the company to do what she knows?
- Did the CEO achieve the desired results against an appropriate set of objectives?
Why Apps suck
31 May 2010
Fred Wilson lists a number of reasons why he prefers web browsing to apps. I could not agree more with his assessment.
I’ve tried a few content apps on the iPad, including the much discussed Wired app. But I don’t like reading content via apps on the iPad and I gravitate to the Safari browser.
There are a bunch of reasons I feel this way and I thought I’d articulate them:
1) many of the apps treat pages as monolithic objects. you can’t cut and paste text, you can’t engage with the content. it is just like reading a magazine or a newspaper. if i wanted to read a magazine or newspaper in physical form, i’d do that.
2) as Bijan points out this morning, there are no links to other content apps in mobile apps.
3) i can keep multiple pages open in the browser, just like i do on my laptop. it’s what i’ve gotten used to. you can’t currently multi-task apps although i suspect apple will change that soon.
Continue reading on Fred’s blog and check my pre-iPad launch post What the App!?
Naval on Entrepreneurship
18 May 2010
Naval of VentureHacks on Entrepreneurship
John Doerr on the iPad
17 May 2010
Google Chrome’s speed test video – FAST
5 May 2010
You know I am not Google lover, but you gotta watch this – pretty awesome!
10 reasons to delete your Facebook account
5 May 2010
By Dan Yoder
After some reflection, I’ve decided to delete my account on Facebook. I’d like to encourage you to do the same. This is part altruism and part selfish. The altruism part is that I think Facebook, as a company, is unethical. The selfish part is that I’d like my own social network to migrate away from Facebook so that I’m not missing anything. In any event, here’s my “Top Ten” reasons for why you should join me and many others and delete your account.
10. Facebook’s Terms Of Service are completely one-sided. Let’s start with the basics. Facebook’s Terms Of Service state that not only do they own your data (section 2.1), but if you don’t keep it up to date and accurate (section 4.6), they can terminate your account (section 14). You could argue that the terms are just protecting Facebook’s interests, and are not in practice enforced, but in the context of their other activities, this defense is pretty weak. As you’ll see, there’s no reason to give them the benefit of the doubt. Essentially, they see their customers as unpaid employees for crowd-sourcing ad-targeting data.
9. Facebook’s CEO has a documented history of unethical behavior. From the very beginning of Facebook’s existence, there are questions about Zuckerberg’s ethics. According to BusinessInsider.com, he used Facebook user data to guess email passwords and read personal email in order to discredit his rivals. These allegations, albeit unproven and somewhat dated, nonetheless raise troubling questions about the ethics of the CEO of the world’s largest social network. They’re particularly compelling given that Facebook chose to fork over $65M to settle a related lawsuit alleging that Zuckerberg had actually stolen the idea for Facebook.
A TC teardown: what makes Groupon tick
2 May 2010
Originally posted by Steven Carpenter on TechCrunch
Much has been written about the rapid growth and success of Chicago-based local daily deal company, Groupon. And it is for good reason. No other startup has gone more quickly from launch to $1 billion+ in valuation except YouTube (12 months), which Groupon achieved in 16 months with its latest $135 million infusion two weeks ago. Just as unprecedented, the popularizer of the “group coupon” increased its valuation 4X in the span of just 3 months. What is going on here? Is Groupon yet another example of frothy venture capital valuations or is the company one of the next, enduring consumer Internet brands?
The Teardown
To find out, I did a teardown of Groupon’s business with data available on its website over the most recent quarter, compared my findings to what I calculated for the final three months of 2009, and then looked at how all of this compares to the top competitors. I conducted two analyses: 1) I looked at every deal across the Groupon network for a single day last November and a day this past April to see how revenue is scaling and how the company is benefiting from rapidly opening support for new cities. I then analyzed every deal listed on the Groupon website across 5 cities (San Francisco, Boston, St. Louis, San Diego, and Denver ) for all of Q4 2009 and Q1 2010 to determine how the company is growing once it enters a market and to see how the product mix is changing. The key finding is that Groupon is achieving considerable revenue growth across all measures: more customers, higher deal prices, and rapidly expanding markets.
Continue reading here
Originally posted by Vivek Wadhwa on TechCrunch
In my last post, I discussed why the odds of a rookie entrepreneur getting seed financing from a VC are very slim. The reality is that less than 5% of venture money goes to seed-stage startups; VCs typically invest when a company has a working product, a tested business model, and a strong management team. It’s the entrepreneurs who take the risk; not the VCs. They beg and borrow money from friends and family, max out their credit cards, and sometimes make do by living at home with their parents. Yet, very often, it’s the VCs who get the glory. I don’t think that’s fair. So in this post, I’m going to highlight three bootstrapped companies, and share the advice of their founders. In my books, entrepreneurs are the real heroes—those who make the innovation happen. They are the ones you should be following on Twitter and learning from, not boastful VCs.
6 reasons you’re not rocking Social Media
29 April 2010
Originally posted by Lisa Barone on Small Business Trends
You know the value is there in social media, but despite your best efforts (or what you think are your best efforts), you’re still struggling to attract anyone. What’s going on and how can you change your social media luck? Below are six reasons SMBs often fail in social media and how you can turn it around.
Stop me when this sounds familiar.
You have no framework: Perhaps the largest reason small business owners fail to see an ROI with social media is because they jumped in without creating a social plan or framework for what they were trying to do. Social media may be ‘newer’ (in theory, anyway), but it’s still a marketing channel. That means before you go into it you want to develop a framework for your objectives, know how you’ll achieve them and determine the key performance indicators you’ll note along the way to make sure you’re on track. Walking into any marketing channel without a clear plan for why you’re there is a recipe for disaster. Make sure you create your strategy BEFORE you try to implement one.
If you need help putting things in place or figuring out how/what/where you should be tracking, the folks at Web Analytics Demystified and Altimeter Group put out a free white paper on social marketing analytics that includes some really powerful information. I recommend you give it a read.
Continue reading on Small Business Trends
Awesome Jon Stewart and the lost iPhone Apple debacle
29 April 2010
Originally posted on TechCrunch
Over the last two weeks countless blog posts and articles have been written about the Gizmodo/iPhone leak and the subsequent police investigation. Few have been as scathing toward Apple as a segment that aired on tonight’s Daily Show. And while Apple has long made a habit of mostly ignoring what the press and media says about it, you can be sure this will get their attention.
You can watch the full Appholes video here
To read the full TechCrunch article click here
Being born under this sign determines many talents, as well as other characteristics that may not be so commendable. Rats are very lively and need a lot of mental and physical stimulation. They can be calm and perceptive, but sometimes their brains can cause a mental restlessness, tempting them to take on too much, only to discover they are unable to meet their commitments. Rats are blessed with one of the best intellects going. Add to their intelligence a curiosity and a bright imagination, and they seem as sharp as a needle.
Detailed Description
of The Water Rat