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zachklein:

I believe a startup should feel like this.

Why Your Product Isn’t As Simple As You Think

Some good thoughts by David Lieb, the co-founder and CEO of Bump. I like this method in particular to test a product:

When you can’t find old or young people, drunk people are a good approximation. In fact, while building Bump 3.0, we took teams of designers and engineers to bars in San Francisco and Palo Alto and watched people use Bump, tweaking the product to accommodate.

Simple is as simple does.

“Build a great product for people who will grab it out of your hand.”

Steve Blank during his SXSW talk, as relayed by J.J. Colao of Forbes.

Also great, with regard to doing press:

Even talented, hardworking CEOs and founders can get caught up in the hype. Why? Blank lists seven reasons:

1. Ego

2. Ego

3. Ego

4. Vanity metrics

5. Attract talent

6. Get funding

7. Drive customer demand

If CEOs get caught up in doing press for reasons other than the last three, he says, their companies are doomed.

That’s exactly right.

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I know some of you have been waiting for my thoughts on Dropbox acquiring Mailbox — my apologies, I’ve been sidetracked by SXSW SARS. I also realize I still need to write my longer thoughts about how Mailbox changed my email habits. For now, let me just congratulate the Mailbox team. They built something truly amazing and I could not be happier that the product will continue to live on and grow under the wings of Dropbox.

Many of you know how excited I’ve been about Mailbox over the past several months — and not just as an investor, but as a user. Email has been so broken for so long and these guys were the first ones really thinking outside the — sorry — box. So the success they’ve seen could not be any less surprising. I think Dropbox was very savvy to make this move and I think it seems like a great fit. Now get me a damn iPad client.

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theonion:

New Social Media Startup Launches, Shuts Down Within 45 Minutes: Full Report

If I didn’t see it on The Onion, it wouldn’t have been a slam dunk that this was an Onion story.

Exitround

My buddy Jacob Mullins, a VC at Shasta Ventures, launched his own first (well, technically second) startup, Exitround. When I first heard the idea a few weeks back, I immediately knew it was a good one coming at perhaps the perfect time.

Series A funding isn’t exactly matching the massive upswing in seed funding in the past year-plus (the so-called “Series A Crunch” — which I would consider natural, and healthy). At the same time, there are a group of voracious would-be acquirers, buoyed by the rebounding economy, out there hungry for talent.

Hand, meet glove.

“I spent the last week trying to write a column that proved Twitter wasn’t worth $10 billion. Then the facts intervened.”

Dennis K. Berman, writing for The Wall Street Journal.

A FiberHouse in Kansas City

Brad Feld:

I bought a house in Kansas City on Monday. It’s next door to the Homes for Hackers and KC Startup Village. It will have Google Fiber in it. I hope it becomes an integral part of the nation’s first Google Fiberhood.

I’m not going to be living in it. Instead, I’m going to let entrepreneurs live / work in it. Rent free. As part of helping create the Kansas City startup community. And to learn about the dynamics of Google Fiber. And to have some fun.

Brilliant idea. Entrepreneurs can apply here.

We're not crushing it

Elizabeth Yin: co-founder of LaunchBit:

When entrepreneurs say they are “crushing it”, statistically speaking, they must be lying or complacent, neither of which are great traits. You have to be absolutely clueless to truly believe that someone is crushing it when they say they are. If I told my employees we were crushing it, they would see right through me. I do want them to be hopeful. And the way to do that is to praise them when they do an excellent job. And to show them numbers and traction, not fake semblances of hoopla.

Love this.

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stevekovach:

Thank you Mailbox.

This is the new normal for me too. Which is awesome.

When Good Design Isn’t Enough

Johnnie Manzari:

Many designers want to launch a well designed product and have it spread by word of mouth. It feels like the best product should just win. But in situations where the product is facing an incumbent and there are complimentary network effects, it’s simply not enough to launch a well designed product.

“There’s nothing more invigorating than being deeply involved with a small company and a young team of founders out to do something incredibly special. And everybody’s betting against us. It’s another mission impossible.”

Michael Moritz to Charlie Rose (via sequoiacapital)

On The Vine

One of the reasons I got into the investing side of things was Instagram. Over the years as a writer, I had “zeroed in” on many companies that would go on to become hot properties from an investment perspective (Twitter, Foursquare, Square, Quora, etc). But Instagram was something I had watched from its inception (when it was still Burbn), and for various reasons knew it had that potential to be the next big thing.

A little over a year into investing, there are several companies I have such hopes for (CrunchFund probably wouldn’t invest if we didn’t!), but one that stuck out in particular in the past year was Vine.

Vine, as you know, was recently launched by Twitter as their new stand-alone video application for iOS. What a lot of people don’t know (or have forgotten) is that it was a startup before it was a part of Twitter. That’s easy to forgive since the entrepreneurs decided to sell before they actually shipped a product (which, as you might imagine, is bittersweet).

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