Now Greasemonkey isn’t exactly a product of my first startup, but it did originate from Aaron Boodman — a guy working for me as a full-time employee in the Web 1.0 days. Aaron’s job at the time? Implementing prototypes of my patent-pending product called Glue™.

Glue is a set of technologies around what later came to be known as “mashups” except that Glue started way back in 2000/2001. We filed trademark for the name “Glue” and successfully sold deployments of the technology at a wide range of A-list clients including Virgin Atlantic Airways, MasterCard, EarthLink, Sprint/Nextel and Audi. Our version of Glue powered tens of million of dollars in sales through the ShopAMD Web site for more than two years, and supported most of the joint e-commerce programs between Microsoft and AMD.

Aaron’s epiphany, apparently realized just after he left as an employee of my Startup 1.0, was that it might be easier to change things at the point of presentation (e.g. in the browser) than through proxy servers or on the back-end as our company was mostly doing at the time.

I’m ever hopeful that Aaron will publicly give a little shout-out to how/if my Glue™ product thinking shaped his early work on Greasemonkey. (He’s gone out on a limb for another of his ex-bosses.) If you’re out there, Boogs, remember that you still owe me one favor from a few years back — even though you’re doing fantastically well on your own these days.

So there you have it. Greasemonkey, Searchmonkey, Yahoo! Glue, and Glue™. All swirling just an arms’ reach away from this little blog. In the old days, I would have brooded over things I might have done differently to squeeze more personal gain out of trends that my old Startup 1.0 predicted way ahead of time.

But these days, I’m pretty darn excited about a potential Startup 3.0 that sees its first light of day in public later this month. It good. It’s timely. It’s got smart people helping me from the ground up. I haven’t felt this strongly about the likely success of an idea in years. Something tells me that Yahoo!, Microsoft or Aaron’s current employer might like this little project, too…

The blurb I had planned for today will have to wait for tomorrow. I just saw this post on TechCrunch.co.uk:

OK so there is a little agenda: Helping a guy out who is currently in hospital with a very serious condition and unable to work on his startup. Paul Cleghorn is founder of TIOTI.com, one of the first startups I wrote about on TechCrunch UK in 2006. Anyone who knows Paul will attest to his generosity and good nature. So it was a real shame when he was stuck down with an unknown condition some weeks ago which confined him to the Royal Brompton Hospital’s intensive care unit. Thankfully he is doing slightly better now (he’s off the oxygen) and is now able to send out the occasional Twitter.

Now anyone who’s an entrepreneur knows that startup teams don’t usually part ways for no reason. (Paul’s not the founder of TIOTI. He and I are co-founders.) So it’s going to be a while before I can attest to anything about generous or good-natured, per above. We’ll just have to see which lessons get learned and how a potential future exit (if any) gets handled.

In the meantime, no one deserves to be holed-up in intensive care so I’m hoping this little LOLCats-inspired image finds its way to Paul. He’s a big fan of the site and a proud parent to the two kittens in the photo here. So, seriously Paul…Get well soon!

New content will be coming on Cinco de Mayo — May 5th for the gringos in the crowd. By early June, I’m also hoping to have 100 invites available here for anyone who wants a peak at what’s cooking.

Unless, of course, the angel investors who get a sneak peek this week and next think we’re crazy. If that happens, I’ll be sending out 100 copies of my resume instead! Ahhh…The joy of the unknown in startup land…

I’ve always loved Sonic ads, and when I went looking for this one, I found the experts agree. Sonic’s work is handled by Barkley in Kansas City.

I got a note saying that someone had posted something to my “Fun Wall.” I wasn’t expecting anything from this particular friend, so I went to have a look. I can’t snapshot what I saw because it’s definitely NSFW.

Anyway, the caption on the picture said, “Click Next to see what happens…” I nearly did, just to see what the heck this thing was. But when I looked to the right of my screen, I saw that the “Next” button was actually below a list of my contacts — all of whom would have received this same picture had I clicked the button.

The damage here was relatively harmless. I deleted the Fun Wall post, although that was not as easy as I would have thought. But I can imagine a scam that would try to extract other personal details, and I’m wondering if it’s already happening with other rogue FB apps.

My advice: Double-check what you click when you’re out in the wild online.

Found a bit of good news for my Startup 2.0 today.

According to the 2008 Digital Entertainment Survey from media law firm Wiggin, TIOTI is approaching Digg in terms of overall awareness in the UK. It actually surpasses Digg in a few demographic slices.

The deets are on Slide 115 for anyone who clicks through to the full report. (Note: This PDF link requires the Adobe Acrobat Reader plug-in.)

But some popular Web 2.0 luminaries have said Twitter could be a billion dollar business just by sticking ads in in the huge volume of “tweets” that go out every day. Until now, that theory’s been untested.

Anyone who’s read any of the related posts in my blog knows where I stand. I think “audience first; monetization later” is a load of crap. I’m reminded of a famous quote, actually:

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
-Margaret Mead

My version would go something like this…”Never doubt that a small group of people willing to give you their billing info can create a business. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

For proof of my theory, I would just point to Club Penguin. Sure, it’s stylish to talk about the Bebo exit, the Last.fm windfall, etc. But Club Penguin got $700mm from Disney, a bigger exit than anything recently except YouTube to Google. Why? Because they have 650,000 people paying $6.95/month for a service that’s worth something to them.

So if anyone wants to throw down a bet with me about where Twitter will be in terms of revenue come Tax Day 2009, look at my CV for contact info and get in touch…

I’ve met with Andy Liu, one of the founders at BuddyTV, several times over the past year. He strikes me as a true entrepreneur with all the right stuff to form an idea into a viable business.

Geoff Entress over at Madrona said he made an early bet in BuddyTV through the Alliance of Angels mostly because of Andy. It’s great to see Geoff’s formidable partners officially behind things now, too.

Some people asked whether BuddyTV is a competitor to TIOTI, my own Startup 2.0. I’ve never thought so, because BuddyTV really seems to be grabbing the truly social side of television by the horns whereas my Startup 2.0 co-founder really wanted a site where he could watch American shows on his PC that he couldn’t get on British television.

I’ve said before on this blog which strategy I like in the long run. Heck, I even gave a tip of my hat to BuddyTV’s social strategy when my own Startup 2.0 was in full swing.

So congratulations, Andy! Getting to a B-round with both a real VC and a strategic partner at the table (Gemstar-TV Guide) is no small feat. Fingers crossed for a Last.FM-style exit in your future…

Something light (errr…maybe not so light) for this Friday’s post. Maybe I should upload one of my still-in-college photos, circa 1990, and put it next to a recent snapshot to really prove the point! At least my MacBook Air is really, really thin. ]]> http://www.twicefunded.com/2008/04/11/thinnovation/feed/ http://www.twicefunded.com/2008/04/09/inspiring-tech/ http://www.twicefunded.com/2008/04/09/inspiring-tech/#comments Wed, 09 Apr 2008 17:29:22 +0000 Marc Colando http://www.twicefunded.com/?p=36 Someone asked me recently what technology inspires me. Oddly, the question sort of took me by surprise. I’ve been so heads-down in one startup and then the next that I didn’t have a list at the ready.

The answer I gave, incidentally, was Ruby on Rails. I haven’t been so inspired by a hands-on programming tool in years. Suddenly, I’m able to go from napkin sketch to working prototype quickly and relatively painlessly. It reminds me of my early 20’s when I was slinging set-up box and Website code myself.

So I got to thinking more about my answer and my idea that I’ve become a business architect over the years. Ask an architect what inspires him or her and you’d probably get the same kind of list that comes to mind for me with tech. Some of the stuff would be very tactical. Like new materials and techniques that let buildings reach impossibly higher into the sky. And some of it would be actual art — as in the buildings that are coming together for the next Summer Olympic Games in Beijing.

So FWIW here’s my Top 5 list of inspiring tech…

1. Ruby on Rails - Love the community. Love the idea of “opinionated software.” Not quite sure yet about DHH, the father of Ruby on Rails. Opinions are good. Big egos are OK. But you can’t hold-up slides saying “F*ck you” to critics forever.
2. Mac OS X - Not only do I get the ease-of-use and integration of iTunes, iPhoto, Pages and Keynote — plus the power-user path to Final Cut Studio, etc…I’m also funding that the *nix underpinnings behind the scenes make it super easy to do some hardcore development. In 10 minutes, I can be running a Web and database server that I can start and stop with a click via XAMPP. And Mongrel is running even on my laptop for a full RoR demo environment to showcase my newest startup ideas in development.
3. Windows Media Center - Say what?! Not TIOTI, my Startup 2.0, or Hulu or Apple TV or Joost? Nope. And I’m not sucking-up just because I’m here in Seattle and playing to the hometown crowd. I have been running a Sony VAIO Digital Living System as the main hub to my living room entertainment for more than a year. It’s been painful at times, but I’ve now got several hundred DVD images on a big network hard drive being served-up on demand to systems around the house via the slick DVD Library menu in Vista Ultimate. I’ve also been impressed with the community that’s starting to plug-in, too. I installed WebGuide before Microsoft acquired them last year for Slingbox-like remote viewing. And I just discovered a great program to wrap all the metadata around the DVD files I’ve stored on the server.One little TIOTI-related note here, too…I was always pushing for my co-founder to have a close look at the way the Sports section works in Vista Ultimate. I get a focused EPG that delivers just the sports that are on in the window of time I’m searching, and I can see highlights (like the score) of games in progress as I surf the guide. Very cool and, IMHO, a sign of where EPG’s will evolve beyond The Grid.
4. Windows Home Server - If you haven’t tried it yet, you should. I run the HP MediaSmart box which pretty much just started doing its thing out of the box. As someone who has had to setup ACLs, LDAP and a bunch of other services with obscure acronyms on the back-end servers running my companies, I appreciate the “instant” nature of WHS. Some cool add-ins are also out there as add-ons and WHS saved my behind just yesterday by doing a full PC Restore on a Sony all-in-one that had failed.
5. iPhone - Sure, I still mostly use my Blackberry because of the amount of e-mail typing I do. But iPhone firmware 2.0 + 3G is going to be huge. I’ve seen some demos of things developed by third parties using the iPhone SDK and some of it will, I think, be truly disruptive. I’ll definitely write about some of these things here in the coming months.