Blockbuster chief of digital strategy is quoted in Fast Company:

You can always say I wish I did X and not Y. But if you asked me in 2009 whether we'd be the only one in the mobile space selling movies other than Apple and whether we'd have Blockbuster On Demand--never in my wildest dreams would I have aimed this high. [emphasis is mine].

What's the point of a strategy if you can execute on it and pass your own dreams? No wonder my money is on Netflix FTW.

Over the past few days, I’ve been at home in Alabama, which as you may imagine, is quite different from New York City. Other than the grossly uncomfortable heat index (100+ every day) and noticeably shorter skyscrapers here, I’ve also noticed that some of the mobile tools that I used in New York are no longer particularly useful.

Take Foursquare, for example. It is useful in New York for me because there are a large number of venues that I can check into, and also because I have  a large number of Foursquare friends that also live in NYC. Also, the density of Manhattan / NYC (in terms of both people and venues) further increases the usefulness of Foursquare. Why? Because there is a greater probability that when I see a pop-up notification of a Foursquare friend who is checking in, it’s actually in a close enough range that it makes sense for me to find the friend to say hi. In suburban Birmingham, where getting anywhere usually requires at least 10-15 minutes of driving at a minimum, the ability for Foursquare to help provide that same connection diminishes greatly. Plus, given the lower penetration rate of Foursquare usage down here, if I even chose to check in, I would have to add a new venue myself.

I think it’s this critical mass of New York users and New York venues, as well as the partnerships that Foursquare has made with NYC-based companies, that has greatly helped it to become the location-based application of choice compared to, say, Gowalla. Earlier this year, around the time of SXSW 2010, I was chatting with a friend from Austin Ventures about location-based services, and it seemed pretty clear that we each had our regional alliances. My friend was a backer of Austin-based Gowalla, and I was a supporter of New York-based Foursquare. This was not surprising, since you’d expect greater adoption and penetration in each startup’s founding city, leading to a critical mass of users in that location.

During SXSW 2010, it seemed as if Foursquare and Gowalla were still neck-and-neck in terms of their potential to become the dominant location-based mobile app, but if you had been a limited partner giving me money to invest, I would have put that towards Foursquare, something I mentioned to my friend. Why? Because the pure size and density of the New York user base, as well as the potential connections to media, advertising, and finance in NYC are a huge advantage in terms of customer acquisition, all other things equal. I think that that boost towards critical mass is a huge value add for many startups (though not all) and should encourage more entrepreneurs to base their companies in New York.

Agree? Disagree? Please add a comment!

P.S. Current stats (as of July): Foursquare is now over 5 times larger than Gowalla and growing 75% faster.

–

In other SocentVC-related news, 40 billionaires have now pledge to give away 50%+ of their wealth as part of The Giving Pledge. The number keeps going up! Read more about The Giving Pledge here.

About a year ago, for a period of around 3-4 months, I was a paying member of New Work City.  I have always been interested in the evolution of the workforce around new technologies, and so I was a spectator of this project for a long time.  When my professional needs aligned with the NWC model, I thoguht, this makes sense for me, as more than an experiment.

Having known Tony via nextNY I suppose I had less of a need to be SOLD on the experience actively, but I will say that if anything, the community under-promises and over-delivers.

It's subtle, but Peter Chislett and Tony and great folks like Frederic Guarino and Mark Bursteiner were fun to be around, full of optmism, and showed how working from the Library or the Cornell Club (some of my favs at the time) were missing something.  Those venues didn't offer stimulating conversation, beta invites to cool projects, or a sense that no matter how f#cked the economy seemed in those days, that we could make it better by our own bootstraps.

This blog is hosted on Squarespace largely as a result of meeting Dane Atkinson at New Work City one day.  NWC will find you business partners, customers, friends, and drinking buddies.  Some of them might like Iced coffee as much as you do (cheers Peter!)

My professional needs changed a bit at the end of the summer and I ended my membership, but I remain supportive of Tony and New Work City's way of discovering the best way to do things with smart and dedicated experimentation.

I pledged my support to NWC, and I'm letting you know I support NWC on Kickstarter not only because it sure looks like Tony is going to do some crazy stuff, but if you believe in something, helping is better than watching.

The cool kids are leaving Facebook, says Pace Lattin based on data from InsideFacebook: the 18-35 demographic is now having negative growth in this "early adopter" demographic.   I can't yet find the raw data, but let's assume the trend is true.  Let's assume that the explosive growth of Facebook for mobile doesn't have anything to do with it. 

Any platform that requires the "cool kids" to be there for it to be successful will ultimately suffer the same fate.  We can't all be East Village hipsters enjoying our own exclusive online party, with VCs chomping at the bit to try to invest in the things we think are cool.  Even if all the cool kids leave, Facebook will still have a huge business with the uncool kids.

However.  Viewing Facebook itself as the cornerstone of social is just false. They beat out all the other social networks, more or less.  Round 1: Facebook.  Bigger, longer term, the interoperability of social graphs will make the choice of any one web site unimportant.  

Any platform that requires the "cool kids" to be there for it to be successful will ultimately suffer the same fate.  We can't all be East Village hipsters enjoying our own exclusive online party, and there will continue to be plenty of business opportunities for Facebook even if those users leave.

However.  Viewing Facebook itself as the cornerstone of social is just false. They beat out all the other social networks, more or less.  Round 1: Facebook.  Bigger, longer term, the interoperability of social graphs will make the choice of any one web site unimportant.  

The fact is, hipsters still have parents, and teachers, and friends they want to connect to, and some they want to be able to ignore.  Technologies built on opening the social graph and intelligent selectively sharing the content we ourselves consume is the direction we're heading.  

we haven't really seen the companies that are thinking about this.  Check out where Diaspora is going these days, and see the interoperable social  future.  

This is part of my Series on Entrepreneurial Culture.

Very recently I shared my thoughts about why serious entrepreneurs should get it out of their heads that startups are some kind of fashion show.  It's certainly easy enough to be lured onto that vapid and self-congratulatory bandwagon where it's all about being seen at the coolest parties, working the press, and pitching VC's. In other words- anything and everything but building a real business.

The subsequent emergence of the so-called Russian Spy Scandal featuring the "red-headed bombshell" (Anna "Chapman" (nee Kushcenko)), only reinforced my point in dramatic fashion. Here was another instance of the self-anointed "entrepreneur" developing great fluency in the "lingo" of entrepreneurship, going to the right parties and generally hanging around the hoop- but who actually has no real business beneath the veneer. The fact that she also happened to be a very attractive Russian spy might certainly add a flair of the dramatic- but let's face it- her "cover" was but one of many put forth by what I can only call "faux entrepreneurs" and other types of poseurs roaming the startup scene.

Poseurs are one thing- but a while back I also wrote this post touching upon a more pernicious and predatory character, and I titled it: Eyes Wide Shut: Welcome to the Masked Ball with my perfunctory clip from the late/great Kubrick's last film of the same name. On a lark, the protagonist in the film falls into a lush, intriguing world in which he finds himself surrounded by dozens of haunting and masked figures. It is exhilarating for him- but of course he soon finds himself 'in way over his head'. So too, said I in my post, does the young, uninitiated entrepreneur who attends seemingly wonderful entrepreneurial gatherings only to run into the charming and unscrupulous "broker-dealer" posing as a veteran entrepreneur. Yes- this older and wizened figure will now serve as the "benevolent guide" to the young apprentice.... (who now of course also enters into a parallel world of hurt!).

So let me be clear that I am not writing this piece to pick on Anna "Chapman" Kushchenko per se- nor am I too worried about her future for that matter. She is young and resourceful and will no doubt land on her feet. Take your cue if you must from the "real Chapman", her newly wise ex-husband in England, who, when contacted by the Daily Telegraph about her recent arrest stated unequivocally that "it wasn't that much of a surprise to be honest". If you need more convincing of her talent for self-preservation and survival, just watch her holding forth quite convincingly and fetchingly about the challenges and thrills of being an entrepreneur right here. (I may be mistaken, but Silicon Alley Insider also seems to have also snapped-up her proferred bait 'hook-line-and-sinker' at some point and published a readable (although cliche-ridden piece) she authored about how to "deal with angel investors"- no doubt impressed by this beautiful up-and-coming entrepreneur.)

What I do mean to focus on, is how earnest and well-intentioned folks out there who are starting new businesses can avoid getting preyed upon not by beautiful Russian spies- but rather by the cadre of American-born bottom-feeders out there that take advantage of their naivete and insecurities about launching a new venture, raising money, etc.  Efforts towards this goal are already underway thankfully. Recently, for example, Jason Calacanis called-out various investment groups that were actually charging entrepreneurs thousands of dollars just to present to them! His efforts have been extremely effective and his adversaries have backed-down (only after trying and failing to intimidate him with the threat of lawsuits). That was an excellent start!

So today I am again officially calling out another type of predator-namely that sort of unscrupulous broker-dealer that engages in predatory practices by targeting unsophisticated first-time entrepreneurs and yes, even unsuspecting professors on university campuses. They often claim that they are themselves entrepreneurs and convince their victims to sign egregious binding agreements with them that give these low-lifes huge equity positions in shell companies that they will subsequently form for the express purpose of taking a fee on the capital the low-life ends up raising for the company. When things don't quite go as planned, embedded as they are in these structures, these bottom-feeders usually sue their prey and try to encumber them for years. This is not entrepreneurship- it is a form of fraud- so beware of anyone approaching you in this manner.

My main point here is that the message we in the entrepreneurial community ought to take from the so-called Spy Scandal is not the audacity of the espionage per-se, but rather that this is only the tip of the iceberg. There are actually worse characters lurking around on the scene born and raised right here in the US. We should also perhaps realize now just how easy it is for these folks to meld in.

Please don't get me wrong. I am of course not saying that we should take the news of the espionage itself lightly. Plenty of foolish folk and ill-informed talking-heads are in fact doing just this on TV and the blogoshphere and are making light of these "inneffectual" so-called spies. This should only make your ears perk up! (One of these spies, just as an example, was an Executive MBA student at Columbia who allegedly targeted and cultivated our own Alan Patricof no doubt for his ties to the Clintons.)

What I am saying is that there are troubled people of all kinds out there who embed themselves into our culture and community, gain the confidence of good-natured folks new to the world of startups, and, once achieved, take full advantage of them. I see this happening all the time, have seen young entrepreneurs get hurt by them and it always infuriates me. Whether they be foreign agents or American-born broker-dealers with zero conscience of the sort I have been describing- they are one and the same to me. Only the masks are different.

During Internet Week, I spoke with Rick Karr about what’s going on in NY tech and with the NY Tech Meetup. Obviously it’s tough to get everything I think into a three minute interview, but I post this here because I think its about the most concise and articulate I’ve been on the subject, on film. So enjoy…

Last month, the idea that Foursquare could exit to Yahoo! for $120+ million had everyone abuzz.

“This means NY tech has come to its own!” people exclaimed. Finally, we had a major player in the social web space. It was a company born here and grown here. Now it was on the brink of being sold for big money. It was a proof point that NYC could breed a serious batch of startups post-Web 1.0.

But if anything, the “Fourhoo episode” was also a scary wake-up call for those of us invested in the future of the NY tech ecosystem. If Foursquare sold — to Yahoo!, to Facebook, or to anyone else in the space — they’d undoubtedly end up in the hands of a Silicon Valley company, and its IP and (probably) leadership would be shipped out of town, taking any future value creation with it. (Sure, they may keep the jobs here, but the profit and reinvestment? Future product integrations?)

As it turns out, this whole exit scenario is a sham for the local environment, and here I thought exits were a good thing. What’s the matter with New York?! Here we are producing a fleet of World Class startups, and an exit for our startup scene means depleting its resources?

This sounds bad. And it is.

Despite the massive amount of progress in the NY early stage scene, one sadness remains: the closest thing to a big local tech company which can acquire our startups is IAC — and IAC is decidedly an “Internet Media” company, not an Internet technology company.

And we need a big ol’ Internet Technology company here.

Does that mean its time, as a City, to embrace IAC and convince it to become a tech company? Perhaps.

Is there a snowball’s chance in hell that the right series of acquisitions and leaderships changes would turn IAC into a major tech (rather than media) player? Yes, there is — and I think this would be a good thing for the company and for the City.

While tech is not in Barry Diller’s wheelhouse, now is the time for him to invest in tech. Looking at his revenue sources, a whole lot is tied up in Ask.com Search revenue, a share of which I think we all know will decline in the long-run for him. After that, he has a sturdy position in Match.com, but this is an area I think is prime for major disruption.

So will IAC be NYC’s saving grace here? I don’t know. As I’ve said, they could be. But either way this problem must be solved. Undoubtedly, our startups need liquidity events, and undoubtedly those will come in the form of M&A 9 times out of 10. Right now it seems those M&A event only exist outside of the City, leaving us in a highly vulnerable place.

Does anyone have an idea how this is going to play out? If not IAC, who will save us?

UPDATE: My friend, and astute industry observer, Caroline McCarthy points out to me the obvious, that AOL could also the “savior” I’m looking for. That’s true, but I don’t see it. AOL has doubled down to BE media company even more than IAC IS a media company. I think they can turn themselves into a great company, but AOL is not going to be a tech company.

Shelly Palmer provoked me to think about whether I am "too into technology to understand real business."  Yikes!

I'm sympathetic to the idea that many "social media" people live in a reality-exclusion zone where they only buy products from brands they can @message on Twitter.  On the other hand, the “real business” folks can probably wait it out, but more and more of them are starting to wonder.

I talked to a small outdoor advertising business owner who might not be ready…but he’s intrigued.  He gets online marketing and does aggressive SEM advertising. But social?

The shift to social marketing certainly made a splash but isn’t sustainable, really. In the early days of Twitter, most of the buzz about the promise of the service to transform marketing was being made by marketing people on Twitter.  Is the future of one-to-one, fragmented media a self-fulfilling prophecy? Perhaps.

That being said, we’re starting to see the ways in which pure awareness advertising shifts into engaging digital and offline experiences that aggregate attention rather than interrupting a piece of content. 

Advertising remains real and necessary, but it will increasingly be built around producing perceived value in and of itself. Pepsi’s PepsiCo10 strategy to take Refresh one step further and start funding new tech entrepreneurs is an bold example, and even if it’s on the wrong side of Wannamaker’s 50%, at least some millennials may get jobs.

Are you a business co-founder who just suddenly realized that just setting up a company Twitter account isn’t driving as much traffic as you had hoped?  Feel like you need some meat on the bones the customer acquisition strategy investors have been asking about? 

Maybe you’re a newly hired entry-level marketer who wants to learn the soup to nuts of everything you need to master to one day become the top VP of Marketing or CMO of a huge venture backed startup.

How do you run a keyword campaign?  What’s an affiliate network?  How do I improve my conversion funnels?  Should I be buying e-mail lists?

Basically the only thing we’re not spending a whole lot of time on is social media marketing—because I think as startups we tend to forget about just about every other any other kind of traditional marketing out there, or that it’s just one part of the puzzle.

Join us for this 5 session class over two weeks.  Our first speakers are Max Kalehoff from Clickable and Eric Wheeler from 33Across.  Max will be talking about how to properly resource an integrated marketing effort over the lifetime of a company and Eric will help you focus on narrowing down your target audience—and finding them. 

Mandatory RSVP Here!

Dates:

June 1st - Session 1: Integrated marketing and the customer - RSVP
Talk #1: Integrated marketing: Scope and function of a marketing effort, how to resource it and adjust focus over lifetime of a company
Talk #2: Thinking about the audience--target markets, demographics, etc

June 17th - Session 2:   Search
Talk #1: Search marketing: Setting up and monitoring a keyword campaign
Talk #2: Search engine optimization

June 29th - Session 3:  Brand building
Talk #1: Recipe for a brand: Core value props, Messaging, Visuals
Talk #2: Public Relations: Goal setting and properly resourcing a PR effort

July 17th - Session 4:  The ad stack
Talk #1: The tangled ad web we weave: Networks, DSPs, Data providers, Authentication
Talk #2: E-mail, Leadgen & Affiliate networks

July 27th -Session 5: Marketing Metrics
Talk #1: Measuring the performance of my marketing engine: lifetime value, churn, engagement metrics
Talk #2: Conversion funnels and multivariate testing