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Monthly Archives: October 2011

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Batch Is a Very Nice Photo Sharing App

October 27, 2011 9:09 pm / 5 Comments / Pat McCarthy

Batch ScreenshotI’ve tried out just about every iPhone photo sharing app, and many of them are quite good. I’ve mostly been attached to Instagram due to the ease of use, design, and the biggest user base means I have more people to follow and to share photos with.

One of the biggest problems with photo sharing apps so far is that they all tend to only allow you to share one photo at a time. While this keeps the quality of photos shared high, it creates some problems.

It’s a painful process if you want to share multiple photos from an event, as part of a theme, or just to get photos off your phone and put them in a place they can be shared without the painful process of downloading them to a computer and then uploading them somewhere.

Tonight Mike Arrington broke the news that the team at self-photo taking startup DailyBooth recently launched a photo sharing app called Batch for the iPhone.

I downloaded Batch and immediately loved it for the following reasons:

  • The design is beautiful. I love the handwritten instructions that overlay the screen in certain areas, and it walks you through how to use the application really well.
  • Uploading photos in a batch is great. The first time I got to touch multiple photos and have them uploaded at once I saw the value in the speed and simplicity of sharing the photos in a batch.
  • Automatic friend connection via Facebook makes it nice to not have to worry about building up my social graph. As friends join Batch, we’ll just get connected. Simple. This has some downsides in that you can’t customize who you follow or don’t follow yet, but I prefer it over having to start from scratch and manually choose everything and hope my friends find me.
  • You can see the future potential if batches from one event or location are grouped automatically and viewable together. It could nicely fulfill the promise of Color that never came to be.

If you have an iPhone and share photos, give Batch a try in the app store.

Posted in: Publishing, Social Networks, Startups

Best Startup PostMortem Yet – GameLayers

October 26, 2011 9:49 pm / 2 Comments / Pat McCarthy
GameLayers Spending

Every entrepreneur and investor takes something different away from shutting down a company. I’m glad to see more people are choosing transparency and dialoge to share unfiltered experiences and extract lessons to be learned. The startup ecosystem is better off as a result. – Bryce Roberts

I posted recently about how much there is to be learned from the stories of startups failing. As investor Bryce Roberts from OATV points out, this postmortem from former OATV investment GameLayers is very detailed with a wealth of knowledge.

There’s personal stories, videos, pitch decks, charts, and pictures that really take you through the ups and downs of the GameLayers startup experience. It’s definitely a worthwhile read.

Posted in: Startups

Why Is Google Even Involved In The Yahoo! Acquisition Talks?

October 24, 2011 8:37 pm / 6 Comments / Pat McCarthy
'YAHOO in 2001.' photo (c) 2007, gaku. - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

There’s been numerous news reports about Google considering “buying” Yahoo!, or at least teaming up with private equity companies to do so.

While most of the articles at least mention in passing that it’d be unlikely for this to pass government review, I haven’t seen many people actually discuss why Google is involved.

Why wouldn’t a Google acquisition of Yahoo! pass government review? Well, if the Department of Justice wouldn’t pass the search deal that Google and Yahoo! worked up in 2008 where SOME of Yahoo!’s search results were powered by Google, then why would they actually let Google take part in buying all of Yahoo!?

In fact, many thought that Google knew in 2008 it wouldn’t pass government review, but tried to do the deal just so Yahoo! would turn down Microsoft and waste a lot of Yahoo!’s internal time (and it worked). I sat in many meetings at Yahoo! that were spent talking about the tests we were running with Google and how we were going to implement the deal.

There hasn’t been enough change in search market share for anyone to seriously even think it could pass. I’m not entirely sure if Google being only part of an ownership group with private equity firms would change the government’s view, but I doubt it.

Which leaves us asking, why is anyone even taking Google’s interest seriously?

I can’t answer why anyone is taking Google seriously, besides the fact that they are one of the only players who actually have the cash to do something around Yahoo!.

'Red flags' photo (c) 2004, Rutger van Waveren - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/It just seems like any major involvement on there part is going to just raise big red flags with the governments of the world and will never pass “go”.

Why would Google get involved then?

I feel like there are two obvious answers to this one.

  1. Google can pretend to at least have interest in Yahoo! to draw out how quickly something happens here. The more time Yahoo! is in limbo, and the more time Microsoft spends figuring out what to do about it, the better that is for Google to continue to separate itself from them.
  2. Google can go as far as even floating prices out there to try and get others (Microsoft) to feel like they have to pay more in order to get Yahoo!. The more money someone spends on Yahoo!, the better that is for Google.

I suppose it is possible that Google really does want to keep Yahoo! out of Microsoft’s hands, but it seems like Microsoft having to acquire and digest Yahoo! would just allow Google to accelerate ahead even further ahead. It’s all just a ruse to waste time by complicating matters and drive up the price. Well played Google.

Posted in: Google, Microsoft, Yahoo

Great Funding Details Post From DuckDuckGo

October 24, 2011 12:25 pm / Leave a Comment / Pat McCarthy

While it’s not a startup failure post, I found this detailed post from Gabriel Weinberg of DuckDuckGo to be much more interesting and helpful than reading a generic blog post about their funding news on all the tech blogs.

Kudos to Gabriel for being open and sharing his fundraising experience.

Posted in: Startups

Someone Create A Startup Failure Blog Please…

October 22, 2011 12:13 am / 2 Comments / Pat McCarthy

At the recent TechStars Demo Day, Gary Vaynerchuk spoke about his concern with the current trend of celebrating the startups who raise money.

It’s easy to understand why the media, investors, and us all as individuals in the startup/tech world tend to focus on the stories of fundraising and hot startups. It’s positive, exciting, and it fuels the dreams of so many involved.

Gary’s point seems to be that we should celebrate the startup that knows how to make money instead of raise money. It’s a good point, but I think when startups make money at scale that’s celebrated quite a bit by everyone.

The problem I see is that these stories paint a picture that everything is great out there in startup-land, it’s easy to raise money, and that if you follow some simple steps you can also raise money and get on Techcrunch.

Besides the inaccurate picture that’s painted, there’s frankly not much to be learned from hearing about a hot startup with a strong team, that’s executed their product well, and raised money from A+ investors. While it’s a feel good story, there’s not much in that story that’s easy to learn from or duplicate.

Where there is something to be learned is from the startups that aren’t making it. The startups who are not finding product/market fit, the ones who can’t raise money, who are having team problems, or are failing for some other reason.

I’ve learned far more from the few startup postmortems that founders have posted than I’ve learned from the thousands of “Startup X raises investment” stories that have been published this year.

These stories are somewhat hard to find, as founders are often less excited to publicly talk about their failures. However, it’s also because there is no publication that’s really giving these companies and founders a voice.

The solution is a blog that specifically covers startups that have failed, are currently struggling, or that were on their way down before pivoting to find success. This isn’t meant to be a site that gossips or mocks these startups like F—edcompany.com did back in 2000, but one that seeks to pull out the lessons to be learned and positive experiences that can be drawn from them.

I’m tempted to start such a blog, but I’m busy working on my own company and don’t need the additional distraction. Who’s up for building a publication that could be very valuable for the good of the tech world?

Posted in: Startups

Thoughts on Steve Jobs: I Feel Sorry For My Kids

October 5, 2011 11:09 pm / 2 Comments / Pat McCarthy


I never met Steve Jobs. I don’t have any neat stories to tell about him. However, similar to everyone else, I feel like there’s a little less magic and mystery in the world now with his passing.

Jobs’ creations at Apple held an important role in my path. My first personal computer was one of the first PowerMacs where I did my first HTML programming. Shortly thereafter, my first “real” business adventure was buying thousands of dollars worth of broken Apple IIe computers from our school district with friends, fixing them up in a garage, and then reselling them for profit.

I reflected today on my own experience with Apple products along with Jobs as a visionary, entrepreneur, leader, marketer, salesman, and more. While doing this, I began to think about my nine, seven, and three year old kids, and I actually felt sorry for them in a weird way.

These kids never lived without the magical touch computing of iPods, iPhones, and iPads. They instantly accepted and became familiar with these products before ever getting a chance to know what it was like before they existed.

They didn’t get to realize how crazy it is that my parents record collection multiplied by 100 could be stored on a tiny and easy to use device.

They didn’t get to try an iPhone for the first time like I did and mentally compare it to a rotary dial phone, and then think to themselves “Wow, I’m living in the future!”.

They didn’t get to figure out that at one point it took tons of hardware devices to accomplish what they do when they instantly play games, surf the web, take pictures, shoot video, watch movies, listen to music, talk on Facetime, and more all on a sleek tablet.

Lastly, I fear that my kids generation may not be as curious and as driven as Steve Jobs and his brethren were on revolutionizing technology. If everything just works so well and and is so easy, will they challenge the status quo to create their version of what the future looks like?

While there will never be another Steve Jobs, the optimist in me believes that he already is inspiring the current generation of entrepreneurs, and that his legacy and products will continue to inspire future generations to come. Thanks Steve.

Posted in: Apple

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