"Of course a great way to show you can build stuff is to build a prototype of the product you are raising money for. This is why so many VCs tell entrepreneurs to “come back when you have a demo.” They aren’t wondering whether your product can be built – they are wondering whether you can build it."
Nov 18
Oct 30
ericfriedman:mikehudack:kevintwohy:
I’ve had these pictures stuck in my head for the last few weeks. The left is a sketch Jack Dorsey made of his concept for Twitter back in 2006, and the right (if you don’t remember) is what Facebook looked like in 2005 when it was essentially a sloppy version of Friendster for students of a particular Ivy League college. When something hits such immense scale, it can be difficult to remember that it once existed as such a fleetingly simple, unmitigated idea. Some of the sharpest people the industry could muster (along with hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars) have been bought to bear to cultivate these technologies into their present forms. But those are effects, not causes.
Think about that the next time you sketch something on the back of an envelope.
Oct 22
View of San Francisco from the Bay Bridge. Was on the way back from Napa this past weekend. (No Photoshopping… this is straight from the camera!)
Oct 06
Increo Solutions acquired by Box.net
I’m very excited to announce that Increo has been
acquired by Box.net!
In talking with the Box.net team, we realized that they shared our vision for the future of documents on the Internet and, with their solid product offerings and rapidly growing userbase, were well-primed to take a leadership role in the online collaboration space.
We could not be happier to bring our technology to Box.net and can not wait to deliver easy document previewing, annotation, and embedding to Box’s customers.
TechCrunch is covering the acquisition here:
“I spoke to Box.net CEO Aaron Leviebriefly about the acquisition. He says the key reason they acquired Increo is to integrate the collaboration and annotation functionality from Backboard. Increo’s underlying technology for displaying documents on websites is also attractive to Box.net.”
And Increo’s official statement on the acquisition is here:
http://blog.increosolutions.com/2009/10/increo-solutions-acquired-by-boxnet/
Sep 28
"People sometimes think things like twitter just take off overnight. Nope. It took them a few years to get real traction. Keep at it if you are still in year 1 or 2 of your business. Give your business at least 3 years."
Sep 14
Book Titles, If They Were Written Today
Then: The Gospel of Matthew
Now: 40 Days and a Mule: How One Man Quit His Job and Became the Boss
Sep 12
"Remember that every company was once a startup. Two people and an idea. Microsoft started when Bill Gates and Paul Allen were students. Google started when Larry Page and Sergey Brin were students. Apple started with just Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak… when they were both students, but hardly in the traditional sense."
Sep 11
Gilman School Profiles an Early Entrepreneur
Very very honored to be profiled in the run-up to my 5th year reunion at Gilman School. Can’t wait to see everyone there!
“Jeff Seibert left Baltimore in 2004 with two important things besides his Gilman education: an entrepreneurial spirit and a passion for computer programming and web design.
As he leaves California for Boston in 2009, he still has all of those things, not to mention a Stanford degree. Plus, he’s got something else.”
Sep 02
Installing PHP 5.2.10 on Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard
Apple deserves serious props for bringing the installed version of PHP up to 5.3 on Snow Leopard, but some projects *cough CakePHP* can’t yet handle the goodness.
Sure, you could virtualize Ubuntu running whatever setup you desired, but if you already had a local setup on Leopard, it might make more sense to downgrade to PHP 5.2 and get back to work.
There’s a lot of confusion and little documentation online about how this is done, so here is the easiest way to make it happen:
- Install the “Snow Leopard” version of MacPorts from: http://www.macports.org/install.php
- In Terminal, run:
> sudo port -v selfupdate > sudo port -f uninstall installed > sudo port install php52 +mysql5 +sqlite > sudo cp /opt/local/etc/php5/php.ini-dist /opt/local/etc/php5/php.ini
- Open /etc/apache2/httpd.conf and change line 114 from:
LoadModule php5_module libexec/apache2/libphp5.so
to:LoadModule php5_module /opt/local/apache2/modules/libphp5.so
- Open /opt/local/etc/php5/php.ini and change line 761 from:
mysql.default_socket =
to:mysql.default_socket = /var/mysql/mysql.sock
- Use the Sharing pane of System Preferences to stop and start Web Sharing
Purists will argue that you now have lots of extra software installed on your system, which is true, but let’s be real: these 5 steps are the fastest way to get back to being productive.
Update (March 30, 2010): If you are seeing weird errors with curl and SSL/https connections, it’s because the version of libcurl that this install is NOT compatible. Here’s how to fix it:
> sudo mv /opt/local/lib/libcurl.4.dylib /opt/local/lib/libcurl.4.dylib.old > sudo ln -s /usr/lib/libcurl.4.dylib /opt/local/lib/libcurl.4.dylib > sudo mv /opt/local/lib/libcurl.dylib /opt/local/lib/libcurl.dylib.old > sudo ln -s /usr/lib/libcurl.dylib /opt/local/lib/libcurl.dylib
Enjoy!
Check out the pre-show for our presentation at Pokin’ Holes in Boston this Thursday, September 3.
The show will be filmed live at 7pm at Vintage Lounge in the financial district - don’t be late!
