A VC - Latest Comments in Axes To Grind

Re: Axes To Grind

Guest — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 20:34:43 -0000

Thanks, Alain,
my mom is a journalist too, but she spent her entire career on covering the media itself. I know that people like you, who can cast an analytical view on their own guild, are rather rare.

Re: Axes To Grind

fredwilson — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 18:20:12 -0000

That is not always the case

Sometimes its the under funded scrappy startup that produces the better
product

Indeed.com bootstrapped itself through launch and did one round which
thankfully we participated in

Their competitor simplyhired.com has done something like three rounds,
raised almost $20mm

And according to comscore, indeed has 5.3mm monthly unique visitors and
simplyhired has less than 2mm

That's but one example and there are many

Re: Axes To Grind

fredwilson — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 16:58:19 -0000

I read it yesterday and had no idea what to make of it

First, tapulous has no real VC investors, just angels

So certainly VCs were not responsible for Mike Lee's firing

And his points about VCs ruining the iPhone ecosystem seem also off base

Look at Facebook for example

The VC funded companies are largely responsible for the apps with staying
power and quality

The ³app spam² was largely a function of thousands of small developers
trying to strike it rich

So I don't really get his point

Re: Axes To Grind

fredwilson — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 16:46:11 -0000

Gin? I've never tried it. I prefer vodka and scotch.

Re: Axes To Grind

Alain Sherter — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 16:16:53 -0000

Krassen--I'm not suggesting the media shouldn't investigate possible malfeasance. That's our job (yep, I'm a journalist). And in the McCain-Reed relationship you cite I would be in favor of exploring a possible quid pro quo between the two related to Abramoff. The question is whether you can muster enough evidence to prove impropriety. if you accuse anyone of unethical or criminal behavior, you better damn well have the goods. If not, then you're a tabloid, and that doesn't do anyone any good. That's what I mean about being sure, at least within reason (no "indisputable truths" in journalism that I've ever encountered), of what you know.

But I agree with you that the press is often gun-shy about investigating power. Why is a complicated subject, and in my view the reasons are historical (ie, there's a long tradition of the media sucking up to govt in this country); economic (media consolidation and falling ad sales) and even social (journalism was "professionalized" in the 60s, so it began drawing reporters from the same class as the people they cover).

Whether something is important or trivial is a judgment call. Reporters and editors discuss what to write about, and why, every day. Often the coverage is lacking, and sometimes we take our eyes off the ball.

Re: Axes To Grind

Lloyd Dewolf — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 10:52:57 -0000

A big part of the frustration for the WordPress customers I work with when trying to migrate them from TypePad is what a surprise these issues are for them, because Six Apart presents itself as being about freedom, open standards, open technology and the open web. It seems fair to call them on it, especially when they have been given plenty of time to address this issue.

Re: Axes To Grind

Steve Kane — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 10:11:17 -0000

i think the only questionable aspect to the insight/photobucket situation is, disclosure, or lack thereof.

did insight disclose their investment opportunity to their LPs?

also, did they allow LPs to decide for themselves whether they may have wanted to invest directly?

the partners at insight put together a little syndicate to make the investment in photobucket, so they could have accomodated LPs who wanted to throw in few bucks (fellow deal junkies).

any case, while these kinds of situations crop up every day, firms that practice true transparency are the ones who avoid not conflicts, but the appearance of conflicts, whioch cn be just as damaging

Re: Axes To Grind

Jeremy Bencken — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 10:05:36 -0000

Yeah, I definitely agree. No wrong-doing from where I sit.

When I was reading that story (with it's huge photo and section-front placement) in the Journal over my morning smoothie, after 2 paragraphs it seemed like an obvious hit job.

Or at best a tortured example trying to highlight the bigger concern over potential conflicts of interest. Must have been a slow news day.

Re: Axes To Grind

Guest — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 10:04:04 -0000

That's really insightful...
I have a somewhat related question. There was this story about Ralph Reed and John McCain a few days ago. McCain was on the Senate committee that had to investigate Reed in the Abramoff case. McCain never called him and now Ralph Reed is fundraising for mcCain.
According to your criteria the media should not be onto this and they aren't. After all, as you say, " it insinuates wrongdoing without proving that it was committed"...
Yet the story smells very bad and raises tons of questions about John McCain in my mind. Why is it that you folks are so delicate and cautious on an extremely important story like that, yet you feel it is OK to bombard us with nonsense about arugula? The media's "indisputable truth" vs. "insinuation" filter is extremely stringent, at the same time your "critically important" vs. "mindless excruciating minutiae" filter is non-existent...

(my take from your comment was that you were a journalist, I am sorry if that is not the case..."

Re: Axes To Grind

andyswan — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 09:10:40 -0000

The more you take it on the way you have been, the more valuable you become to your readers, your portfolio companies and the customers of your portfolio companies. I say keep it up exactly as you have been doing....with the exception of possibly having a stronger filter for those with bad tone and an obvious axe to grind (send them to Lindzon so he can just tell them to unsubscribe)

Re: Axes To Grind

ASherter — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 01:47:52 -0000

No tricks of the trade here either, but I'd expand on Peter's comment to say that trying to determine if something is true is a different sport than trying to determine someone's motives for telling you something. The latter is tough. People's motives for telling you anything are often complicated and frequently undecipherable.

No one wants to be a dupe, of course (pace Judy Miller), and you have to be on guard not only against being used (that comes with the territory), but also of being used in ways you can't perceive. Because if you can't spot the con, you may be less likely to seek a second opinion, as you sensibly did on Typepad.The biggest problem with the Photobucket story is that it insinuates wrongdong without proving that it was committed. That's no good.

At bottom, not to get all high-falutin about it, these questions are epistemological. How do I know what I know? What's the basis for my opinion? Am I even qualified to hold an opinion on this issue? What's the origin of this idea in my head, and why do I trust it? Etc. Be thankful that your TypePad axe-man was so clumsy. It's harder when people slip the dagger in gently enough so you don't notice it.

In your case, there's a complication in that you're an investor and a blogger. How you respond to someone commenting about a USV portfolio company is be definition colored by your financial investment (btw, I don't necessarily see that as a conflict of interest, a slippery notion if ever there was one). If you can't be certain of someone else's motives for telling you something, you can be certain (more or less) of your motives in deciding how to treat what you were told..

I'm quite sure this was of no assistance whatsoever. Gin helps.

Re: Axes To Grind

Bryan Woods — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 23:36:45 -0000

I think we, the early adopters of free software, need to get together and write up some kind of agreement that keeps us as much as possible from grinding our axes on free software services.

Re: Axes To Grind

Lloyd Dewolf — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 21:24:03 -0000

Hi Ivan, our (WordPress) export tools are a work in progress, so we're looking for substantial blogs to confirm they work well with -- assuming Six Apart fixes the show stoppers. We have some tricks to get all of the images, but as you said, no joy for the albums. Feel free to get in touch.

Re: Axes To Grind

k00k — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 20:57:51 -0000

Agreed, Batchbook by Batchblue rocks! They're also some really good and really smart people.

Re: Axes To Grind

Lloyd Dewolf — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 20:55:53 -0000

Fred, thank you soo much for blogging about this issue. I'm one in the same as the person who wrote that article and that emailed you. My email include the signature:
Lloyd Budd | Digital Entomologist | | Skype:foolswisdom
WordPress.com | WordPress.org | Automattic.com

Ax to grind is a great way to describe this issue, because for a year I've been trying to work with Six Apart on this issue. It causes me great headaches trying to help people export from TypePad.

There are no tools or documentation on how to export in a way that preserves the permalinks, and because of a bug in TypePad and an unpublished permalink creation rules that have changed over the years, it guarantees a tedious, manual process to truly backup or export a blog.

I do describe this as a data portability issue, because for a blog, the URL to an article is content -- it's surprises me how often I notice that the URL is hand crafted (and cheeky). And as the w3 preaches, "Cool [URLs] don't change."

MartinEdic was OK with leaking Google Juice all over the place, but others covet the goo. And other others don't like loose strings or need more control over their online identity.

Six Apart's leadership team can keep repeating the mantra of "AtomPub", but the simple fact is that you can’t truly backup or export a blog today (remember I include permalinks). Currently broken using AtomPub:
* Can no longer retrieve comments on posts.
* No longer contains Pages.
* XML-RPC for trackback retrieval broke.

If anyone wants to argue otherwise, show me a tool that I can get a full backup of a TypePad blog. Much better, would be such a tool being part of TypePad. Really, few people care whether it’s AtomPub or something else, just end the lock in.

Re: Axes To Grind

Ethan Bauley — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 20:48:44 -0000

When you kicked this blog off years ago, did you ever think you'd be doing customer service for your portfolio companies through it?

The thing that I love about this post is that it gets into the "Who actually calls the 1-800 number on the back of a cereal box?" question.

What are these people's M.O.? Should I take them seriously?

I love the "customer service is the new marketing" heuristic...there's a lesson in here somewhere ;-)

Re: Axes To Grind

Guest — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 20:36:24 -0000

Perhaps related to the topic is this case between myself and Bob Metcalfe (of Ethernet fame), where he tried to argue that personal motives matter more than the laws of physics (you have to scroll to the comments section):
http://www.xconomy.com/bost...

To his credit, though, Metcalfe sorta-kinda admitted later that the company in question had overreached in their hype:
http://algae-thermodynamics...

Re: Axes To Grind

Guest — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 20:25:12 -0000

Personal conflicts and pettiness are highly unattractive to third parties; generally these situations reflect poorly on the "ax grinder" and have an opposite ,or backfiring effect.

Unfortunately, this very dynamic has been very well understood and exploited by the Bush administration to undermine and distract legitimate criticisms. Joe Wilson, Paul O'Neil, Scott McClellan and many others went public with legitimate concerns and criticisms and the response has always been not to address the factual matter but to attack the personality and to imply some "ulterior motive" or "disgruntlement". It has been very effective, I must say.

Re: Axes To Grind

ivanpope — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 18:27:32 -0000

Josh, I pay for Typepad. It's not a free product. So I have to go on paying year on year on year or lose my blog?

Re: Axes To Grind

ivanpope — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 18:25:33 -0000

Your friend at TypePad might say they provide an easy import/export format - but apart from anything else, it doesn't export images. In fact there is no way to just export images. You can go through and download them one by one, which isn't exporting them and doesn't help reconstruct the blog. You also can't actually save down their own Photo album format. They suggest you back up your blog, but don't provide the tools to do it. To suggest otherwise is stupid. This from support yesterday: "Using the export utility will save your weblog content (text) but not the resources such as images and other files." So yes, I have an axe to grind with them - which is that after four years of art blogging with hundreds of images I am trapped - no data portability there then. And I have to pay year on year to remain trapped. Thanks Typepad.

Re: Axes To Grind

fredwilson — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 16:16:34 -0000

Re: Axes To Grind

sippey — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 16:15:33 -0000

Obviously blogging has evolved to the point where different platforms are focused on different needs and markets. What we're focused on with TypePad is providing an easy to use hosted blogging platform that gives users powerful tools to design their blogs; the freedom to extend their blog with widgets, advertising, third party content and tools; while giving users control over their content and their own brand.

Re: Axes To Grind

fredwilson — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 16:14:20 -0000

Good point

Although our target investment over the life of the deal is $7mm to $10mm.

We just start with $500k to $2mm (usually)

Insight is 3-5x bigger than we are the way I think of it

But I want to be clear that I do not think they did anything wrong. And it's
also clear that their LPs don't seem to think so either (at least publicly)

Re: Axes To Grind

sippey — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 16:10:45 -0000

@racerrick -- we have made improvements over the years in how we render URLs in response to customer feature requests; and while as Fred points out in his post the import / export format doesn't include those URLs, the AtomPub API will return them. I can say for certain that at no time have we ever designed URLs to make things convenient for Six Apart and inconvenient for customers; instead we're focused on making things better for TypePad bloggers and supporting standards for data portability.

Re: Axes To Grind

kidmercury — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 15:53:16 -0000

there will always be haters, just ignore them. rejoice instead that you are not as pathetic and weak minded as they are, and pity them for the fact that hate has conquered their soul.

or tell them 9/11 was an inside job, that will usually scare them away so they won't come back with their petty complaints. :)