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In my last blog post I wrote about how, in the world of online media, viral hits are inevitable. They arise organically on platforms like YouTube with no top-down intervention. Today over at AVC.com, Fred wrote about how movie studios are on the wrong side of history: "Restricting access to content is a bad business model in the age of a global network that costs practically nothing to distribute on." I agree, but let's dig in a bit more. Scarcity is not...

  The New York City tech scene has become hip and has integrated into our culture.  This brings many positive factors into our fair city including an entrepreneurial spirit and a more risk taking culture.  I love that.  But, it has also brought a little bit of snobbery about what and who are “cool”.  I guess I noticed this about something that is really meaningless; how people dress. Most of the younger guys at RRE wear the downtown uniform:...

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 a package of equity to motivate them to join (and remain at) the acquiring company, while...

tl;dr:  everything is now a meme Is there any doubt about the nature of the moment we live in?  We are passing through a period of global disruption and fermentation.  An age of volatility and risk.  The bottoms-up, decentralized, and emergent is overtaking the top-down, centralized, and directed. That much is probably obvious to anyone who’s awake (not to mention the 20% of Americans with anxiety disorders).  What’s less clear is what...

In keeping with compulsory end-of-year traditions, I wanted to share what I’m most excited about as an early-stage technology investor heading into 2012 and beyond. If 2011 was all about VCs losing their heads in the consumer Internet craze, I think 2012 will be about the re-emergence of enterprise investing which has been a black sheep for many venture capitalists since around 2008. (Perhaps nothing makes it clearer that enterprise investing is on its way back than this...