Rob Johnson

On Urban Outfitters now selling fixies

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 10:47:38 -0600

A friend of mine, known around here as DJ Double A, had this to say about Urban Outfitters now selling fixies:

How cheap are these things to produce, if urban outfitters sells $25 tshirts but can sell these for 400 bucks. They must be total crap.

But what does it matter when you can get double-takes on your bodacious pink rims with checkered slip-on vans, tight girl jeans rolled to the calf, white punk rock belt, and a sleevless tshirt to show off your arm tats on the way to sit at the heroin-chic, bohemian, 2-cool-4-school, coffee joint to sip an organic free-trade 6 dollar espresso so you post tweets from your smartphone while reading dharma bums, hoping somebody notices.

Best hipster rant ever.

Great idea from Nike & Livestrong - Chalkbot. Send messages...

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 13:16:20 -0600

Great idea from Nike & Livestrong - Chalkbot. Send messages of hope to be printed on the road during the Tour de France.

Good luck Lance.

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 17:12:10 -0600

Good luck Lance.

I’m craving some SC barbeque about now. The best in the...

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 16:56:03 -0600

I’m craving some SC barbeque about now. The best in the whole state has got to be Brown’s Barbeque.

"She replies that life never presents us with a single big question, that every day, he’s being asked..."

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 13:07:00 -0600

“She replies that life never presents us with a single big question, that every day, he’s being asked to choose, and that each time he misses an appointment or doesn’t make it home, he’s making his choice.”

- Chris Yeh in a comment on Steve Blank’s post about the ugliness of startup workaholics.

I think this is true beyond the context of just this comment - most of my big decisions were made daily over time and rarely in one moment.

"This generation will determine if the world can avoid the apocalypse that will come if the..."

Sun, 14 Jun 2009 12:25:15 -0600

“This generation will determine if the world can avoid the apocalypse that will come if the fear-ridden establishments continue to dominate global politics, motivated by terror, armed with nukes, and playing old but now far too dangerous games.”

- from Andrew Sullivan.

As my friend Justin said: I do hope the next generation will end the dangerous war games of our fathers. That is something to hope for.

Yes, this is the siphon pot coffee from blue bottle. Todd...

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 22:23:55 -0600

Yes, this is the siphon pot coffee from blue bottle. Todd Sampson first introduced me to this place and it’s now a must-visit on every trip to San Fran.

marco:

Decidedly not Peet’s. Blue Bottle Cafe, San Francisco.

I recently discovered The Autumn Film and have been blown away...

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 09:36:24 -0600

I recently discovered The Autumn Film and have been blown away the more and more I listen. This video (filmed by my friend Andrew Hyde) is one of the most chilling and honest performances i’ve seen in a long time.

They’re currently giving away 3 songs and this video on their site and I highly encourage you to go check it out.

before wade beat me (and won the tournament), i did win one...

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 18:03:57 -0600

before wade beat me (and won the tournament), i did win one round with a decent slam :)

dustinhenderlong:

mid-slam.

A Day at TechStars

Tue, 26 May 2009 10:12:20 -0600

davemorin:

On Friday I spent the day in Boulder, Colorado on my first day as a TechStars Mentor. I had the chance to meet with some great Boulder-based startups to talk shop, brainstorm product strategy, and help them think big about their businesses.

In the evening, we hosted a Facebook Developer Garage Boulder, and had a chance to hear about some great Facebook Platform and Connect applications being built in and around the Boulder/Denver community.

The most interesting thing I took from this first session in Boulder is that the startup energy there is electric. The entreprenuers are passionate, and the community is overwhelmingly collaborative and supportive of each other.

Here’s a look at a few of the startups I had a chance to meet with on Friday. For the most part, when mentoring startups, you talk about the future. Here you will find a quick overview of the present. I’ll leave the future to be seen in each of their products.

Suffice to say, there are some really cool things going on in Boulder:

Lussumo is a free, open source, platform for doing cool things. Right now, they’re shipping an awesome discussion forum application called Vanilla, which over a million users love. Expect big things in the forum space from Lussumo in the future.

http://lussumo.com

The Next Big Sound is pushing the music envelope on the internet. Today they’re a platform for discovery of unsigned bands. Tomorrow they’re looking to change the way music business is done. With all of the innovation needed in how artists and management interact with the internet, these guys are thinking about things in exactly the right ways.

http://thenextbigsound.com

Everlater seeks to make telling travel stories fun and easy. In traveling around the world, and looking around the web, they realized that putting together a simple travel story is actually quite hard. If you are a traveler who also loves to share and create, keep an eye on Everlater.

http://everlater.com

Mailana is frustrated with how hard it is to make meaning out of the increasingly massive amount of user generated content inside the email stream. They’ve been expermimenting with new ways to visualize email inside the firewall, and have released some of these tools for consumers on top of Twitter. With all of us fighting our inboxes every day, lets hope Pete and the team at Mailana bring some innovation to the craziness of email.

http://mailana.com

EventVue seeks to connect you to the people who matter most every time you attend your favorite conferences. With recent Facebook Connect integration and a slew of upcoming features, attending conferences will never be the same. If you run a conference series, or are looking to get one off the ground, I highly recommend you take a look at the work this team is doing. They’re making connecting, in person, easier for all of us.

http://eventvue.com

TimZon makes communicating concepts and ideas to remote teams easy with video, white boarding, and a slough of asynchronous private video communications tools. What they are doing is really cool, and has a shot at helping people communicate an be productive with video in a way that no one else has tried.

http://timzon.com

Lijit gives blog publishers powerful tools for search by extending the idea of search to include the social network surrounding the publisher. The social graph is a powerful thing, when combined with search and put into the hands of publishers.

http://lijit.com

Ignighter takes a more social approach to dating. Rather than signing up for the site by yourself, you invite your friends to become a “dating group.” Then, you can find other dating groups to go out with on a group date, increasing your odds for finding a compatible mate in the social graph. These guys are adding more features soon which will help get more people involved and hope to create a movement around group dating. I think they’ve got a shot. If you’re single, stay tuned, this could be really cool.

http://ignighter.com

meeting with dave was awesome.

Sharing towards a generation of mass innovation. Hat tip to...

Thu, 14 May 2009 13:34:19 -0600

Sharing towards a generation of mass innovation. Hat tip to Jacquelin (@jmalan).

Betaworks founder on Social Distribution Networks

Thu, 14 May 2009 12:53:41 -0600

I’m spending a large number of my brain cycles recently thinking about “social distribution networks”. Each day that I spend in startup world I feel more and more that we’re at a major inflection point in the history of media. When hundreds of 140 character thoughts from my friends get more of my attention than all the news giants of the past combined, something is changing.

If you sense the same thing, you should read John Borthwick’s essay (and the comments) on Social Distribution Networks. We’ve been using the same term for the past month or so in the EventVue office a bit differently, but John really uncovers a lot of the power in this new distribution model. One favorite quote:

Today there seems to be a new distribution model that is emerging. One that is based on people’s ability to publically syndicate and distribute messages — aka content — in an open manner. This has been a part of the internet since day one — yet now its emerging in a different form — its not pages, its streams, its social and so its syndication. The tools serve to produce, consume, amplify and filter the stream.

Go read the whole essay.

congrats to my friends foodzie for being businessweek top young...

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 16:01:48 -0600

congrats to my friends foodzie for being businessweek top young entrepreneurs.

I’m sure this is a video that will be emailed around very...

Sun, 12 Apr 2009 11:03:00 -0600

I’m sure this is a video that will be emailed around very quickly. I wanted to share it here because of the particular beauty I find in her song choice. Les Miserables is a very powerful metaphor to me of grace & redemption. It seems to me that in Susan Boyle’s singing of this song on stage in front of the world, we’re all given an undeserved gift. And as with the bishop’s gift to Valjean, it’s hard to recieve this from Susan Boyle without being transformed.

Happy Easter!

this is a painful look at creative destruction. sure the...

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 15:36:27 -0700

this is a painful look at creative destruction. sure the internet is a very powerful force for good, but in its increasing dominance, industries & companies are being destroyed.

Clemson crushes #4 ranked Duke 74 to 47! Oliver Purnell has...

Thu, 05 Feb 2009 09:36:20 -0700

Clemson crushes #4 ranked Duke 74 to 47! Oliver Purnell has some good things going back in Littlejohn Coliseum!

Thinking about "low cost traffic acquisition"

Sun, 01 Feb 2009 12:37:50 -0700

Saw this comment on Fred Wilson’s post about the power of small web teams combined with the distributed magaphone of the web to generate outsize revenue on small costs. I think there’s some real insight into Steve’s point about one of the fundamental success factors of a startup is low cost traffic acquisition. Thinking hard about what that looks like for EventVue…

and isn’t the big secret to zynga’s success that they brilliantly arrived first on facebook app opportunity? honestly, if the same people launched the same zynga games and apps and stratgies today (rather than figuring out how to get first in line before facebook opened to third party apps) would zynga be as successful? i seriously doubt it - because their traffic acquisition costs are so wonderfully low, a situation almost impossible to replicate

for me this is the single biggest strategic need for new media startups — low cost traffic acquisition. everything else is a commodity (including brilliant app or content ideas)

Originally posted as a comment by Steve Kane on A VC using Disqus.

via fred-wilson

Sun, 21 Dec 2008 20:23:10 -0700

via fred-wilson

This is a great reminder for people like myself who just assume...

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 13:49:21 -0700

This is a great reminder for people like myself who just assume that the benefits of technology should be everywhere.

Colorado Weather by Josh Larson

Sat, 13 Dec 2008 18:32:00 -0700

My friend Josh Larson writes an excellent blog about Colorado and Boulder Weather that you can read here:

http://www.coloradowx.com/

Josh has particular fascination with snow and is definitely my most trustworthy source of snow-related weather information for Boulder. I love that he not only forecasts the weather but also invests in educating his audience so that we can understand a little more about the unique weather patterns around Boulder with each post.

If you live in Colorado, and especially Boulder, I highly recommend his weather wisdom at Colorado Weather.