We Beat The Nerds (MIT)!

We beat MIT 11-9.  Play Bucknell in the semi-finals tomorrow at 6PM EST.  Lets Go!

Indecision! And My New Thesis Topic About VC.

So I switched my thesis topic today.  Originally I wanted to write on social media and its affect on financial markets.  More specifically I wanted to look at StockTwits tweets its effects.  Unfortunately since StockTwits is so recent and we have such a short period of time to write our thesis my advisor and I decided that this was a little bit too ambitious of an undertaking.

My new topic:  How has the financial crisis affected the venture capital industry?  In a previous paper about the financial crisis and venture capital Joern Block and Philipp Sandner found that on average companies that raised funding after the financial crisis raised 20% less than those that raised funding before.  Interestingly they found that this difference in funding was not found in early stage seed funding, but rather in Series A or later.

The hypothesis explaining this was that entrepreneurs that hadn’t already raised seed capital could simply wait for a better economic climate, but firms that had already raised some capital had pressure to execute and could not simply put off their need for capital until the economy turned around and must accept funds on worse terms.

For my paper I hope to look at the effects in even more detail.   I think looking into if the location of the startup influences in any way the amount of funding or the valuation pre and post financial crisis.  One theory I have is that since start ups outside of the entrepreneurial hot spots are already under immense pressure and scrutiny by VCs the ones that do survive and were funded after the financial crisis are already the best of the best.  Because of this I believe the financial crisis will have had less of an effect on start ups located outside of the entrepreneurial friendly cities such as Silicon Valley, New York, and Boulder.

Of course I am still very early in my thesis process and my ideas are constantly evolving.  I would love any input anyone has on my idea or suggestions as far as interesting hypotheses to test.

What Can I Do For You?

So this is a little idea I got from Gary Vaynerchuk while I was reading his book today.  I’m a little bored here on a Sunday night, so thought I would ask my readers if there was anything I could do for them.

 

Information Overload, Why People Need to be Able to Dislike

We are living in the information age.  It has never been easier to publish your thoughts for the masses.  Although I think that this is great, and I am very happy getting my information from blogs instead of traditional print media, there are some negatives associated with this.

The most obvious of these is information overload.  I must admit I am part of the problem and not the solution.  One of the goals I gave myself was to post a new blog entry every day.  To be honest I find it very difficult to come up with interesting topics to write about, but I believe that writing every day is a very healthy exercise for myself and I also hope that every once in a while I provide some interesting insight to some of my readers.

Brad Feld had a great post about how much information is available these days and how he wants more more more.  I agree with this, but I think that I need to be more specific in that I want more GOOD information.  There is huge potential in the area of distinguishing high quality from low quality information.

Sharing information has become easier than ever.  Digg, delicious, twitter, etc. have all made it incredibly easy to share information.  The problem with these methods of sharing is that the signals are always positive.  In order to be able to distinguish between good and bad information shouldn’t people also be able to send negative signals about things that they read.  If I am suckered into reading one of Guy Kawasaki’s hundreds of links he shares a day and I find that I have unfortunately wasted 10 precious minutes of my life reading an article that has in fact made me stupider shouldn’t I be able to share this with my friends.  I think a Facebook “Dislike” button is a great idea, and so do apparently 3 million other people.  I think its great that information sharing has become so easy but we need to be able to share what we found useful as well as what we found was a complete waste of time.  A dislike button would be a great step in that direction, but there is obviously a lot of evolution that could go on in this area .

Good Bye Polo

This past weekend we had the Southern Division Water Polo Championships.  We ended up losing in the finals.  This tournament really didn’t count for anything.  The big tournament is the Eastern Championships which are in two weeks.  The winner of that gets to go to the NCAA Final Four, which is conveniently at Princeton this year.

I’ve been playing water polo since third grade, and the games in two weeks could be the last competitive water polo games I ever play.  It’s been a great run, I’m definitely going to miss the sport, but at the same time it has taken up so much of my life I am kind of ready to move on and pursue other interests.

Water polo has been a huge part of my life and here are some of the things I’ve taken away from it and playing competitively at a very high level.

Practice makes perfect.  Its sad to say, but I seriously think that I have consistently gotten worse year after year since I started playing at Princeton.  Why is this?  Because in high school I practiced a minimum of 2 hours a day and sometimes up to 5 hours a day.  I also had games almost every weekend against the best teams in California.  At Princeton the most we practice is 2 hours a week, and the competition is very often sub-par.

How does this translate to the real world?

Surround yourself with the best.  Love what you do, and always be working to get better.  Find the people who are the best at what you want to do, and learn from them.  If you try to learn from people who are average that’s all you’ll ever be.

This day and age there is no excuse.  Connecting with people is so easy, and most people will be flattered to be asked for advice.

Don’t get fancy.

Fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals.  In high school sometimes we would spend hours doing passing drills.  This was probably one of the most boring aspects of playing water polo, but it was definitely one of the reasons we were the best.  You have to master the fundamentals before you can elaborate on them.  Of course there is always room to get fancy, but if you can’t do the basics correctly you’re never going be successful at getting tricky.

This point is commonly referred to in the software and web 2.0 space.  I forget which class I learned in, but the professor emphasized the importance of the acronym KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid).  Simplicity is key and once you are successful with simplicity, then you can start to get fancy.

Always give it 110%.  Realize that every practice matters.  If you aren’t giving it everything you’ve got, then you’re giving your opponent the opportunity to catch up.

How this carries over into the business world is easy to see.  As an entrepreneur you need to be going balls out at all time.  If you aren’t your giving your competition the chance to catch up.

Overall I think I’ve had a pretty successful water polo career.  I’ve won two national championships, played in the national team development program, played water polo in over 5 different countries and hopefully in a couple weeks I’ll be able to say I made it to the NCAA final four.

I’ve made a lot of friends, learned a lot of lessons and had a great time.  Its been a good trip, but its time to move on and keep **LIVING THE DREAM**

Should I Be a Little Bit Meaner?

I like to think that I am a generally nice guy.  Sure there are people that don’t like me, but for the most part I like to think that I have a lot of friends and I’m fun to be around.

My business card speaks much to my feelings on the subject.

My Business Card

In online media today intelligent people that want to be heard have to be assertive about their opinions.  If I try to take an opposing argument I am usually subject to an uncensored response as to why my view is incorrect.  Although I don’t enjoy the feeling that I am wrong, I am always more convinced when the response is assertive and confident and with this type of response usually comes an air of superiority.  It might not be the most warm and welcoming response, but I usually respect the opinions of those who do so in this fashion.  Because of this I have come to wonder if I should adopt this sort of tone when offering my own opinion in my comments on blogs I read.

It is important for a writer to be true to themselves.  The most important part of developing an online personality, is just that, developing a personality that is truly your own.  I think that it is very possible to find a healthy medium between passive and uncaring and overly-aggressive and egotistical.  One of the reasons I started writing this blog was not only to share my thoughts with others, but also to discover who I was for myself.  My thoughts and feelings are always evolving, and I now realize that you can’t please all the people all the time.  But I do hope that if I do happen to respond to a comment of yours in the coming months you still see me as warm, polite, intelligent and funny and not a huge ***hole.

Forming Habits

I read somewhere the other day that it takes at least 21 days to form a good habit. Every year billions of people tell themselves, “I’m going to exercise more” “I’m going to quit smoking” “I’m going to eat healthier” etc.

Why is it so hard for us to follow through on these obligations? It’s because our brain weighs immediate consequences much greater than delayed gratification. This is a known flaw in our judgment process, but it is one that can be overcome.

My water polo season is about to come to an end, and I must admit I am very uncertain about how my physical training regiment is going to continue once I don’t have the obligation of being on a team to keep me exercising every day. Two summers ago I coped with this by telling my boss to deduct $20 from days pay if I didn’t get in an swim at least 3,000 yards each day.

Most people need this kind of added pressure in order to make the optimal decisions.  Although every morning I woke up regretting making that deal with my boss, at the end of every workout the good feelings I felt greatly out weighted the initial morning misery.

The reason I am writing about this is because I think that this area has huge potential as far as a product for greatly benefiting society.  Coming up with the details of this product are where the difficulty lies.

How much incentive does a person need in order to overcome the inertia effect?  How do you prevent people from cheating in a honor-based system?  How do you convince people that it is in their best interest to use the commitment devices to make better lifestyle choices?  If we answer these questions we will be on our way to greatly improving the decision making process for people around the world.

From the Horse’s Mouth

With all of the transformation that has been going on in social media we are seeing a lot of new ideas as far as how monetization is going to occur. One of the most talked about questions when Twitter raised more money a couple weeks ago was how can they have a $1 billion valuation when they don’t even know how they are going to make money.

To me the marketing strategy that I think has the most potential is the word-of-mouth marketing campaign. I believe that any company that figures out how to monetize individual’s promotion of an event or product is going to make a lot of money.

One company that is looking to get into this space is TellAPal http://www.tellapal.com/ , which aims to facilitate the spread of recommendations through viral channels such as email, facebook, twitter, etc.

Although I think that these companies are offering on the right track in finding an alternative type of advertising, I really question how successful they will be for one reason. When I get a recommendation from a friend I want it to be because my friend actually loved the product. When I tell one of my friends about how great I think the new Google Voice is it’s not because Google is paying me to do so. It’s because I throroughly enjoy the product and think my friend’s lives will be better off because of it.

Once you introduce economics into the mix it’s a completely different story. Incentives get skewed and information loses its reliability. Although we already have to deal with adjusting how we utilize information because of different preferences etc. this adds an entirely new element to the mix. In the end I think that the idea of word-of-mouth marketing is a good one, but it is definitely going to undergo some evolution if it is going to become a large percentage of the advertising market.

Clipp Show!

And so it begins… This was going to be the season. So what if we only won 19 games last season. We got the #1 pick and with it Blake Griffin. This year Staple Center was going to be our house. Well once again just as I was getting excited for the Lakers vs. Clippers debut we find out that Blake Griffin is going to be out until December with a broken kneecap.

They’ve managed to do it again, but at least I still have Kobe vs. Baron to look forward to. I think it Baron really wants to motivate the team he should vow not to shave his neck beard until the Clippers make the playoffs. It will work one way or the other. Either the team will come together under the leadership of Baron, or his neck beard will get so disgusting that opponents will be scared to guard him.

Write for yourself

One of the reasons I think it has been so hard for me to continue a blog going for any extended length of time is my constant desire to please everyone.  For some reason I have this overwhelming desire to make everyone happy.

How does this translate to maintaining my blog?  Instead of writing about what I want to write about, and truly talking about my feelings, I would try to write about what I thought others wanted to hear and try to be as uncontroversial as possible.  Well this is no more.  Here marks the beginning of Vreeland by Vreeland’s blog.  If you don’t like it you don’t have to read it.  That is all for now.