Counter Cliche: As Simple As the Wheel Fred’s VC cliche of the week this week is about the analog analog. It builds on one of Brad’s great concepts which he blogged about here. The concept is that figuring out how a digital idea mirrors an offline idea is a better way of handicapping future success of a venture than understanding pure technology analogs. I tend to agree with Fred, that it’s one useful lens with which to evaluate a new idea, but not the only one. So my counter cliche for the week is to look for something As Simple As the Wheel. At Return Path, by the way, nearly every business we’re in has a clear analog analog (Email…
Archives / March, 2005
Why Email Lists Need to Be More Like Toothpaste
Why Email Lists Need to Be More Like Toothpaste My colleague Mike Mayor’s column this week in iMedia Connection is a great quick read for anyone connected to the email list business. Warning! Reading this article may cause you to ask some more probing questions before your next list management or list rental event…
Counter Cliche: Don’t Just Do Something, Stand There
Counter Cliche: Don’t Just Do Something, Stand There Fred had a great posting the other day about Analysis Paralysis. And he’s right, a lot of the time. But I’ve always thought that Newton’s third law of motion can be applied to cliches — that every cliche has an equal and opposite cliche (think “Out of Sight, Out of Mind” vs. “Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder”). The counter cliche to Analysis Paralysis is “Don’t Just Do Something, Stand There” — another great lesson taught to me by my old boss at MovieFone. While startup businesses generally do need to move quickly and nimbly, there are times and places, particularly when negotiating something, where stopping or moving very slowly works to…
10 Candles
10 Candles My colleague Mike Mayor and I were reminded that yesterday was the 10th anniversary of the founding of the web design firm that would eventually become NetCreations (a company Return Path acquired last year) by Rosalind Resnick and Ryan Scott. Also, today apparently Yahoo! turns 10 (and is giving away free ice cream to commemorate the event). In different ways, and obviously at different scales, both serve as proof that one of the Internet’s most enduring concepts is to simply allow consumers to tell you what it is they are looking for and then to give it them. Think of the hundreds of companies that did not make it to their 10th birthday partly (or even their 1st)…