Scott Rafer's Blog

The WentNative conference team was emailed this earlier in the...

Thu, 16 May 2013 21:29:55 -0700

The WentNative conference team was emailed this earlier in the day, correctly and humorously. We’ve been aggressively inviting non-white and/or non-dudes to speak and have struck out across the board. Please show us up, suggest people, anything you can — however, we have been trying.

[i’ll give the photomontage artist credit if they want, but I didn’t want to unilaterally out the person or wait to post.]

"So, how does one define and identify this “one thing”? What exactly is a feature? A product? And,..."

Wed, 15 May 2013 10:00:08 -0700

“

So, how does one define and identify this “one thing”? What exactly is a feature? A product? And, what do investors consider to be businesses?

A matter of perspective

Here’s the secret: investors themselves often struggle to delineate the difference among these identities. Wasn’t Twitter just the status bar feature on Facebook? Facebook Places launched in 2010, a year after Foursquare. Did Foursquare then qualify as a feature?

Bill Gurley from Benchmark Capital drew criticism after claiming Dropbox to be a “major disruption” because the team “had taken a hard problem – file synchronization — and made it brain dead simple” as disbelievers fell into the Steve Jobs camp that file sync is a feature, not a product. Rory O’Driscoll from Scale Venture Partners came to Gurley’s defense, stating that the feature label should be taken as a compliment. “To get any traction in software today you have to start with a feature — an atomic unit of delight. You have to solve one problem superbly.” Dropbox is currently valued at over $4 billion.

”

- How VCs think: Is your startup a feature, a product or a business? - The Next Web (via dcancel)

Rafer sez:
I face a different version of this misunderstanding frequently. The historical differences between B2B and B2C is a derivative of product and feature dichotomy above.

Lumatic’s revenue is comes from the use of our Map SaaS outside our iPhone app, so I am frequently asked, “When are you going to discontinue your app and focus on your API?”

Answer, “We can’t. The app, with its million monthly searches, etc. is the only way our API advances and remains the best thing our customers can license.”

chriskaye: BANKSY Rafer sez:The Native American image was on...

Tue, 14 May 2013 19:51:21 -0700

chriskaye:

BANKSY

Rafer sez:
The Native American image was on Sycamore near the house. I just want to preserve a great pic of it.

tech-sense: Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. /HT @rhyshillman

Tue, 14 May 2013 18:50:18 -0700

tech-sense:

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. /HT @rhyshillman

"Here’s a current example of the challenge we face,” he writes in the book’s prelude: “At the height..."

Tue, 14 May 2013 18:48:31 -0700

““Here’s a current example of the challenge we face,” he writes in the book’s prelude: “At the height of its power, the photography company Kodak employed more than 14,000 people and was worth $28 billion. They even invented the first digital camera. But today Kodak is bankrupt, and the new face of digital photography has become Instagram. When Instagram was sold to Facebook for a billion dollars in 2012, it employed only 13 people. Where did all those jobs disappear? And what happened to the wealth that all those middle-class jobs created?””

- Jaron Lanier: The Internet destroyed the middle class - Salon.com

I like Jaron Lanier a lot, but this illustration as some sort of evidence of the internet hollowing out the middle class is, forgive me for saying so, idiotic. A child could figure out where those jobs went.

1) Instagram SHOWS the photos. We have to include all of the people who work on the cloud that supports that.

2) Kodak made cameras and film. Cameras are still being made - even moreso. At the very least, we should include the current #1 camera maker’s employees. At this point, that’s apple. Fifty thousand employees. Pro rate it to only the apple devices that have cameras, ignoring their mac business. 30,000 employees.

3) The film business still exists. It was just lost to Fujichrome, who still makes film and has over 30,000 employees. This has nothing to do with the web, but rather something called “Globalization.”

The internet didn’t kill a single job in photography. There are more cameras now than ever. There are still tens of thousands of people making film.

Take the market cap of JUST these three companies - facebook, apple, fujifilm, and we’re looking at $500 billion market cap, and nearly 90,000 employees.

Think that’s unfair? Canon has nearly 200,000 employees. Nikon has 24,000. 10,000 more than Kodak. Shit, ZEISS has 24,000 employees.

Never mind every single camera in an android phone.

Those jobs went overseas, and they went to computer companies, Mr. Lanier. They still exist. The internet didn’t kill a single one of them.

(via rickwebb)

Rafer sez:
Huzzah, plus Kodak’s consumer film executives went out of their way to line their pockets on the way down, at the explicit and afaik knowing expense of the nascent digital businesses. They killed Kodak, probably knew they were doing so, and showed no signs of caring at all.

I was the first internet PM for Kodak Hollywood. My product line was one of their victims.

Rafer sez:Yes, the kids can be scary.

Tue, 14 May 2013 10:51:34 -0700

Rafer sez:
Yes, the kids can be scary.

gregcohn: EFF: Who has your back?

Tue, 14 May 2013 09:25:46 -0700

gregcohn:

EFF: Who has your back?

Photo

Tue, 14 May 2013 08:08:46 -0700

Photo

Fri, 10 May 2013 10:11:53 -0700

"the guy in the cockpit has to fly the plane, not the passengers."

Fri, 10 May 2013 08:32:02 -0700

“the guy in the cockpit has to fly the plane, not the passengers.”

- JLM in the comments to:

A VC: Great Entrepreneurs Will Listen To You But Will Follow Their Own Instincts
(via fred-wilson)

aaroneous: On July 30, 2012 I posted how a side-project of mine...

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 00:11:36 -0700

aaroneous:

On July 30, 2012 I posted how a side-project of mine had been getting massive traffic despite my neglect.

I’m excited to say that since I wrote that, the traffic has more than doubled.

My little just-for-fun project, that I built in a weekend, is now ranked as the 485th most trafficked site on the internets.

That’s kinda neat.

Rafer sez:
How much is mobile?

annelehan: I hate hipsters. Their smug faces, vegan diet, tiny feet & sawdust bedding. No wait....

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 23:33:24 -0700

annelehan:

I hate hipsters. Their smug faces, vegan diet, tiny feet & sawdust bedding. No wait. Hamsters. I hate hamsters.

(via Perry disgusted by cartoon depicting explosion -...

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 12:46:01 -0700

(via Perry disgusted by cartoon depicting explosion - SFGate)

Rafer sez:
Instead, be disgusted with yourself about the people you maim, kill, and and undereducate.

"For a country like America that defines itself by its enemies, that must have them lest the hawks..."

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 06:06:58 -0700

“For a country like America that defines itself by its enemies, that must have them lest the hawks and warmongers of the right sigh themselves to sleep every night, we just don’t know where to turn, where to direct all our intolerance and bile. All we have is one skinny, naive-looking 19-year-old kid named Dzhokhar who’s lying in a hospital bed, riddled with bullets, barely alive, his throat torn out and his world surrounded by cops and ignominy and death, whispering that he has no clue what the hell is going on.”

- World’s. Dumbest. Enemies. | Notes & Errata by Mark Morford | an SFGate.com blog

Rafer sez:@founderscard Thanks for the email, but three white...

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 12:51:00 -0700

Rafer sez:
@founderscard Thanks for the email, but three white guys? Is that your definition of a founder in 2013? #fail

"I don’t blame the platform. They have to constantly adapt their strategy and if you’re..."

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 12:30:48 -0700

“I don’t blame the platform. They have to constantly adapt their strategy and if you’re going to bet on them, expect the worst all the time, that way you won’t be disappointed.”

- My Best Mistake: Building in Someone Else’s Yard | LinkedIn

kenyatta: @fivethirtyeight: Becoming hard to tell difference...

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 08:14:20 -0700

kenyatta:

@fivethirtyeight: Becoming hard to tell difference between credible news organizations like 4chan and troll sites like New York Post.

Welcome to the desert of the real.

inothernews: Stacey Campfield is a villain from a Dickens...

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 01:59:27 -0700

inothernews:

Stacey Campfield is a villain from a Dickens novel.

Would You Tweet This Article if It Earned You Points? - Businessweek

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 21:42:48 -0700

Would You Tweet This Article if It Earned You Points? - Businessweek:

wonheechang:

If it’s on the internet is must be real! A lovely write-up of my startup by the delightful Caro Winter. <3 <3 <3 <3 <3

laughingsquid: Don the Salesman

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 15:08:51 -0700

laughingsquid:

Don the Salesman