Tomorrow I’ll be meeting with the FCC to explain why Net Neutrality is so important.  The following is a summary of what I’ll be sharing with the FCC.

First, some background: I’m an entrepreneur with a background in creating Internet businesses that span online entertainment, advertising and Web infrastructure.  I remember when the Internet was controlled by a different regime–back when you couldn’t even connect to the Internet without adhering to NSFnet policies.  Legends of Future Past, my first commercial Internet application, and perhaps the first commercial Internet online game, snuck-in anyway and didn’t get big enough to piss anyone off before the Internet became commercialized.  Since then, I’ve created a Web software company that participated in building Web 1.0, and a gaming/advertising company.

All of the entrepreneurial blossoming we’ve experienced on the Internet over the last 15 years has been due to the Internet’s commercialization and unfettered access to content and applications.  As others have observed, telecom companies had every opportunity to create a company like Google, but didn’t.  It wasn’t because of lack of capital, or even lack of talent–telecom companies are certainly great at building huge networks.  But they’ve consistently lacked the vision to create applications that anyone cares about.  If you want a good comparison of what the Internet might be like if the telecom companies had made all the rules, look at the utter dearth of success with their proprietary mobile computing platforms or the how hard it is for entrepreneurs to deal with mobile carriers.

One of the arguments often used against the concept of Net Neutrality is that “regulation isn’t needed to keep the Internet open.”  In fact, raising the specter of government interference is one of the primary arguments against Net Neutrality that is used by the telecom lobby.  The wording of these statements is intended to strike fear into anyone with concerns about large government, government failures, etc. Yet it misses one big point: the Internet is actually one of the US government’s great success stories–if you are a US taxpayer, then you or your parents (or their parents) paid for the Internet back when it started as ARPANET.  Large telecom companies have generated enormous wealth by capitalizing on this–let’s not begrudge them the money they’ve created by investing in the Internet, but let’s not surrender control of the ‘net either.  We paid for it, so of course we get to have a say in the rules that govern what content gets to be created and who gets to access it.

Issues of equity aside, the practical issue remains: it is clear that telecom carriers are more interested than ever to own and control content.  Add to this that US Internet carriers are getting less competitive and offer fewer services than many international locations.  If we want to continue the innovation on the Internet that has led to widespread innovation such as Amazon, Ebay, Facebook, Twitter, Google, World of Warcraft–then we need to hold US telecom carriers to Net Neutrality standards now.  Let’s learn from the pain of mobile entrepreneurs who have had to beg for permission from telecom bureaucracies: a few government rules will benefit society, consumers and all businesses.

Last week I wrote Six Wonderful Things about Games, an analysis of some of the many positive benefits of gameplay. A lot of you have been sharing and spreading this essay–and a few have had really helpful feedback, and pointed me towards additional research that ought to be mentioned. I’ve lightly edited the original to include hyperlinks to some of the additional research.

If you have already read the original article, the following is a summary of the additional references (if you haven’t read it yet, please follow the link above!).  Most of these focus on the type of learning that games support and reinforce:

• Unlimited Learning, a study supported by the Scottish government, investigating the use of games within learning environments.
• Marc Prensky’s essays on how children can learn social collaboration in games, and his essay and research survey, “What Kids Learn That’s Positive From Playing Video Games.”
• A compilation of research and expert interviews debunking the idea that videogames promote violent behavior.
• MIT Professor Henry Jenkins essay for PBS, Eight Myths about Video Games Debunked focuses on rebutting some of the popular misconceptions about games.

About two and a half years ago, I launched GamerDNA with the vision of creating a new type of gaming media company based on community, social participation and real-time gameplay data.

During the time we’ve started, we successfully launched gamerDNA.com, a social platform for sharing real-time gameplay from your Xbox, Playstation or PC; launched a revenue-generating ad network for the game market which reaches over 10 million monthly visitors, and worked with over a hundred game websites.  We did it all with a very small team of some of the most capable technology and media professionals I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with.

After looking at all the options available to us, we decided it didn’t make sense for us to “go it alone” in the market any longer.   Yesterday we merged with Crispy Gamer, which has very ambitious plans to build a media company around the gaming market.

I’ll help out Chris Heldman (the CEO of Crispy Gamer) for a little bit to make sure things go smoothly–but I’m an entrepreneur, and I’ll start something new in 2010.  People have asked me what it will be, but the reality is that I don’t know yet.  I have interests in social networking, the real-time Internet, online entertainment, games–so whatever I do will probably be in one of those areas (or an intersection thereof).  In the meantime, I’m mentoring and advising a few cool startups and larger companies in the areas that interest me.

Watch this space for more news soon.

I just read through Seth Godin’s What Matters Now. You can read it for now (free). Just click on the link!  It’s 82 pages of thoughts and images that will inspire you. Here’s one of my favorites (by Jessica Hagy):

There’s also a thought, titled “Leap” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie which is one of the best pieces of advice for would-be entrepreneurs:

I always start my fiction-writing classes by
telling my students this: “show don’t tell.” It
is the classic rule of writing, to use details, to
engage all the senses of the reader by
‘showing.’ In this way, fiction is like faith. To
believe in something is often to be unable to
talk about satisfactorily but you can show
the manifestations of that belief in your life.

This, I think, is also a good way of looking at
our lives, in general.

Show don’t tell. To write fiction and to have
faith is to take an imaginative leap.

And because life is always full of doubts and
fears, to act is to take that leap.

So leap.

Check out the full work. It’s in a free PDF at Seth Godin’s website.

Broadband Internet access is essential to the future of online entertainment, education, and access to economic opportunities for billions of people.

The OECD has just released their most recent statistics on broadband penetration.  The United States isn’t doing too well–with broadband penetration only slightly edging into the top half of the most developed Asian and European economies.

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However, my thoughts are that the numbers are a bit misleading.  The OECD still includes DSL within the definition of broadband–but DSL is typically much slower than cable or fiber alternatives.  I’ve previously written about how Comcast is unable to offer better-than-DSL speeds in key urban areas of Cambridge, Massachusetts (where the Internet was invented).  It’s time to stop thinking of DSL as a real broadband technology–or else we need a new term to describe true, high-speed Internet access.

I re-ran the OECD’s numbers with DSL removed, and one finds that the United States–along with Japan, Canada and Korea–are leading the world in terms of the newer and faster technologies:

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On the other hand, the United States’ relative technology lead hasn’t manifested as a big increase in speed yet.  This is where things get fairly disappointing:

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Japan leads the world in Broadband Internet speeds.  The reason for their speeds is widespread deployment of fiber (I’m fortunate enough to be one of the few residential subscribers in the United States with similar speeds, thanks to Verizon FIOS).  Here is some data that NTT provided as part of a response to the FCC’s study of broadband speeds:

The line labeled FTTH stands for “Fiber to the Home,” and its growth is the key contributing factor to Japan’s Internet speeds.

How is it that the USA can be leading with new technologies, yet so far behind on access speeds?  One problem is that in the United States is that there is less competition than in many other countries.  This leads providers to slow deployment, poor core networks, and low-speeds even in places that should have access to superior speeds.  Often, “broadband” gets marketed to uninformed consumers who think they’re getting the highest speed technology available.  Telecom-industry experiments with metered usage have also been disturbing.

The United States needs to pursue a public policy of promoting high-speed Internet (fiber, not simply DSL) throughout the country.  Fiber deployment needs to be a priority in all urban, suburban and rural areas.  Recently, Finland made broadband access a legal right; and Japan’s industry-investments have made the highest speed access very affordable.  Although the Internet was invented in the United States, others are innovating and building.

The United States has a lot more geography than Japan and Finland, so it’s a harder problem to solve–but no more insurmountable than the effort to electrify the country earlier in the 20th century.   Disturbingly, it is becoming a less competitive market, not more competitive; and US telecommunications providers also oppose Net Neutrality–which could impair access to capital and customers for the entrepreneurial companies creating the next wave of Internet applications.

If you care about the future of the Internet–along with the access to information, education and content that it offers–it’s time to tell telecommunications providers, your Congressman and your town/city governments that you want more competition, Net Neutrality, and a policy of promoting high-speed networks to everyone.

We’re in the midst of the holiday season and it’s a good time for us to think of ways we can give back to our communities.  The other day I highlighted MassChallenge, and the mission of mentoring entrepreneurs to become great business leaders.

Entrepreneurs create wealth–not only for themselves, but for their communities.  In fact, entrepreneurship is the best way to lead people out of poverty.   Businesses can increase the standard of living, create new opportunities, end hunger and provide sustainable means for people to live better and give their children better lives.

That’s why I wanted to highlight another local Cambridge organization I’m really excited about: the Seven Fund, which has a mission of ending global poverty by encouraging innovation and entrepreneurship.   Not only do I love their mission, it was co-founded by one of my former colleagues, Andreas Widmer.   I had the pleasure of working with Andreas at Eprise when he was VP International.  Anyone who has worked with Andreas knows that he’s one of the most knowledgeable people about international business, not to mention an incredibly passionate and capable executive.

The idea of Seven Fund is simple:  don’t simply donate to struggling economies.  All the donations of food, time and money are well-intentioned, but ultimately don’t put in place the infrastructure to empower people to control their own destinies.  That can only be accomplished through entrepreneurial businesses–but most people in these economies lack the traditions, institutions and mentoring that makes entrepreneurship possible.  That’s where Seven Fund hopes to close the gap.

Last weekend I suggested a few books for Internet entrepreneurs.  One of the things I mentioned is that books aren’t a good source of current, real-time knowledge about the Internet itself.  Business is changing too rapidly, so even the books that were “hot” a few months ago have quickly declined in relevance.  That’s where blogs come in.

My blogroll has a decidedly Boston-oriented (and east-coast) flair–maybe that’s because I’m gotten to know some of these people.  Or maybe it’s because we’re really good at blogging.  I’ve put together a selection of some of my favorite blogs on entrepreneurship and Internet technology.

Current entrepreneurs:

• OnStartups is written by Dharmesh Shah, a local software/Internet entrepreneur  who founded Hubspot.  It is updated fairly often, and has good tips ranging from pricing software, to prioritizing what’s important in a company, to thoughts on inbound marketing (SEO, SEM, blogging, etc.) programs.
• Dave McClure is a Silicon Valley serial entrepreneur who writes at Master of 500 Hats.  His recent posts on “Startup 2.0: engineering better startups through incubators, angel investment and iterative development” is excellent.
• Sim Simeonov writes at HighContrast.  Sim left behind a PhD at Stanford to join Allaire (the creators of ColdFusion, and one of the Web 1.0 era’s great Cambridge success stories).  Later he worked as a venture capitalist at Polaris, but has returned to the operational side recently.  His blog has a lot of good articles that bring together his deep technical expertise, economics knowledge and practical business experience.

Investors

• A VC by Fred Wilson gives a lot of practical advice, and Fred always seems to be on the leading edge of any new technology/Internet trends.  It’s frequently updated–and often a great source of inspiration.
• Josh Kopelman’s Redeye VC blog is another blog by a venture capitalist–but Josh is also a very experienced entrepreneur (he founded Half.com during Web 1.0).  The posts are always incisive, thought-provoking and frequently contrarian. I particularly like one of the older posts on shrinking markets.
• Bijan Sabet’s blog is run on tumblr, a company he’s invested in.  He’s also invested in Twitter and a few other cool companies.  He has lots of concise advice and anecdotes in-between comments on the most recent music he listens to.  I particularly like Bijan (and Spark Capital’s) position against non-compete agreements, a relic that California made unenforceable through law years ago–something Massachusetts would do well to follow.
• Jeff Bussgang is a partner at Flybridge Capital who has been involved in several successful startups including Open Market and Upromise.   His blog, Seeing Both Sides reveals perspectives from having been on both sides of the entrepreneur-VC equation.  See his recent slideshow on What Makes Boston’s Startup Scene Special.

News/technology

• Scott Kirsner is a technology journalist who has become the voice of the local startup scene.  He writes at the Innovation Economy blog on Boston.com.
• Chris Brogan is the most knowledgeable person on social media I know.  And he’s another Boston local, which makes it that much better.
• ReadWriteWeb is my best source of information on new trends, startup companies, Web technology.

That’s my list.  What about you?  Am I missing something great?  I’d love to hear comments from everyone on the sources of knowledge you’ve come to rely on.

If you’ve been anywhere around the startup community in Massachusetts, the key theme of 2009 was “How can Massachusetts make itself more competitive?”  Scott Kirsner raises the issue in a recent article on Boston.com, where he highlights seven things that Massachusetts could do to foster a stronger startup environment (other than pep-rallies, panels and reports–which I’m finding myself fatigued by).  He points to one area which I want to highlight:

We offer a lot of support to start-ups, but some kind of organized, open mentorship program across every industry (or an office hours initiative) would be helpful to entrepreneurs trying to grow their five-person start-up into a 500-person business.

There are a number of venues for entrepreneurship mentors in Massachusetts.  I’m a mentor for one such organization, the MIT Venture Mentoring Service (VMS).  To gain access to VMS, you need to be a student, alumnus or faculty member of MIT.  Boston could use a few more things like this, particularly for those who come from other other academic backgrounds or other parts of the social strata.

That’s why I’m particularly excited about a new organization: MassChallenge.   This group was founded by three successful entrepreneurs:  John Harthorne (who won the Grand Prize in the 2007 MIT $100K Business Plan Competition), Akhil Nigam and David Constantine.  MassChallenge is creating a competition intended to expose entrepreneurs at varying levels of company development (not simply startups) to successful business people, mentors and capital sources.  Winners will receive cash prizes, and–more importantly–privileged access to potential investors.  John, Akhil and David are to be thanked for their effort on this program.

]]> http://radoff.com/blog/2009/12/11/masschallenge-for-the-innovation-economy/feed/ 1 http://radoff.com/blog/2009/12/11/masschallenge-for-the-innovation-economy/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/JonRadoffsEntrepreneur20Blog/~3/Vzy6kuUUozU/ http://radoff.com/blog/2009/12/10/how-big-are-the-interwebs/#comments Thu, 10 Dec 2009 14:46:57 +0000 Jon http://radoff.com/blog/?p=357

Big. Really, really frigging big.

Just received this from Gizmodo:

If you’re a member of Facebook, you probably got an email recently informing you of a settlement regarding the Facebook Beacon system.  Beacon was a technology that learned a lot about how you used the web, and could share that information with third-parties who could target you with offers based on what you like (for example, Netflix could pitch you on particular types of movies).

Beacon quickly became a rather disastrous public-relations nightmare for Facebook; they also ended-up getting sued for it.  There’s a good lesson here for every startup: be very careful of how you treat customer data.

If you are interested in information on the lawsuit, you can find it on the settlement website. In summary, Facebook will pay $9,500,000 which will get put into a charitable foundation (a tiny amount, $41,500, will go to the group of plaintiffs who brought the lawsuit). The purpose of the foundation will be to “promote the cause of online privacy, safety, and security.” Sounds like a good cause to me, although I think the Electronic Frontier Foundation already does a good job of that. Perhaps the foundation will be able to fund some of the EFF. In addition the funds will be used to pay for the foundations expenses and legal costs.

Often, the legal bill has a nasty habit of chewing up a big chunk (or all) of such settlements. So I decided to ask the lawyers how much of the $9.5MM would go to legal fees. Here’s what they told me:

The vast majority of the funds will go directly to the foundation. Our current estimate is that the costs will be several hundred thousand, the legal fees will be no more than a third (but are likely to be closer to 25%) and that the balance of the funds will go to the foundation.