jon steinberg

I took the dirt road...

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 20:27:00 -0400

This is a story, I’ve told before but never as an adult, and having been blogging for over a year it seemed well worth the time. Especially given that in retrospect, it’s odd to consider how close you can come to a path you set out on and how much harder and winding that path can be. The picture on the left was taken when I was around 8 years old. Moments before it was taken, I told my mother that someday I wanted to be a Disney Imagineer.

How I got it in my head that I wanted to be an Imagineer was probably a mix of the fact that I was unathletic, got a computer at a young age, and liked to invent things. I knew that being an Imagineer involved the latter two; in fact, I must have read somewhere that being an Imagineer was the pinnacle of computers and creativity.

So I had this dream, and every pass that I missed or time I was picked last, I held onto that dream. And so in the summer of 1993 when I saw the ad below in Scientific American urging me to “dial into” a BBS with my modem, to become an Imagineer, I jumped at the chance. I dialed in and began to answer a

wide array of personality questions that scrolled across my Toshiba Gas-Plasma Orange luggable screen. In the section where it asked for a resume, I wrote ideas that I had for theme park attractions. I’d like to say that I was surprised when about a week later I got a call from a Vice President at Disney Imagineering inviting me out to Glenview California with my parents, but I wasn’t. They were looking for adults, but the multiple choice personality test flagged me as having the traits they were looking for, and they thought my ideas were cute. After tours and interviews, I began an amazing internship that lasted two years at Imagineering and then several more years when that team moved to Sony to develop the Metreon complex in SF.

To the last of my knowledge, I was the youngest Imagineer in the company’s history at the time.

At 15, I spent a summer living in California on my own with other Imagineering interns; they were in college. I struggled with very little direction or understanding to make REAL contributions to the teams working on the Aladdin virtual reality attraction. I held myself to an incredibly high standard without a real understanding of the uniqueness of my situation or the opportunity. I learned a ton about computer graphics, design, invention, companies like Silicon Graphics, the Internet, and creativity. I thought I knew some things when I got out there but being surrounded by the collective brilliance of the Imagineering R&D team, I realized how far I had to come. I made a couple life long friends, and learned what it really meant to both invent and execute.

Coming off of Disney I made a couple mistakes in my view. I either should have gone West to Stanford or postponed college if gone at all. There was a loose offer to continue working with this team, and I think I could have made that happen. Going to college in the East was a mistake. I didn’t allign with my interests and while I was stimulated, it was diversion that led no where.

And so it’s funny, 16 years later working in the NY tech and media community and spending time on that same Silicon Graphics campus that I visited so long ago to be in much the same position that I was at 15. Being surrounded by brilliant people in the world of technology, creativity, and invention.

Every time I attend a NY Tech Meetup or see a startup pitch, I reminisce about the “Demos” the Imagineering team used to do with new technologies or products. Every time I drive up to the SGI campus, I get a shiver thinking about my trip there with the Disney team in 1993. SGI demoed a geo technology to us - it was some rotating globe you could “zoom in on.” Something about polygons…

And then I think, about how unpredictable life is and how much longer the road always is. I founded a startup and had pitched at Benchmark and Sequoia by the age of 22, even winning funding from Benchmark - but after all it was 2000. After the dot com bubble burst, I went to business school, something I swore I would never do. I consulted for a year for Booz Allen - the worst year of my life. I did not wake up every morning glad to be doing what I was doing.

I did business development for a startup that had some unique internet data that it modeled into financial research reports. I acquired some more data for them and that somehow led to me becoming a Series 7 equity salesperson catering to hedge funds. And then finally I found my way back to technology and innovation.

I always knew what I wanted to do. I knew at 8. And then life intervenes, and I suppose whereas some people find a superhighway, I set out on the same cross country journey but somehow ended up taking the dirt roads. With that said, there have been some great restaurants, some bad restaurants, and plenty of local attractions along the way. I continue to know what I love, and I continue to drive.

Lifehacker lists DropBoxee in "Five Ways to Get More from Boxee"

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 13:25:00 -0400

Lifehacker lists DropBoxee in "Five Ways to Get More from Boxee": “DropBoxee just views the video, music, or pictures you or anyone else has uploaded to a “drop.” That saves you the trouble of manually transferring files to your Boxee sources, and makes it easy to, say, grab pictures from an in-law’s computer for a slideshow you’re prepping for later”

My DropBoxee Video Acceptance Speech DropBoxee won the...

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 07:47:00 -0400

My DropBoxee Video Acceptance Speech

DropBoxee won the People’s Choice Award in the Music Category of the Boxee Developer Challenge! DropBoxee was also in the top 5 in the Pictures and Video Categories!

DropBoxee for Music: playlist.io + Boxee Put music in a drop.io...

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 21:44:00 -0400

DropBoxee for Music: playlist.io + Boxee

Put music in a drop.io and play it easily anywhere on Boxee. Load up songs at work…listen to them in the drop…later that day when you go to a party, pull them up on Boxee on a TV! Create playlists for friends who have Boxee and just tell them the drop name.

Please vote for DropBoxee below as your favorite music app in the Boxee Developer Challenge!

After all, eveything is a fad, even Life, the Universe, and Everything

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 23:17:00 -0400

In 2000, everyone reading this blog was likely too busy working on a B2B idea and proclaiming the stupidity of B2C ecommerce (that’s so 1999) to watch TV, but that was the year that Survivor premiered on CBS to enormous ratings. The sitcom standby, Friends, was running strong in its seventh season and still enjoying consistent ranking in the top 10 of primetime ratings.

There were likely ad buyers at the time unwilling to buy time around Survivor. Not because it was questionable, but rather because it was a “fad.” These marketers probably continued to buy Friends, while commenting to their Survivor spot buying colleagues at other firms, “Survivor is stupid, reality TV is crap….it’ll never last.” But how flawed is that logic? Survivor proved to have some legs, but even if it was a one season fad, why not buy time around a highly rated show even if it’s only popular one season.

How about those who steer away from trendy restaurants not because it sounds distasteful but rather because it’s trendy, a flash in the pan. But why is longevity a reason in and of itself to value something.

I like trendy; I like trends. If something is good or interesting now; it is good and interesting now. The only thing that’s forever is family, close friends, and ideally integrity.

Of course, this comes back to Twitter and my annoyance at people who scoff at Twitter or the concept of advertising on Twitter. 10% of twitter users may produce 90% of the content, but that still means that it has 4.5M to 9M registered users and the eyes of the web tuning into it at a rate of 125M visitors a month.

Further it’s not an either or game. You can advertise everywhere you want offline and online, including Twitter. If the only reason your corporate twitter account gets attention is because it’s on Twitter that’s fine.

If you don’t find this logic compelling, then you probably also avoided buying tech stocks during the bubble and predicted the housing market decline for the past 5 years. If you say anything long enough you’ll eventually be right, because in the long run the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent and the long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. Because at the end of the day what’s not a fad? GM was a fad.

Remember, “You have to run Windows for file compatibility.” FAD

It seems the only industry that has a reasonable view of its product-related longevity is Broadway, which begins selling tickets to a production with the incoming ackowledgement that it will have a “run.”

And after around 80-100 years all of our lives will be over, so I suppose you could even argue that each of us as humans is a fad.

For the record, I think Twitter will be around at least long enough that my 4-month old daughter will someday want her Twitter-name, so I grabbed it. But at the end of the day, all that matters is that it’s the most important media creation consumption platform around right now, so only the foolish would snicker.

DropBoxee

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 16:31:00 -0400

VOTE FOR DROPBOXEE in the Boxee Developer Challenge!

boxee + drop.io now live in the App Box! (Boxee Blog Post)

Dropboxee for Boxee Released in Boxee’s App Box

I’m really psyched to announce Dropboxee. I’m a big fan of boxee, and when I heard about the developer contest, I knew I had to build something. I often have home videos on my desktop that I want to quickly and easily get onto my AppleTV Boxee. There was simply no easy way to do it.

Pairing this need with my love of knitting together APIs (and words) and DropBoxee came to me.

Without even asking, I knew that Sam Lessin’s Drop.io API would be flexible to do just about anything. Sure enough it is.

I knew with the right developer, I could have this built quickly and elegantly. I had the great fortune of meeting Nick Perez on ODesk willing to build it for me as a work for hire. His skills, speed, and attention to detail far exceeded my hopes. As soon as DropBox opens their API, we have plans to add that support to the App, and I look forward to continue to working with Nick on projects.

DropBoxee Real Life Walkthrough from Jon Steinberg on Vimeo.

DropBoxee is the easiest way to get your own video, music and images on Boxee!

* Step 1: Drop your content in a drop.io
* Step 2: Enter the drop name in the Dropboxee App on Boxee
* Step 3: There is no Step 3

DropBoxee is the easiest way to get your own video, music and images on Boxee!

Step 1: Drop your content in a drop.io
Step 2: Enter the drop name in the Dropboxee App on Boxee
Step 3: There is no Step 3

Twitter: @dropboxee

My Tier 1 Feeds

Fri, 22 May 2009 09:45:53 -0400

My Tier 1 Feeds: I’m often asked by friends and colleagues how I stay on top of the endless stream of tech news. Let me begin by saying, that this is an obsession, which I’m certain actually decreases productivity. With that said, tech is my passion, profession, and hobby all rolled into one, so I guess it beats watching sitcoms. This link is a “bundle” of the feeds I label “Tier 1” in Google Reader. It’s the news I never miss. Enjoy!

A rising tide lifts all boats, or enough to eat for everyone

Thu, 14 May 2009 12:59:01 -0400

Everyone obsesses about competition when product and execution are so much more important. And it’s also execution in the right area/sector at a time when businesses or people need your product, and the economics of the market space allow for success. May you live in interesting times and be a creature of your times.

For example, being an app developer on the iPhone is a great place to be. The app store allows for tons of entrepreneurs to make money using a friction free platform. To make a VC type return, you have to be one of the best producers on the platform, but there is plenty to eat and all boats rise for those who are shooting, or willing as a fallback, to be Ramen-profitable.

The same can be said of cloud storage. It just makes sense for consumers and businesses, and this tide will raise many players in the space including Pogoplug, drop.io, and Dropbox. Ryan McIntyre wrote a great post about Foundry’s investment in Pogoplug. He argues that Pogo is much more affordable that “true” cloud platforms, and I think his argument makes sense. However, the overall market shift to cloud will benefit all players who have good products in the space. I’m going to buy a Pogo and continue to use the other two. Some consumers and businesses may use only one. But the reality is, you want to be one of these guys and not a consumer hard-drive manufacturer targeting end-buyers.

The macro trends so often outstrip everything else. Businesses worry so much about their competitors “beating” them when relatively few businesses fail because of competitors. Most failures can be attributed to failed business models, poor execution, or a solution looking for a problem. And, relatively few businesses exist in markets where network effects result in winner-take-all.

The importance of industry and market trends is why so many VCs and public market investors use a thematic investing approach. Unless you can do a hedged trade, who wants to bet against even the losers in a market witnessing tremendous tailwinds. As an entrepreneur, you don’t have the opportunity to go long a good company in a bad sector, while simultaneously shorting the sector index.

I've seen the future and the rumors of OS death are highly under-exaggerated

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 10:05:00 -0400

Image by Paul Watson via Flickr

You hear about the cloud taking over and operating systems being obsolete, but it’s only when you get your hands dirty that you really understand the scale and speed of this transition.

I installed Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) Netbook Remix on my Acer Aspire One Netbook over the weekend. It took about 15 minutes to install, after which I was running Firefox and a few other pre-installed apps with ease. Web browsing, settings, and wireless networking via the preloaded desktop is completely intuitive. For the average user on OS X or Windows XP, going to Ubuntu will be less a transition than Vista.

Getting Adobe Flash to run properly was a hasle that took hours. Similarly, installing new apps through the package system requires that you be a bit of a geek. Your parents could use Ubuntu with ease, but there is no way they’d be able to install new applications.

With that said, the price is right (free) and this OS runs better than XP on the new cheap hardware (netbooks) that are the next growth area in hardware. Further, most users really only need a browser. After all it’s no longer 1993, when you were buying packaged software and installing games you bought at Gamestop. With everything in the browser, and the fact that most people only click a few icons that are on the desktop, who cares what the desktop is running on?

A few more tweaks, and Ubuntu is all you need.

First Look at Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope [Screenshot Tour] (lifehacker.com)
Newest Ubuntu, ‘Jaunty Jackalope’, arrives (blogs.chron.com)
Can Microsoft Wean Big Business Off XP? (businessinsider.com)
Microsoft’s Cheap Netbook Plan: ‘Windows 7 Starter’ (businessinsider.com)

The easiest money is the money you already have

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 10:50:27 -0400

Image via Wikipedia

In the past three weeks, I have disputed around 4 credit card charges. I find that I average around one dispute a week. Here are my most recent disputes:

Wells Fargo refused to refund a “mortgage deposit,” despite being unable to deliver a mortgage to me less than 25 hours before my apartment closing.
Equinox Fitness charged my wife for two months of membership on an account that it should no longer have been charging on. It took me four phone calls to get a refund.
Vonage attempted to charge me a $44 line cancellation fee despite my having been with them twice the duration of their 2-year contract period.
Charged twice on another fitness fee. Same charge twice, a one-time dupe.
My parental-leave checks mistakenly left-off several days I should have been paid for. (This was partly my fault, but I spent the time to study the stubs and discovered it.)

I won all the disputes. Average time was probably about 45 min per dispute. It amazes me that you can sign up for anything on line in 5 minutes, but cancelling and getting a refund is so much harder for these companies to do.

I try to charge everything on my Amex, and then I inspect it around once a week online to look for errors. I always find some error. My first step it to call the merchant. Around 75% of the time I need to escalate to a supervisor. There’s a lot of repeting myself, so I typically do email or perform some other task in tandem so that my time is not wasted.

If the supervisor is unable to resolve my issue, I email the management team of the company. I find their email addresses by going to the press release section of their web site and identifying the structure of the email addresses (i.e. firstname_lastname@companythatscrewedme.com) and then going to the management section to get the names.

Simultaneously, I dispute the charge on American Express. Their dispute resolution is fantastic; they immediately credit you for the amount and contact the merchant. I also strongly discourage the use of debit cards; they are much harder to get funds back on.

When I asks friends and colleagues if they perform similar disputes, most respond they don’t get mis-charged. They should add “at least that they know about.”

I have to give some credit to my mentor in credit charge disputing, my dad. He gets into the office each day before 8am to check on this kind of stuff. If you say you don’t have the time to check and dispute, you’re either not waking up early enough, or enjoy giving away money to companies that are trying to defraud you either by error or active choice.

The best way to save money in this recession is to keep the money you already have…

The Kindle Boxee-ify Tweetout Challenge

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 18:40:33 -0400

Image via Wikipedia

Let me begin by saying this has nothing to do with boxee. It’s just that the analogy of boxee on AppleTV is how the idea resonated with me.

The challenge:

Build a piece of software that allows a user of a Kindle, to:

Select a section of text and Tweet it out with comments via the Twitter API
Generate and fire a tweet on demand with the title, author, and section # of what he is reading, and maybe even a link to the book on Amazon (with affiliate code?) also through the API
The user must be able to perform this tweeting using his own twitter account; which means he must be able to login on the Kindle
These Tweets must be sent over the GPRS connection on the Kindle
Existing Kindle controls and navigation must allow for this functionality

This “add-on” must be able to be applied to the Kindle via the existing USB port. So the user must be able to download this “add-on” to his PC and then apply it to the Kindle by simply connecting the Kindle to the PC/Mac via the USB cable that comes bundled with the Kindle. No soldering!

Must work on Kindle Version’s 1 and 2.

If you’re up for the challenge please email more or leave a comment. I’d love to angel-invest in something like this. I’m a huge Kindle fan, but the inability to do anything social on it makes for an unnatural experience with a product like this.

Boxee springs new API, Hulu work-around (news.cnet.com)
Another Kindle Projection: 500,000 Sales This Year (businessinsider.com)

Fooled by Barriers to Entry

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 12:17:00 -0400

The most influential and singularly worthwhile portion of my business school education was my sessions in Bruce Greenwald’s class, Economics of Strategic Behavior. Twice a week we thrashed through case studies of firms like Coca Cola, Dell, Wall-Mart, and Coors. However, at the end, Greenwald concluded the class with the same sentiment that he concludes his book, Competition Demystified:

“It is true that many firms may have the potential to enjoy competitive advantages is some markets….Still these triumphs are infrequent, no matter how brilliant the plan and flawless the execution….However, strategy is not the whole story. An obsession with strategy at the expense of the pursuit of operational excellence is equally damaging. There is simply too much evidence of the variability among strategically identical firms, and of the speed with which performance can be improved without any changes to the larger economic environment, to discount the importance of management.”

To often success is attributed to competitive advantages that are assigned in retrospect. There always seems to be a barrier to entry that is used to explain a company’s success. When in reality, we know it is always about the golfer and not the clubs. (I don’t like golf, just the analogy.)

It is important to map out the competitive landscape, but the greatest barriers to entry are executional in nature: product quality and differentiation, sales, team talent, and innovation. I’m not arguing for the entry into commodity markets or other flawed strategies - simply that there seems to me to be an obsession with what really amounts to attempts to build assurances against competition.

For years we said that Coca Cola had barriers entry, but a shift to healthier diets allowed juices, bottled water, and energy drinks to emerge forcing Coke to diversify. Microsoft was said to have had the greatest of all barriers to entry: network externalities through compatibility till file interoperability and web-based computing put that “lock in” to bed. In this market, Microsoft had the “barriers,” but Apple had the operational excellence. The past decade shows near 1000% growth in AAPL and -50% growth in MSFT:

Can you really think of any cases where success wasn’t truly attributed to great product and innovation? And when those dual pillars start to crumble, so too does the company’s supposed barrier to entry? I can’t think of any of the pantheon of great companies that started with what we would define as a barrier to entry. It’s only in retrospect that we invent these barriers, such as “economies of scale,” which you can scale as you scale. No one needs massive scale day one; you can build scale with demand.

In fact, the greatest barrier to entry is probably adaptability, which in and of itself defies the fixed notion of barrier. Remember when Starbucks had barriers to entry? It turned out that as product quality and experience declined coupled with a weakening economy, the wining attribute in the coffee market changed to value.

Why didn’t Starbucks execute immediately on a value proposition? Why not switch to $1 cups of coffee? I would trade their barriers all day for Greenwald’s “operational excellence.” Isn’t the real barrier to entry operating and competing ferociously? We know that all fertile markets or “gold mines” invite competitive farmers and prospectors. The question is not what are your barriers to entry but rather - how will you compete?

Less is the new more

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 15:55:00 -0500

When we had the baby, I knew I wanted to capture and share video, but the thought of spending hours in iMovie seemed overwhelming. Between the demands of baby and work, the last thing I wanted to do was spend hours editing. At the same time, unedited clips are unsatisfying for the viewer.

I had used Flip video cameras before, but it was only once I had used it five or six times that I realize the value is in the software not the camera. With Flip, I can cut and stitch clips, add a little music, and be uploading in under ten minutes. The cutting, titling, and music (only one mp3 per movie) are very basic but I’d glady give up a kitchen sink of features for what really matters: ease of use and efficiency.

It the same tradeoff that makes Google Apps a winner for the vast majority of tasks over MS Office. What matters in the office tools arena is: access, ability to collaborate, and streamlined workflow.

This is the same with almost every major web tool that I use and enjoy. It’s why I use tumblr instead of wordpress. It’s why I like the iphone instead of the G1. The more features the more confusion. If life is a series of trade-offs, I’d rather long for a feature once a year than be overwhelmed by a cornucopia of sub menus that I ignore on the other 364 days.

It’s like my somewhat portly college entrance advisor once exhorted my senior class: “I’m well-rounded,” motioning to his frame, “don’t you be well rounded.”

Number of Tweets with URLs Many thanks to @jstrellner for the...

Mon, 29 Dec 2008 22:15:00 -0500

Number of Tweets with URLs

Many thanks to @jstrellner for the 4.095 stat!

The New American Citzen: The Potential for the Internet to Reengage Americans in Civic and Political Life

Mon, 29 Dec 2008 08:54:00 -0500

After reading Fred’s post yesterday about Correspondence, it occurred to me that my senior thesis from 1999 was more relevant than ever. I begin with a discussion of de Tocqueville, progress to initiative and referendum campaigns, take a detour into the Teledemocracy experiments of the 70’s, and conclude with a discussion of what we now call Web 2.0 technologies.

If you read, I’d love your feedback via the comments.

You can download the full paper here: http://bit.ly/newamericancitizen

or view at scribd:

The New American Citzen: The Potential for the Internet to Reengage Americans in Civic and Political Life

Everything but code

Sat, 27 Dec 2008 14:37:44 -0500

The notion of the ultralight hacker team has permeated web startups over the past few years. There were always teams of two to three individuals building software, but the extent and quality of the output of these teams seems to me to have reached a new level in recent times. Entire, fully-functional products are now created and operated by teams of typically two; tumblr, tipjoy, and disqus immediately come to mind. (Paul Graham may deserve part of the credit for institutionalizing the team of two, but I’m sure someone will point out plenty of prior art.)

What I have not seen emerge quite as much is the “everything but code” (EBC) team member. Just like the agile coding members of the team can do anything required in creating the product, the EBC can do anything required in non-product creation. This includes primarily deals and sales but extends also to operations, project planning, legal etc. The EBC may also do things closely tied to coding, such as developer outreach, API policies, and product roadmap, so a technical understanding is required.

Rolled all together the EBC tasks make up one coherent and efficiently busy role for a startup. Further so many of the tasks are the same rose by different names: when have deals not required salesmanship and selling not required dealsmanship? Shouldn’t someone who’s in charge of the sales pipeline be capable of managing the product rollout pipeline.

Yet despite the obvious nature of the EBC role, we continue to see specialty segmentation on the business side in startups that we would consider passe on the coding side. In startups, we’ve moved away from the rigid classification of software development specialities, and yet on the business side we model roles on the bureaucratic classification systems employed by companies like Dunder Mifflin and Innotech.

Many startups find themselves needing 1/3 of a business development person, 1/3 of a salesperson, and 1/3 of a marketing person. They struggle to divide these responsibilities amongst an already small and already incredibly efficient/busy/taxed technical team, and wait to make a hire in each area until it hits 3/3. Or suboptimally, they hire a “sales guy,” who doesn’t do business development, and has 2/3rds of slack capacity. They should have just hired one EBC at the point of the three 1/3 needs, and recent conversations lead me to believe that there are a lot of EBCs out there.

If one or two all terrain hackers can handle everything related to product creation, the EBC should be equally broad in non-coding tasks. We’ve witnessed this efficiency on the technical side, so it seems only logical to model it on the business side. I would extend this logic and argue that the release early and iterate philosophy with code should be applied to partnership deals, pricing strategies, and marketing approaches.

If one or two people can build/code an early to mid-stage product, surely we should model that into the business side and create the same kind of efficiency in everything but code.

Two books I did research on...

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 09:10:00 -0500

Cover via Amazon Cover via Amazon

I found both on Google Books, and then bitlyized the links…

Worked as a research assistant for my thesis advisor and friend Paul Starr on his book, “The Creation of the Media”

http://bit.ly/creationmedia

A crazy theory I had in Prof John Wilmerding’s Early American art class made it into his book “Signs of the Artist.”

http://bit.ly/signsartist

Look at how crazy the expanded urls are. Adding scanned books to the list of URLs people will want to track and need to shorten…

Howard's new book...

Sat, 22 Nov 2008 20:47:00 -0500

Let me begin by saying that Howard Lindzon is a friend, so my review of his book is completely lacking subjectivity. With that said, I tore through his 200 page book in about one cross-country flight. The thesis is absolutely novel for an investing book: buy winners on the way up.

Whereas most pundits would advise you to buy “cheap stocks,” Howard details how money can be made in stocks like TASR, CROX, HANS, CME, etc. When I was on Wall Street, these were the very stocks that my hedge fund clients made their most significant profits in.

While market conditions as a whole make individual stock picking difficult at best, quarters from now, individuals will return to the market. And they will do so with a lost confidence in the large insititutions to protect and grow their savings in funds that were previously called “safe.”

In this new market, I think individuals will be required to be more self-sufficient. This book arms people to pick stocks with basic research and simple guides. Howard debunks concepts such as “Averaging down,” which can be really dangerous to individuals, and “being too late,” which can prevent individuals from getting in on winners.

There are also interesting comparisons and learnings from the venture market with quasi interviews from leading VCs such as Fred Wilson and Brad Feld.

The book only has passing references to Wallstrip; it is very much a simple and straightfoward guide to research followed by technical analysis. The technical advice boils down to trend following with an introduction to Average True Range (ATR). ATR is a valuable metric that allows investors to sell out of positions when a stock moves down below a typical average move

The book is great…congrats to Howard!

Breakfast with Adam Seifer of Get in My Belly fame. He’s...

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 13:50:31 -0500

Breakfast with Adam Seifer of Get in My Belly fame. He’s documented every meal he’s eaten for the past 6 years…wow.

DebRA of America Wins Google Grant For AdWords Utilization

Sun, 09 Nov 2008 18:54:50 -0500

This is an amazing and important organization that I work with. So psyched they got a Google Grant!
-j

DebRA of America Wins Google Grant For AdWords Utilization

With an AdWords Google Grant, The Dystrophic Epidermolysis Bullosa Research Association (DebRA) get closer to their goal: a cure for the 50,000 children affected by epidermolysis bullosa every year and continued support of the families affected by the disease.

New York, NY (PRWEB) November 9, 2008 — The Dystrophic Epidermolysis Bullosa Research Association (DebRA) of America receives a Google Grant that will significantly aid their work that focuses on the support of children and families affected by epidermolysis bullosa (EB) and the funding of research undertaken to find a cure for the disease. DebRA’s Google Grant consists of in-kind keyword advertising using Google AdWords. DebRA will utilize AdWords to raise awareness about EB and their efforts to support affected families and fund research.

DebRA is the only national 501(c)3 registered non-profit organization dedicated to both promoting research to find new treatments and a cure for EB and providing information, care and support for people with EB and their families. The Google Grants program supports organizations sharing Google’s philosophy of community service to help the world in areas such as science and technology, education, global public health, the environment, youth advocacy, and the arts.

We are the only national organization dedicated to supporting families affected by EB and funding peer-reviewed research around the country. Recent accomplishments in each area of our work put us in a good place, and it is my hope that the Google Grant will help us reach out to more children and families in 2009. They are our heroes.

Many of our clients have great success with AdWords. Because search engine queries determine which ad is displayed, AdWords brings together like-minded interests of the viewer and the advertiser, automatically! I am confident that AdWords will become a valuable tool for DebRA as they work to raise awareness about their efforts in 2009.
DebRA’s Executive Director, Mary Sprague, states, “We are the only national organization dedicated to supporting families affected by EB and funding peer-reviewed research around the country. Recent accomplishments in each area of our work put us in a good place, and it is my hope that the Google Grant will help us reach out to more children and families in 2009. They are our heroes.”

EB is a serious genetic skin disease that affects 1 out of every 50,000 children born each year. Patients are called “Butterfly Children” because their skin is as fragile as a butterfly’s wings. Large areas of their bodies must be bandaged at all times because the gentlest touch can cause blisters and friction can cause painful, open wounds. Sun exposure causes these same symptoms, which require constant, acute care by their families.

DebRA is encouraged by the Google Grant because it kicks off their efforts to gain 12 corporate sponsors in 2009, one for each month of the year. DebRA continues work to garner sponsors in conjunction with The Laidlaw Group, a Boston-based full-service advertising firm providing integrated communications solutions and strategic design products to help clients intelligently meet and exceed their business goals.

Principal of The Laidlaw Group, Cindy Laidlaw, states, “Many of our clients have great success with AdWords. Because search engine queries determine which ad is displayed, AdWords brings together like-minded interests of the viewer and the advertiser, automatically! I am confident that AdWords will become a valuable tool for DebRA as they work to raise awareness about their efforts in 2009.”

Designed for 501(c)(3) non-profit organizations, Google Grants is a unique in-kind advertising program harnessing the power of Google AdWords advertising product. Google Grants has awarded AdWords advertising to hundreds of non-profit groups whose missions range from animal welfare to literacy, from supporting homeless children to promoting HIV education.

Find DebRA on the web www.debra.org. Contact Mary Sprague at 212.868.1573 for more information about DebRA’s programs that support children and families affected by epidermolysis bullosa (EB) and fund research to find a cure for the disease. Contact Cassandra Nicholson at 617.423.2801 x203 for more information on this news story.