Bijan Sabet

Picked up new converse kicks today (Taken with instagram)

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 13:12:22 -0500

Picked up new converse kicks today (Taken with instagram)

Different Names for the Same Thing (Death Cab for Cutie cover)...

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 06:48:00 -0500

Different Names for the Same Thing (Death Cab for Cutie cover) by Frightened Rabbit

shared from exfm

43

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 06:43:55 -0500

It’s my birthday today. 43 years old.

For my birthday, I’m raising money to help provide clean and safe water to those that need it. I’m asking everyone I know to donate $20 or more (or less) if you can. It’s a very important cause and 100% of the donations go directly to towards water projects.

If you are interested please click or tap here and make your donation today.

Thanks.

Water Changes Everything. from charity: water on Vimeo.

A new member of the Spark team

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 20:00:00 -0500

Our team at Spark Capital has evolved a bit since we started in 2005. Since that time, we promoted Alex from Principal to General Partner. We promoted Mo from Principal to General Partner. And we promoted Andrew, from Sr. Associate to Principal

I’m proud that we’ve been able to grow the firm by giving members of the team more and more responsibility.

I always tell people that the best part of my job is that I get to meet and work with the most talented and creative entrepreneurs on the planet.

The other part of this job I love is that I get to work with my friends. I’ve known Santo for years before Spark. Same with Todd. My kids call our other partner/cfo Paul, grandpa in a joking way because his hair is gray. When we have our holiday party it truly feels like a family event.

Today we announced a new addition to the Spark team. Nabeel Hyatt has joined our company as a Venture Partner. Nabeel is super creative, smart and high energy. He gets the social web and obsesses about design. He’s also a serial entpreneur. Nabeel’s latest startup was Conduit Labs which was acquired by Zynga. After that acquisition, Nabeel became General Manager of the Zynga Cambridge office.

When I moved to Boston after 10 years in SF, Nabeel was one of the first people I met. He had cofounded Ambient Devices and I bought their Orb. I was so obsessed with connected devices that I reached out to him cold. We became fast friends and we always wanted to find a way to work together.

And now we have that opportunity.

Nabeel has a post up as well (and it’s on Tumblr wouldn’t you know!) about joining Spark.

Welcome aboard Nabeel!

They have these super cool cabanas at the Square office

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 08:35:42 -0500

They have these super cool cabanas at the Square office

The Shins - September new song from the shins. very happy about...

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 09:48:00 -0500

The Shins - September

new song from the shins. very happy about that.

"The best feature is that it works"

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 22:49:13 -0500

“The best feature is that it works”

- @kevin - via Inside Instagram: How Slowing Its Roll Put the Little Startup in the Fast Lane

6k posts later

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 07:24:48 -0500

Last week a friend told me they were going to start a blog. They asked me the difference between Wordpress, Tumblr and a few others. This post is an attempt to explain that answer.

I’ve been using Tumbr since 2007. Almost 5 years later and I’ve created over 6k posts. I’m proud to call myself an active Tumblr user.

I pretty much find something to post every day. I missed day is a very rare thing. The user interface is so well designed and beautiful. It couldn’t be easier.

But thing that most people find special about Tumblr is the community. I certainly do. It’s engaged, active and tight in a wide range of categories like fashion, music, photography, tech, books, etc.

And this community wasn’t imported from another network like a facebook’s graph. It was built purposefully for the Tumblr experience.

When Tumblr started, it was the easiest way to create a tumblelog. But as the community grew and so did the experience. As a result, w now have a service of content creators, and the audience, but a couple of years ago a highly engaged new activity happened.

Curation.

On Tumblr, curation happens when users reblog content they see in their Tumblr Dashboard (feed). And that curation brought in new users which in turn became new curators. Today the number one way people join tumblr is by seeing a Tumblr page online and clicking the “join tumblr” link in the top right corner.

A reblog on Tumblr is a big deal. It’s something I find so special that not only do I want to share it with everyone but I want it to live on my very own page, my Tumblr, on my domain forever.

As a result, the reblog “hurdle” is high and Tumbr reblogs are rich in value. They are meaningful to the content creator, curator and audience.

The people and things I follow are a joy. I love it here.

And that’s why I use Tumblr every day.

Saw this as a highlighted post on my dashboard. great way to...

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 07:10:01 -0500

Saw this as a highlighted post on my dashboard. great way to start the day. rock on.

via fred-wilson:

Gossip - Ben Kweller - Go Fly A Kite

new track from the new Ben Kweller record. available at Amazon and directly from Ben’s website too

Outta My System by My Morning Jacket shared from exfm

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 16:05:00 -0500

Outta My System by My Morning Jacket

shared from exfm

"We may always have different challenges to address in our lives. But maybe simplicity isn’t..."

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:30:17 -0500

“We may always have different challenges to address in our lives. But maybe simplicity isn’t eliminating problems; maybe it’s learning to embrace them, face them, and grow from them, instead of seeing them as something to resist.”

- Tiny Wisdom: Life May Never Be Simple | Tiny Buddha: Wisdom Quotes, Letting Go, Letting Happiness In

The Strokes - Under Cover Of Darkness

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 07:55:00 -0500

The Strokes - Under Cover Of Darkness

.@jamessabet’s prized possession (Taken with instagram)

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 17:34:57 -0500

.@jamessabet’s prized possession (Taken with instagram)

Why Facebook Connect shouldn't be your only sign in option

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 12:32:00 -0500

When I see startups that only offer FB Connect as the singular sign in option, I always get squeamish.

I tell founders they should support FB Connect but they also support Twitter sign-in as well as giving users an option to sign in the good old fashioned way : user id & password.

Sometimes founders ask if our investment in Twitter is the cause of my recommendation.

The answer is no. It’s based on the behavior and data we see in our portfolio companies.

Giving users only one way to sign in and FB as the only option is going to turn off a large number of users. Some people want to sign in with an alias for example.

But the biggest issue is the screen your users will see when they try to sign in with Facebook Connect. Here’s an example. Today I tried to sign up for Topsy with Facebook Connect.

(to be clear: Topsy supports other sign in options - but I wanted to show you what the FB connect screen looks like)

That’s a rough screen in my opinion. It makes some users confused. Will my data be okay? Will Topsy start sticking stuff on my Facebook without asking me. What gets shared and where? Too many questions and too many concerns.

That’s not how to build a relationship between you and your users.

You want to make life easier - not freak them out.

Instead offer them a simple sign up screen. The one I point to all the time is Tumblr’s sign up process. Couldn’t be simpler or more beautiful in my opinion.

So in summary, I’m good with FB Connect as an option. Just make it an option that’s all.

Suddenly Everything Has Changed by The Postal Service Original...

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 10:05:00 -0500

Suddenly Everything Has Changed by The Postal Service

Original by the Flaming Lips.

shared from exfm

met up with david for dinner in brooklyn tonight. his bike is...

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 22:37:00 -0500

met up with david for dinner in brooklyn tonight. his bike is rad.

Thinking about Facebook's S-1 and lessons for entrepreneurs

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 22:29:59 -0500

Today we all read a lot of information about the Facebook S-1 registration.

The execution and performance of the company is simply stunning.

There are plenty of folks that have written great insights about the key metrics of the business that were disclosed in the filing.

I’m not going to talk about that.

Instead, I’d like to talk about how Facebook’s success will hopefully impact entrepreneurs all over the world.

1. Independence.

There were times were Facebook could have sold their company. It would have created a successful return for founders, employees and investors. But the company turned down those offers and committed to an independent strategy. I’m sure they had plenty of critics that thought they were crazy to turn them down.

It reminds me of the situation we had at Twitter back in 2008. Our firm had invested earlier that year when there were less than 20 employees in the company. Maybe less than 15.

In the fall of that year, we had an offer to sell the company. It was a very signficant multiple to the price of our investment. When we got the offer, I relayed it to Ev and the board. Ev said he wanted to sleep on it. The next day, Ev sent us one of the most thoughtful and insightful emails I have ever received. For a variety of reasons, he recommended that we stay independent. It was obvious that it was the right answer but I’m sure others outside of the company would have considered us nuts for turning it down. Ev’s leadership and conviction put Twitter on it’s path for independence. And I’m so thankful for that.

Lesson: ultimately selling might be the best option depending on the situation, but that shouldn’t be the goal. Build your company to last.

2. A better team and a superior product

Much has been written about the value of being a first mover in a given market. Or the importance of market timing. Or whatever some bullshit business school has to say on the matter.

But the reality is that it wasn’t that long ago where MySpace was massive and Facebook had a tiny fraction of their users. If memory serves, in 2006, MySpace had 7x the user base of Facebook.

Think about that.

It wasn’t market timing. It was execution. Facebook had a better team and a better product and they were able to keep pushing, and pushing with bold initiatives.

Lesson: there is a big opportunity when the market leader has a bad product

3. Patience

Going public isn’t the destination.

Building a company that can succeed, grow and become self sufficient is much more important.

Some companies choose to stay private. Others go public. It’s not boilerplate stuff.

It’s not easy to be a public company under any circumstances. Take a look at Amazon’s history. Jeff Bezos has been able to convince the market to believe in the long term business even when profits haven’t always been there every quarter. But not every CEO can convince public investors of the mission. Focusing the company on long term goals and not optimizing for each quarter can be tough.

I know a successful private company that is raising a large round right now to buy out an existing early investor. The company is private and the early stage VC wants them to go public so they can get liquidity. The founder/CEO doesn’t want to go public because he doesn’t want the market to tell him how much to invest in engineering. That’s impressive and I’m happy to see the company take control over their destiny.

Lesson: The very best companies don’t need to go public. They choose to go public when and if they want.

4. Ignore the haters

I can’t tell you how many people have said to me over the years that Facebook will never be able to generate meaningful profits. There is no money in photos. You can’t monetize email and messaging. There is no money in user generated content. You can’t rely on ads. Facebook can’t monteize like Google can.

Can’t, can’t, can’t, can’t.

Lesson: Yes you can.

Congrats to the team at Facebook. Not because of the upcoming IPO. But congrats on building a great company.

fred-wilson: Eyeoneye - Andrew Bird new music from Andrew Bird....

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 17:26:00 -0500

fred-wilson:

Eyeoneye - Andrew Bird

new music from Andrew Bird. the new record is out in March.

music from Andrew Bird’s Soundcloud will be featured as the artist of the weekend on fredwilson.fm

so good.

Coffee in a Tumblr cup at Tumblr HQ

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 11:03:01 -0500

Coffee in a Tumblr cup at Tumblr HQ

Big game. Little man.

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 19:37:01 -0500

Big game. Little man.