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by Gregory GalantWhat does it take to start a successful business? We’re working the phone to find the answers by calling entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and their friends and foes. This podcast features our conversations.
Recent podcasts
Venture Voice Rebooted
19/09/2007
We took off for the summer from Venture Voice. E-mails like these from loyal fans made it a painful experence:
Great show, have you taken the summer of? I hope to hear you back on the pods soon.Cheers!
pb Penticton, BC
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I talked with Joel Spolsky recently and he said that you are no longer doing Venture Voice! I have learned so much from your podcasts and was disheartened to hear this news. I do hope that you continue VV. I wish you the best in what you are now doing. Diwant
I can explain!
I was busy launching a new business called News Groper, a network of parody first-person blogs. For example, if you want your fix of business news, you can read blogs "by" Tom Perkins, Ben Bernanke, Stephen Schwarzman and Jeff Skilling.
But fall's upon us. Venture capitalists are back from vacation, customers are ready to do deals again and entrepreneurs are more than ready to pounce. As such, we're ready to give you the content you need.
I'm very excited to announce that Eddie LeBreton has joined the Venture Voice team to help take things to the next level.
Now we need your help: What can we do better? Who should we interview? Any other great ideas for us? Want to sponsor Venture Voice? Please post in the comments or contact us.
Facebook: Crossing the Chasm in Reverse
08/07/2007
I had the pleasure of being in the very first Facebook generation. My college was one of the first 13 to be added to Facebook, and we were all jazzed just to see photos of each other and occasionally get a "poke" -- the implications of which are not clear to this day.
I only have a couple of friends from college who are not on Facebook. The rest are. And I went to a college without a computer science department.
Generally the way new technologies spread, according to Geoffrey Moore's Cross the Chasm, are by starting with early adopters and spreading to the early majority. The early adopters are visionaries and do things simply for the sake of trying a new technology (e.g. being at the leading edge of "social networking"). The early majority are pragmatists who try something when they're sure of it's value (e.g. seeing what your friends are up to). Crossing from one to the other is a huge and often fatal challenge.
LinkedIn took this challenge and started with the early adopter Silicon Valley scene. They started to invite their friends, VCs, lawyers, bankers, etc. until it eventually spread so that many professionals -- even here on the East Coast -- know what it is. Reid said on my show that he doesn't think it's hit its "tipping point", but I believe it's crossed the chasm.
Facebook's another story.
Their first few thousand users included most of the college kids at the original 13 schools allowed in. While college students are more computer literate than many, most of that audience could not be considered early adopters. I had friends on Facebook in those days who didn't know what a blog was.
Facebook didn't start with the traditional early adopters, or if they did they only started with a small subset of them and didn't stay there long.
Moreover, they didn't even allow in the typical Silicon Valley/TechCrunch 53,651 early adopters in until recently (unless they happened to be in college).
Now, after Facebook has launched its API and the tech world has taken notice in a big way of the business opportunity in Facebook, you're starting to see lots of typical early adopters -- tech entrepreneurs and VCs (e.g. Fred, Josh, Roger, Dave, Howard, Andy) -- experiment with Facebook.
What does it mean that the early adopters are giving their two cents only after the early majority (at least among 18-30 year olds) have already adopted?
Teaser for Next Episode: iContact
29/06/2007
I usually don't like to give hints about who's coming up on Venture Voice, but I can't resist breaking news: Ryan Allis -- who left college early to start his business iContact -- just raised a $5.35 million for his already profitable company. Stay tuned to hear the story.
Immigration
25/06/2007
I was reminded of how immigration policy affects all parts of the economy while reading Fare is Fair, one of my favorite columns in The L Magazine that's a collection of quotes from those most in the know in NYC: the cabbies.
A number of our past guests on Venture Voice are immigrants. How does the immigration policy affect entrepreneurship in the US?
VV Show #46 - Jeremy Stoppelman of Yelp
25/06/2007
Download the MP3. Jeremy Stoppelman is the co-founder and CEO of Yelp, a site where users can write and share reviews of local businesses. Everyone's now a restaurant critic. However, local reviews were not the original focus, but just one of several features in the earlier versions of the site. Noticing the growth of this buried feature, Yelp re-tooled the site around reviews and hasn't looked back since. Does this story sound familiar? Jeremy's the former VP of Engineering at PayPal, which also had to drastically alter its business early in its life. Listen in to hear Jeremy's thoughts on growing a local enterprise, giving users and identity, and how to recognize and act upon the need for change.
