NYConvergence ORIGINAL
by: Amy Berryhill

If there is a fight in the mind of any creator, where the battle between sharing and profiting begins, Creative Commons licensing offers a treaty.

A panel discussion about Creative Commons' open copyright licenses took place at an Arts, Culture and Technology meetup last night. Speakers included a museum technology director, artists, a lawyer and a representative from Creative Commons.

"The great thing about Creative Commons is that it gives you a lot of choices," said Shelley Bernstein, chief of technology at the Brooklyn Museum. "You can start with a level of risk where you are comfortable, and move forward from there if it makes sense."

The Brooklyn Museum uses Creative Commons licensing on their website and is reviewing their entire collection to determine appropriate levels of copyright for each piece. "The Brooklyn Museum has a community oriented approach and we take that very seriously," said Bernstein.

According to Fred Benenson, a product manager at Creative Commons and professor at NYU, that is precisely the point. "The founding fathers knew that public access was important to the public good," Benenson explained. He outlined how open standards like TCP/IP, Ethernet and HTML have led to quantum leaps in innovation, advancements that he argued would not have been possible with restrictive copyrights.

Because the Internet developed from open standards and protocols, it is no surprise that digital works often enjoy less restrictive rights than their non-digital counterparts. "I would never make a purely digital product without the intention that it would be copied," said Tim Whidden, an artist with MTAA and frequent user of Creative Commons licensing.

"You have to be on your customer's terms," added Bernstein, "and those terms have changed."

Better late than never (I guess). I finally got around to writing a quick blog post on a press release that came out a few weeks ago...

I’m happy (and proud) to finally announce that Tycoon Publishing, the leading provider of premium online investor education, has acquired TickerHound.

Before I say anything else, I really have to take a moment to thank the New York technology community for all of the help, support and advice over the last few years.

Thanks to those who believed in us when we needed it. Thanks to those of you who gave us guidance when we needed it. And thanks for offering some constructive criticism when we needed to hear it.

Bringing a start-up from napkin to sale is an incredibly difficult process. Add that to the fact that I had the “brilliant” idea to start a finance-related company right before the "greatest financial crisis since the great depression," and the challenge becomes almost comical. But a large part of our success is due to the outpouring of support in the New York start-up community. So, thank you.

In particular I wanted to thank Philip James and Mark Angelillo, Rikki Tahta and Perry Blacher, Matt Milner, Brett Petersel, Jay Levy, Ari Weinberg, Justin Tsang and David Ambrose, Gary Vaynerchuk, Vin Vicanti and Jim Moran, Nate Westheimer and Jonah Keegan – thank you for all of the awesome insight, advice, referrals and support!

And for everyone else who took the time to chat with us or answer some of our questions at an event or on the nextNY Google group, THANK YOU!

I’m humbled and honored to be part of this community.

Lessons Learned

The other night some friends insisted we go out and celebrate – “How happy are YOU!?” was the question of the evening.

But what's so surprising to me is that while I'm certainly happy about this, I’m happy for different reasons than I would have ever imagined when we started the company. I thought I'd be thrilled by being able to say "my company was acquired”.

But the “funny thing” is, that's not what made me happy at all. That old cliché comes to mind:

“Success is a journey not a destination.”

What made these last few years so amazing was simply the experience itself and most importantly, the lessons I learned along the way.

While there are probably more takeaways than I can count, these have to be my top three:

1. Principles, not Methods:

I can’t think of a better way to say this myself, so I’m simply going to quote Emerson:

“As to methods there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.”

It’s easy to get lost in the day-to-day grind of running a start-up. But as long as you have a solid framework from which to make decisions, evaluate opportunities, etc. , you’ll be just fine.

2. Know Your Numbers:

More specifically, get your financials down cold.

Know how big your market is. Know what it costs to acquire a user. Know how much revenue you can generate from that user.

To even begin to calculate these numbers you’ll need to constantly test, measure and optimize every single step in your marketing funnel: various marketing channels, conversion rates, retention rates, landing page design, etc. Constantly testing, measuring and optimizing every step along the way is what will ultimately bring acquisition costs down and lifetime value up.

It’s something we should’ve been doing from Day 1, but like many start-ups, we probably made every mistake along the way and still managed to do “ok” in spite of ourselves ☺

Luckily, we eventually got our act together but I have to say, the sooner the better when it comes to knowing your key metrics and how they relate to your financial performance.

3. Chickens & Eggs:

One of the biggest challenges when developing a social or community-powered site is the old "chicken & egg" problem. People won’t come to your site if there’s nothing there, but if people don’t come to your site then nothing will ever be there – what’s an entrepreneur to do?

There are a few solutions to this problem, some more difficult to implement than the others. You could, of course, develop an app that is “viral” by nature, but what’s the likelihood of that happening (and working just as planned)?

You could also go for the whole “Utility->Network” model. This is where you build the first version of your app so that a single, lonely user finds it valuable. And once you have thousands of individual users, you break down the walls between them and form a “network” (the whole is greater than the sum of its parts). You’ve probably seen this on sites like Del.icio.us.

That’s obviously tough to do with a Q&A site, so what we ultimately did was inject our solution into existing communities. We white-labeled TickerHound and allowed our partners to use it as a knowledge and interaction tool within their websites. This meant we had traffic, an engaged audience and activity right away.

However, not all of our white-label initiatives were as successful as others, which I’ll go into in a separate blog post because there are some serious issues to think through with this strategy as well.

The Next Act…

I also always thought that exiting the business would be the end of the process – hence the term, “exit”. But I'm realizing that while it was the end of one process, it is the beginning of an entirely new one.

We founded TickerHound because people need answers to their questions and working on Wall Street taught me that it wasn't the place they could go to get them. I come from a "blue-collar" working class family and culture, so do my new partners at Tycoon. As opposed to the folks on Wall Street who are making 8 or 9 figures a year, we have a pretty good idea of what most Americans are going through right now.

We can relate to their fears and anxieties. We also know what it takes to make something from nothing.

Together we're hoping to change the world.

So I'm on a new mission now, I’m moving onto a new phase in my professional and personal development and I couldn’t be more grateful.

NYConvergence ORIGINAL

Meetup.com CEO Scott Heiferman announced that Meetup.com will be releasing a mobile application "in the coming weeks" during a New York Entrepreneur Week session at Columbia University's Faculty House in Manhattan's Morningside Heights neighborhood yesterday.

He was there to participate in a session called “A Roadmap for the Tech/Mobile/Telecom/Media Sectors: Top Entrepreneurs Reflect” session, moderated by Adam Penenberg, author of Viral Loop: From Facebook to Twitter, How Today’s Smartest Businesses Grow Themselves.

The panel focused on topics such as mobile bandwidth, advertising on mobile phones, the use of mobile phones in Japan for everything from making calls to making purchases, and the challenges of building mobile applications for use in a market where high-speed cellular connections are spotty.

Previous:
> NYC Entrepreneur Week Events Broadcast Live

Today, I'm very happy to announce that I've joined the amazing team at Flybridge Capital Partners as an Advisor for New York-based investment opportunities.

This position is part-time (more like real-time), as day-to-day I -- as most of you know -- help run AnyClip (as EVP Product & Technology), and (on a part-time, pro-bono basis) lead the NY Tech Meetup.

I'm excited about this new relationship for a number of reasons. For one, it's a great opportunity for me to work with and learn from yet another World Class team. I've been very lucky to work with amazing people in the past -- from Kyle Bragger at BricaBox, to Bob Williams at NPB; from David S. Rose at RTV, to Aaron Cohen and the team at AnyClip -- and now, I get to add the team at Flybridge to that list.

The partners at Flybridge are true entrepreneurs with amazing startup stories of their own. Each of them have walked first and foremost in our shoes, and have succeeded. In the investing they do today, they take the entrepreneur's perspective to the table, and it's reflected in every aspect of how they do business. As I did my diligence on the firm, I heard from person after person how exceptionally respectful the team was to entrepreneurs (when it's a "no" you'll hear "no," not a dial-tone, and when it's a "yes" the deal will get done painlessly); on the other side of the table, I also heard from my friends at other VC firms how great it was to co-invest and be shareholders with Flybridge.

Additionally, Flybridge is much more diverse than a typical New York VC firm, and working with Flybridge I'll have the opportunity to see inside of deals outside of New Media, and inside industries like green tech and biotech. As I grow as an entrepreneur, and as New York grows as an ecosystem, having support infrastructure for non-media related investments, -- whether from Flybridge or others -- will be a very good thing.

This last issue is a good segway to another reason I'm so excited about my relationship with Flybridge: it's another notch in the belt for New York, as the startup capital of the World. In my work with NY Tech Meetup, I welcome new VCs and startups from outside the New York area here on a weekly basis. Flybridge already has its foot in the door in New York -- they were a founding partner in the First Growth Venture Network, and recently invested in NY's own 10Gen -- and now, with my engagement with the firm, I'm excited for New York that Flybridge has made an additional investment in our ecosystem.

(By the way, this relationship means that if I can get a chance to know you and your startup -- and it seems to be a fit -- I now have a direct line to a great East-Coast VC firm and can make the connection. Hopefully, those connections, over time, will lead to more successful startups in New York City.)

Finally, I'd like to thank someone who helped this relationship come about. It was Roger Ehrenberg who connected me and Jeff Bussgang, the partner at Flybridge I'll work closest with. I've known Roger for a few years now, and I look up to him for his entrepreneurial spirit, early stage investing prowess, and sheer intellect. Even before meeting the Flybridge team and spending time with them, I felt good about the opportunity because it came from Roger.

So that's it! I'm looking forward to my ongoing work, as an entrepreneur and community leader, in the New York startup ecosystem, and now working with Flybridge to make killer investments in our great City.

NYConvergence ORIGINAL

Verizon FiOS Internet is now powering New York City's Bryant Park's wi-fi network.  The installation of Verizon's up-to-50 megabits per second (Mbps) Internet service took place over the past week, according to a press release NYConvergence received from the company. 

The FiOS Internet installation replaces Internet connections that had been provided by another telecommunications carrier and they were selected by the Bryant Park Corporation, the non-profit originally formed to oversee the park's restoration in the 1970s.

The telecommunications company's headquarters was previously located across the street from the park at 1095 Avenue of the Americas.

Previous:
> Wi-Fi Service Ending in Ten NYC Parks

Wow… what a long way we’ve come.  In February 2006, I started nextNY because the only community-wide event in town was the NY Tech Meetup and, at the time, it didn’t have much community about it.  I think I was member #71 and now it’s got over 10,000.  At the same time, the NY tech community has exploded with events, both educational and social.  One look at GarysGuide and you can get quickly overwhelmed.

A number of people asked me at recent nextNY events how they can find out about what’s going on.  Pointing a busy entrepreneur or executive to the nextNY listserv, which buzzes all day with discussion of memory caches, CMS’s, and finding a bookkeeper clearly isn’t the answer. 

Therefore, I’ve decided to take the attendee lists from the last two Shakeshack events and some recent nextNY talks and start a once a week e-mail newsletter as a curated version of what’s going on around town and in the online communities as well.  In the future, I’ll also be highlighting some open job positions, maybe some companies, and maybe just some recommendations on people that you should follow.  If you’d like to sign up for the list, just go here.  It’s going to look pretty texty and unformatted for a bit, but I’ll dress it up soon.

 

Event of the Week:

The Net Neutrality TechDebate, an Oxford style competitive back and forth on what is probably the most important topic in technology today that few of us have a clue about. 

The debate will be held on Tuesday, November 17th at the IAC Building, 555 W 18th St btw 10th & 11th ave.  Doors open at 7:00 PM.   **RSVP here**

The Debaters

Against

James Assey - Executive Vice President, National Cable and Telecommunications Association

Robert Quinn -  Senior Vice President-Federal Regulatory, AT&T

Christopher Yoo - Professor of Law and Communication; Director, Center for Technology, Innovation, and Competition, UPenn Law

For

Tim Wu - Coined the term "Network Neutrality"; Professor of Law, Columbia Law

Brad Burnham - VC, Union Square Ventures

Nicholas Economides - Professor of Economics, Stern School of

Business, New York University.

Can't make it?

The debate will be streamed live at: http://www.livestream.com/techdebate

A podcast will be available after the event at: http://tech-debate.com

 

Would rather drink? 

Check out the NYVC Happy Hour instead.

=========================================

This week is O’Reilly’s Web 2.0 Expo at the Javits Center.  By registering for an Expo Pass, you can get in free to see all the keynotes, the sponsored sessions, Web2Open, Launch Pad, and the Birds of a Feather sessions.  

Here’s what you won’t want to miss:

Monday

Ignite NYC – 5 minutes, 20 slides.  Geeks + Slideshows = Awesomeness

7PM at New World Stages: 340 West 50th Street

 

Tuesday

2PM: A Conversation with Caterina Fake Jennifer Pahlka (Code for America), Caterina Fake (Hunch)

2:25PM: Streams of Content, Limited Attention: The Flow of Information through Social Media danah boyd (Microsoft Research)

 

Wednesday

2:20pm A Conversation about the Realtime Web Brady Forrest (O'Reilly Media, Inc.), John Borthwick (betaworks)

 

Thursday

9:15am A Conversation with Beth Noveck Tim O'Reilly (O'Reilly Media, Inc.), Beth Noveck (Executive Office of the President/OSTP)  <—Yes, *the* President

=========================================

 

It’s also Entrepreneur Week and there are a couple of noteworthy panels.  Unfortunately the event is sold out, but there will be a livestream available on their site soon.

I think the pick of the conference is this panel at 2:15PM on Thursday:

The Revenue Inflection Point: The New Reality of Scaling a Business to $100MM in Revenue

MODERATOR: Bob Tedeschi, New York Times Technology Columnist

PANELISTS:

Stephen Messer, Co-Founder of Linkshare

Omar Amanat, Entrepreneur in Residence, Wharton School of Business

Marc Cenedella, Founder & CEO of TheLadders.com

Nancy Pedot, Former CEO of Gymboree & Party City

Chris McCann, President of 1-800 Flowers.com

 

Also right up there is this Friday panel at 10:30AM:

 

A Roadmap for the Entrepreneur Pt. 2: Top Venture Capitalists Reflect

MODERATOR: Murat Aktihanoglu, Founder of Centrl & Entrepreneurs Roundtable

PANELISTS:

Albert Wenger, Partner at Union Square Ventures

Jim Robinson, Co-Founder & Managing Partner of RRE Ventures

Anthony Marino, Managing Partner at Virgin Investments

Howard Morgan, Partner at First Round Capital

 

=========================================

This weekend is Startup Weekend.  Startup Weekend recruits a highly motivated group of developers, business managers, startup enthusiasts, marketing gurus, graphic artists and more to a 54 hour event that builds communities, companies and projects. 

David Kidder will be speaking Friday night while Nate Westheimer, Sam Lessin, and I will be on the Sunday night panel.

NYConvergence ORIGINAL

The "Controlling Content in a Digital World" session's panelists, including representatives from VEVO, Verizon Communications, Yahoo!, and Rainbow Media addressed this issue during the first day of Dow Jones and Nielsen's Media and Money Conference at the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan's Midtown neighborhood today.

Yahoo!'s Jimmy Pitaro started things off by noting how subscribers to a number of Yahoo!'s message boards preferred paying for access as it "keeps the riff raff out."

Verizon's Terry Denson then highlighted how the distinction between platforms where content is obtained is changing.  As advertisers look for more "bang for their buck," the importance of content providers diminishes as more creators emerge.  He noted that this will more likely be influenced by the number of mobile phones with advanced capabilities by 2012 than by the company's own FiOS given how the mobile devices allow greater interaction with the content.

Cablevision's Rainbow Media's Joshua Sapan talked about making content freely available online, saying that Rainbow only puts content online "for promotional purposes" as he thinks the industry shouldn't "Napsterize" itself.  He went on to explain that Rainbow sees a "devaluing" of content's advertising value when it's put online in short order after it airs.  He thinks, however, that a model like TV Everywhere which will require users to subscribe will add value.

VEVO's Rio Caraeff shared his opinion that the number of people who buy music is diminishing and that the music industry, which has largely been business-to-business focused, needs to get its content to more consumers directly using the company's Hulu-like model.  When the site launches, he explained, it will be reaching 460 million screens through a partnership with YouTube.

During the question-and-answer session that followed, Denson did address the issue of the iPhone being available through Verizon Wireless, noting that he doesn't see "a need for Apple to exclusive."

Previous:
> Cablevision Proft Triples in 3Q, Plans Rate Hike

Over the next weeks and month, the Net Neutrality debate will be heating up in Washington. It will also be heating up in NYC.

Next week, Jason Schwartz organized an impressive Oxford-style debate between the leading sides of the Net Neutrality debate. Anyone working in the Internet, Media, political or other industry should attend.

Here's the info:

When: Tuesday, November 17, 2009 from 7:00 PM - 9:30 PM (ET)

Where: IAC Building, 555 W 18th St, btw 10th ave and the Westside Highway

RSVP: Here

Also, next month, come to the December NY Tech Meetup, where -- on top of our tech demos -- Josh Silver will be speaking about the Net Neutrality debate.