Sean Parker recently stated that small startups are ridicously over-funded where talented entrepreneurs start their own companies that don’t go anywhere resulting in a serious talent drain among bigger scalable companies. My buddy Michael Eisenberg similarily related to how that is negatively affecting the Israeli tech ecosystem by recommending non-scalable two-person startups to give up and joint bigger and more succesful companies going somewhere but having problems in attracting talented engineers.
My take on this is that both the investors and the founders of these small startups need to have an honest discussion of where things are going and act accordingly. The big problem here is that too many investors tend to follow up on an initial investment and thus keep the illusion of potential success alive even though the writing is on the wall…
I am really tired of social discovery as a way to find new interesting content. Let’s just be honest about it, most content on Facebook, Twitter and Google + is just recycled, ret-weeded and over-shared mainstream-like content with very little quality. The open Web is turning into a trash dump of recycled content consisting of executive, startup, VC, celebrity and Weblebrity gossip. It’s enough to read it once. I don’t need the same piece of shiitake in my face 15 times a day to get it. What we need is something new that can help us discover high quality content that is actually interesting. Is that so hard to come up with or is the social web turning us into mainstream conditioned “like” & re-tweet monkeys? Anyone?
China market spotlight 2011 for Hemisphere
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Last week I gave a talk at Hemisphere, a global community of executives with operating experience leading international expansion and market development for digital companies worldwide, on the challenges for foreign Internet companies to enter and do business in China. Since I ofter get questions about this I decided to share the slides here.
This is a post I wrote for the Quora Review earlier this week.
As Quora is rapidly growing out of its Silicon Valley nest and is spreading its wings across the world, the question is: How will Quora deal with internationalization? Having experienced facebook’s internationalization efforts at first hand, I am intrigued by what approach Quora will take when the right time comes. After all Quora is a very different animal than Facebook.
Anybody who has been involved in internationalization efforts knows that it stretches far beyond than just translating a bunch of strings into a new language. It is said that, every translations is a new interpretation, but I wonder, is every question equal everywhere?
Assuming that Quora will crowd source the translation in a similar way to facebook , I dont’ think that the translation in itself is going to be much of an issue. I think the question the questions of identity and cultural sensitivity is going to be more challenging. That is, if Quora wants to stay close to it current identity.
Will Quora suffer from multiple personality disorder?
While Quora currently is perceived as an almost elitistic-like Q&A site colored by what is important in Silicon Valley , i.e. focused on technology, venture capital, startup gossip and entrepreneurism. I can’t help to wonder if that “identity” is scaleable ? And even if it is, is that something that Quora could and should strive to guide & maintain at any price? Will Quora embrace and encourage multiple identities throughout different markets even if their nature might be very different from its original identity ? How will Quora deal with turning into a site where the questions and answers will be centered around political views and religious orientations rather than technology, startups and venture capital ? How will Quora deal with two politically opposed groups lashing out against each other in a fierce Q & A battle in Iran? Monitoring and managing the active Quora community members to ensure that they uphold and follow Quora HQ policy can be tricky. One the one hand, you’d like the Quora community to set the tone and give them “editorial” freedom within reasonable limits. On the other hand, what if that goes out of hand in a direction contrary to Quora’s original vision? Is that good or bad? It begs the question: Will Quora be able to live with multiple “personalities” ?
How will Quora deal with cultural sensitivity?
Are all questions equal in every country and region? What can you ask where? Are there questions that are off limits in certain regions for political, religious or cultural reasons ? If so, how would the Quora community deal with them? What is irony in Bahrain and what is offensive in Poland? What is a sarcastic question in Italy and what constitutes a leading question in Russia? When does a question become antisemitic in Germany and racist in France? Can you ask how to make a Cheese burger in Israel, or where to find a bar in Saudi Arabia? Would it be offensive to ask where to buy contraception in Italy? Moreover, who will monitor the editors to ensure that the strike the “right” balance?
How will Quora deal with privacy and data protection in different countries?
If you’ve ever been involved in growing a company internationally, you know that it will come sooner rather than later. The privacy backlash. The data protection headaches. Every country has their own issue with privacy and data protection and Quora will have to comply with local laws and regulations in each and every market they operate in. The question is, can a question be illegal in certain countries? Likewise, can an answer be illegal in some countries? What will Quora do if it gets a request from the FBI via a foreign government to share the private data on one of its citizens for having asked “sensitive” questions? And if so, how will Quora protects its users from getting into trouble? These are just a handful of questions that comes to my mind when thinking about what challenges Quora might face with regards to internationalization.
The mother of all questions is: How will Quora approach internationalization?
Here is a great interview with P1′s CEO & founder Yu Wang on building a private social network targeting the affluent market in China.
Facebook’s initial crew moving on to new start-ups.
Some of my former facebook colleagues and myself were featured in a great piece by The New York Times on new companies stared by ex-facebook employees.Will be very interesting to see what can of companies the growing number of X-facebookers will create in 2011.
Sesame street – step a side! Here come Baby Juno! I’m very excited to announce that I have joined the Juno Company advisory board. The Juno Company is an amazing little San Francisco based company that is focused creating a fun, witty and engaging musical experiences for pre-schoolers. The Juno [...]
Sesame street – step a side! Here come Baby Juno! I’m very excited to announce that I have joined the Juno Company advisory board. The Juno Company is an amazing little San Francisco based company that is focused creating a fun, witty and engaging musical experiences for pre-schoolers. The Juno Company have already won several Emmy Awards and was founded by classical composer and mom, Belinda Takahashim her husband Adam Adelman.
There are several reasons why I decided to get involved in this company, first of all my kids absolutely love Juno DVDs’ and toys. Second, as a passionate music lover, I was just blown away by Belinda’s beautifully orchestrated compositions recorded by real live orchestras. Juno also have very strong social responsibility program: For every for every Juno product sold through the company’s website, the company will donate a special music education DVD to a child in need through K.I.D.S. as a part of their One-For-All-program. This is a great initiative I’d like to help grow.
I really believe in this team and think that the Juno Company is going to be the next Sesame Street. They are already already killing it retail byt totally taking over FAO Schwartz store in New York, the biggest such launch FAO Schwartz have done for decades, selling nation wide through Buy Buy Baby & Amazon and soon rolling out in Toys-r-Us.
I will be helping the Juno Company with digital and social strategy. And I’m not alone, I am joining a great company of advisors: Brooke Shields (narrated all Juno books), Andrew McCollum (Facebook co-founder), Bernard Gershon (former Disney SVP & GM) Peter Safran (The Safran Company) and Dr. Dorothy Singer (Yale). The great thing is that these are not just passive advisors but very active advisors. The way it should be.
If you are interested in partnering or working with the Juno Company bringing highly engaging musical edutainment to kids, feel free to reach out and I’ll hook you up.
PlayHopper was outed by CNN as one of 6 new ventures by Facebook veterans last week.
PlayHopper was outed by CNN as one of 6 new ventures by Facebook veterans last week.
The Chinese Gaming company The9 has invested in AuroraFeint – makers of the OpenFeint platform to bring OpenFeint to China & Android. Very exciting times for Jason & the team. I first got involved with OpenFeint as and advisor last year after I left [...]
The Chinese Gaming company The9 has invested in AuroraFeint – makers of the OpenFeint platform to bring OpenFeint to China & Android. Very exciting times for Jason & the team. I first got involved with OpenFeint as and advisor last year after I left Facebook & have been very impressed by the speed Jason Citron & his team have executed on their vision under the guiding star of Peter Relan, founder of YouWeb who incubated the company.
OpenFeint has over 2,200 live games for the iPhone, and will soon have publishers such as Astraware, Digital Chocolate, Glu Mobile, Hudson Soft and others onboard.
With both Chinese and Japanese investors onboard (the Japanese gaming giant DeNA invested in the company last year) AuroraFeint is set up for a strong future presence in Asia.
Very excited to see how the how the story unfolds.
Disclaimer: I’m a former advisor & a small shareholder in AuroraFeint.
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