May 2013
1 post
“Republican lawmakers have become reflexive in rejecting every extended hand from...”
– Who Can Take Republicans Seriously on the Budget? - NYTimes.com
March 2013
2 posts
“These are the employees who could never keep a job in the private sector. I...”
– EXCLUSIVE: Former Newark TSA screener dishes on lax security at what may be America’s most unsafe airport - NYPOST.com
Snow Poem
Snow, Aldo
by Kate DiCamillo
Once, I was in New York, in Central Park, and I saw an old man in a black overcoat walking a black dog. This was springtime and the trees were still bare and the sky was gray and low and it began, suddenly, to snow: big fat flakes that twirled and landed on the black of the man’s overcoat and the black dog’s fur. The dog lifted his face and stared up at...
August 2012
2 posts
“Ryan’s claims weren’t even arguably true. You simply can’t say the president...”
– A not-very-truthful speech in a not-very-truthful campaign
“On the other hand, to anyone paying the slightest bit of attention to facts,...”
– Paul Ryan’s speech in 3 words | !!!Fox News!!!
June 2012
2 posts
“The startups that really get hosed are going to be the ones that have easy money...”
– Paul Graham’s Letter to YC Companies | Hacker News
“in 2006, for example, the 25 highest-paid hedge fund managers in America earned...”
– Paul Krugman: ‘I’m sick of being Cassandra. I’d like to win for once’ | Business | The Guardian
May 2012
1 post
“How awesome is this treasure trove of emails, documents, files et. al placed...”
– The Lehman Bankruptcy Docs (Buy LEH!) | The Big Picture
April 2012
2 posts
“More than 1 million Americans who have taken out mortgages in the past two years...”
– U.S. house price declines dragging more homeowners under water | Mortgages | Personal Finance | Financial Post
Don’t try to catch a falling knife.
“to make his numbers work Mr. Ryan would, by 2022, have to close enough loopholes...”
– Pink Slime Economics - NYTimes.com
I Should Write More Often
I should write more often. I like doing it. It helps me crystalize my thoughts both about the venture and startup industry and the subject matter that permeates each work day. When I first started at RRE one of the insights I had (now pretty obvious) was that effective communication with a readership was actually a critically important bits of connective tissue that have been developed in...
March 2012
6 posts
“Anyone who wants to know what the Occupy Wall Street protests are all about need...”
– Bank of America: Too Crooked to Fail | Politics News | Rolling Stone
“The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) was formed to ensure America’s...”
– gmancasefile: TSA: Fail
Good and worth reading the whole thing.
The iPad is the First Screen
Yesterday a couple of my colleagues and I met with a senior executive at one of the world’s biggest media companies to talk about what we’re seeing in the world and a few of our companies. As part of the general level setting she asked how we were seeing the development of the “second screen” as a media consumption device. And after pausing for a beat to make sure the answer wasn’t going to be...
The "Inflected Right"
You know how, like, pretty much everyone, like makes fun of teenage girls for like, always talking like this?
Have you noticed that people in tech do almost the exact same thing, but with a different linguistic crutch? Consider the following made-up exchange:
A: So you know, right, there’s no way that Google can catch us. They just don’t get product, right?
B: Yep! Think about Google Wave,...
February 2012
1 post
How to Make an Introduction
It wouldn’t have occurred to me to write about how to make introductions, but I’m surprised at how many people get it wrong. The most common error is making a connection between two people when at least one of them doesn’t actually want to be connected.
VC’s tend to receive a lot of introductions and we are often asked to make introductions on behalf of portfolio CEO’s, people looking for jobs or...
January 2012
3 posts
“The Economists’ statement opposing the Bush tax cuts was a statement signed by...”
– Economists’ statement opposing the Bush tax cuts - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Well, I guess we know who won that bet.
(via rickwebb)
Add this to the long list of data points that suggests that perhaps our national leadership should listen to people who, you know, know stuff.
“Gingrich, as he showed in a gasping effort in Thursday night’s debate in...”
– Deconstructing a Demagogue - NYTimes.com
“I’m dead serious,” the president continued, saying that any...”
– Obama Openly Asks Nation Why On Earth He Would Want To Serve For Another Term | The Onion - America’s Finest News Source
December 2011
3 posts
“Gingrich sees the world as a battleground — more than any other man alive,...”
– Imagining a Gingrich Presidency - Mickey Edwards - Politics - The Atlantic
What Obligation (if any) Is Owed?
The recent acquisition of Gowalla by Facebook is just the latest incidence of the potential tension between investors and founders when a company is acquired primarily for the team rather than for the technology, product or business that they’ve built. People around the web will take the opportunity to observe that in situations where a company is acquired in this way, the founders typically get...
“National home prices have declined 33% from the peak in 1Q06 through 3Q11,...”
– MICHELLE MEYER: Home Prices Will Continue To Plunge, And 2013 Will Be The Worst Year For Foreclosures In History
Normally I’m not one to say I told you so but … I totally did.
November 2011
1 post
“And last week, Romney released a commercial with footage in which Obama stated,...”
– Presidential Politics as Craven Crudités - NYTimes.com
September 2011
1 post
“As we’ve all learned, Bachmann’s strong points are her passion and...”
– The Bachmann Chronicles - NYTimes.com
July 2011
1 post
June 2011
2 posts
'Death Tax' Deception →
sawickipedia:
But the estate tax was meant to do more than bolster budgets and aid charities. From its inception, it was meant to ward off the emergence of a hereditary aristocracy in the United States. Established in 1916, the tax was a populist response to the excesses of the Gilded Age. President Theodore Roosevelt justified it by arguing that society has a claim upon the fortunes of its...
“The desire to own your own home, long a bedrock of the American Dream, is fast...”
– Index expected to show new low in interest in homeownership - ContraCostaTimes.com
I commented about four years ago that you will know the real estate crash is over when EVERYONE agrees that owning a house is just dumb, that the market will never recover, and that home ownership is dead. This was...
May 2011
1 post
“Have you noticed that the real-estate crash is almost always written about as a...”
– Tell your housing success story | Bankrate.com
April 2011
3 posts
“Nationally, prices have declined 32.6 percent since the market peaks, and are...”
– Home prices drop 3 percent in region - NorthJersey.com
Note too that there’s an arithmetic subtlety here - “fall from peak” numbers always look small by their nature. If prices go from 100 to 200 then they rose by 100%. If they fall from 200 to 100 then they fell by 50%. Same...
Best tax day for rich since '30s →
17%
That was the effective tax rate paid by the 400 Americans with the highest adjusted gross income in 2007, the most recent year with IRS data available. The figure is down from almost 30 percent in 2005. All in all, this April 15 could be the best tax day for the wealthy since the early 1930s - with top rates on ordinary income, capital gains, dividends, estates and gifts at or near historic...
March 2011
1 post
The English are feeling the pinch in relation to recent terrorist threats and have therefore raised their security level from “Miffed” to “Peeved.” Soon, though, security levels may be raised yet again to “Irritated” or even “A Bit Cross.” The English have not been “A Bit Cross” since the blitz in 1940 when tea supplies nearly ran out....
February 2011
4 posts
1 tag
WatchMy video response to “Why are there so few good sports-related start-ups?”
1 tag
WatchMy video response to “What exactly does it mean to be a “venture capitalist?”“
“So there you have it. Illegal immigrants: 393,000. Lying moms: one. Bankers:...”
– Why Isn’t Wall Street in Jail? | Rolling Stone Politics
“The share of Americans who own their home dropped again last year, but that...”
– More people choosing to rent, not buy, their home Amy Hoak’s Home Economics - MarketWatch
When you read this story for the hundredth time, when it seems like the entire country is walking away from the concept of home ownership, when it feels like you’d really just be crazy to fly in...
January 2011
2 posts
“The bleakest year in the foreclosure crisis has only just begun. Lenders are...”
– Over 1 million Americans seen losing homes in 2011 - Yahoo! Finance
“Home prices fell for the 53rd consecutive month in November, taking the decline...”
– Home price drops exceed Great Depression: Zillow | Reuters
December 2010
2 posts
Survivor Entrepreneurs
If you live in or around the startup world (and if you read this blog I suspect that you do), you have almost certainly been exposed to what I’ll call the “all-in ethos” that is considered appropriate and even mandatory to be successful as an entrepreneur. What I mean by this ethos is the stories told and retold about a given founder’s willingness to max out credit cards, call in every favor, and...
“Glenn Beck today claimed that 10% of all Muslims are terrorists.”
– Glenn Beck claims that 10% of all Muslims are terrorists (Video) - National Political Buzz | Examiner.com
A lot of Americans take this man seriously, and worse - they feel they are righteous in doing so.
September 2010
1 post
“Reagan’s behavior might not pass muster with those voters today who insist...”
– What people forget about Reagan
August 2010
3 posts
“The average consumer WANTS to be misinformed about housing. He wants to buy, and...”
– patrick.net » Interview with Patrick
“The antigovernment campaign has always been phrased in terms of opposition to...”
– Paul Krugman - America Goes Dark - NYTimes.com
June 2010
3 posts
“The federal homebuyer tax credit shifted demand in the U.S. housing market...”
– Fannie Mae’s Duncan Says Homebuyer Tax Credit Shifted Demand - BusinessWeek
AWESOME. So taxpayers paid tens of billions of dollars to people who would have bought houses in 2010 anyway but bought them a few months earlier. So glad to hear my money was well-spent.
“Remember where you were, when you could still laugh about teabaggers and racists...”
– Wonkette : Arizona School Demands Black & Latino Students’ Faces On Mural Be Changed To White
It’s past time we acknowledge just how serious the racism problem in the country still is.
May 2010
1 post
“Everybody thinks rising home prices are good, but rising property prices may...”
– Housing Prices Are Falling Again. We Have a Moral Obligation to Embrace The Trend. « NewObservations.Net
April 2010
5 posts
“You probably think of a search as something you do when you enter a term into a...”
– How Did Twitter Pass Yahoo in Search? With Robots, of Course! | Peter Kafka | MediaMemo | AllThingsD
Yeah that’s kind of crap. 