Why I joined Path 101

As Charlie announced on the Path101 blog, I've joined his angel round as an investor and will be taking a seat on their Board of Directors (me, Charlie and his co-founder CTO Alex). Path101 is aimed at providing professional career advice with a combination of community, data analysis and personality assessment tools. The company is being developed in "uber anti-stealth" mode, so, in that spirit, here's my thinking behind getting involved.

1) It's a bet on Charlie

• Charlie's a phenomenal guy who follows his passions and I believe that longterm he'll succeed. He and I met online because of the mutual interests expressed in our blogs (if not always in our Last.fm profiles). Since then we've had several casual conversations which escalated once he decided to start Path101.
  
• I'm buying into Charlie early in order to continue building this relationship. Path101 is a good concept with merit (see #2) but my involvement here is also about a set of broader opportunities with Charlie and his projects going forward. I'm "going long" on Charlie O'Donnell.
  

2) It deserves to exist

• People making better, more fulfilling career choices - i'd like to help that happen so I'm investing some expertise and a small amount of money. Projects that excite me tend to have both heart and mind -- merit and value -- I care less about "yet another " and more about seeing products come to fruition that help people in one form or another.
  

3) My personal growth and skill development

• Becoming a board member with Path 101 provides the opportunity to further develop my persona as an advisor, Director and investor - roles that i plan to increasingly take on in the coming years.
• After participating in many board meetings at Second Life, this is a chance to learn about managing the process from the other side, a skill I'll need when I return to start-up life post-Google.
• Most of Charlie's investors are NYC-based, an area where my tech/VC network isn't as deep as in the Bay Area. Co-investing with these folks gives me a) increased diversity of ideas and b) some insights into their community in case I ever end up back East.
  

And so it begins....

Second Life Friday

Cited by Yahoo as one of the hot searches for 2007, Second Life has a bunch of different interesting coverage, beginning to wrap up a crazy year in their existence.

One of AOL's Hottest Products for 2007

Interview with Daniel Terdiman about his business guide to Second Life

Fortune's David Kirkpatrick still believes

Going down Path 101

I'm joining the Board of Path 101, a NYC-based start-up founded by my friend Charlie which hopes to help people make better, more satisfying life decisions, starting with their careers.

Anyone who follows Path 101 knows that Charlie has gone "uber anti-stealth" -- sharing way too much info about what they're building. I love this philosophy and will follow-up with a blog post here about why i decided to get involved, etc.

Charlie makes a nice announcement of me and some more funding they raised. One small note for modesty and accuracy sake because i cringe a little whenever i see my accomplishments detailed by others. All the great stuff i've been involved with - Second Life, Google, YouTube - is because of excellent teams.

A Selfish View of People Leaving Google

So as several longtime googlers leave the company, a selfish question occurred to me. Do I become less valuable to Google once my friends leave?

As a 4+yr Googler I assume that some of my ability to accomplish my job comes from knowing who to call and having their trust. People open my emails, prioritize my requests appropriately and give me resources. These are important qualities in a large company. As these folks leave and I'm more of an unknown to new hires, does my ability to grease the skids decrease? Do i need to start relying on my title more than my relationships? Certainly I feel this already in some areas - especially since I'm at YouTube fulltime and don't have the time to rebuild all of my Mountain View relationships.

The other side of the coin would be that as some longtime Googlers leave, the folks who hold the history and knowledge of the company become increasingly valuable because they're fewer of us and we tend to be in increasingly senior roles.

[for clarity: this is a thought exercise and not a calculation i run through my head when someone tells me they're leaving or i look at my other longtime colleagues]

Okay, this smells like 1999

PlayFirst (casual games co) raises a bunch of money and trumpets "a deal with major Facebook application developer RockYou Inc. to distribute PlayFirst's games on the site."

You know what that means? It means RockYou will promote PlayFirst games in their popular apps. This is not a "deal," it's a rate card -- anyone can buy this promotion.

When ad buys start being called "deals" it reminds me of AOL's infamous "you scratch my back, i scratch yours and we both look good" days of passing revenue in a circle so everyone gets to book it.

The psychology of a clean slate

Caroline and I have a smallish sum parked with a money manager to basically balance out our broader portfolio in ways that i wouldn't otherwise select myself -- essentially someone who we pay to be more risk seeking and risk averse at the same time in order to offset my straight and narrow perspective. It leads to the strangest collection of bonds and international emerging markets funds.

Anyway, our adviser is selling off two bond funds for a small loss in order to move us into a different investment. I wonder whether financial advisers believe that removing a losing holding will make the portfolio look better when a client assesses how he's doing via checking the current balances. Do clients quickly forget the historic loss where as if it was showing a negative situation each time i logged in, i might start to think "what am i paying this guy for?" That is, is there a bias here for these guys to sell losers too early in order to create an imaginary clean slate?

Mitchell Report Infographic Porn

Sometimes a good graphic just makes the info jump off the page. NYTimes has an interesting story on how many of the players mentioned in the Mitchell Report for baseball steroid abuse were connected to two journeymen players. Basically, they moved from team to team, introducing many of their teammates to their steroid connections.

But all of this can be summarized in this awesome graphic.

Google Gear: Hat's All Folks

Grey. YouTube. Hat.

Eat Chad Hurley's lunch

Chad Hurley designed a lunch box for a charity auction.

Come on - bid on it for the kids. It's June Cleaver meets, uh, Marilyn Manson?

Mass Media?

via NYPost

Puttin' on the Foil: 2008 Style

The NYTimes metrosexual version of the Hanson Brothers Foilin' Up:

On a runway model or an Upper East Side debutante, black nail polish might seem a nod to vampy elegance. On a professional hockey player — even one balancing rock shrimp tempura on chopsticks, as Sean Avery, a left wing for the New York Rangers, was doing on a recent Monday night — the look is a little more menacing.

“It’s my fighting hand,” Mr. Avery, 27, said over dinner at Nobu Next Door. Traded to the Rangers from the Los Angeles Kings in February, he was explaining how he paints his nails to intimidate opponents before he tussles on the ice. And being feisty and hot-headed, that’s often.

Second Life CTO departs

CTO Cory Ondrejka will be leaving Second Life over differences with CEO Philip Rosedale, the most visible departure from Second Life, well, ever (most of the early team has been there ~7 years). Cory, Philip and I spent much of the early days together brainstorming and debating what Second Life should be. We all brought very different perspectives which resulted in a better product and ambitious goals.

Although we haven't kept in touch very much since I left SL in 2003 (i do see Philip a few times a year), Cory left a lasting impression on me. He was the gruff guy with a heart of gold, and someone who was a great colleague.

I first met him during my interview process in late 2000. One day i was on the top floor of 333 Linden talking to Philip when Cory popped his head in and asked Philip to stop by his desk when we were done. After the conversation wrapped up, i headed downstairs and noticed that a small mindbender on the landing had been completed (it was not yet solved as i was walking up the stairs earlier). It was clear that, while taking a break from coding to walk upstairs, Cory had quickly solved the puzzle and then returned to work. It immediately struck me that this was the place I wanted to be - that we actually had a shot at building this incredibly complex vision because we were filled with some early engineers who were committed to solving hard problems, even in their spare time.

I look forward to seeing what Cory does next and the evolution of Second Life.

The "F U" in Momofuku

Chef/owner of Momofuku David Chang had this to say in GQ about his target market for his NYC-awesome Asian restaurants (great pork belly):

"I want to cook for real people who want to eat," he says. "When I worked at Cafe Boulud, I hated making food for East Siders. I hate their air of superiority. I hate investment bankers. I don't want Momofuku Ko to come off as elitist or snobbish. I don't want shithead bankers and their friends of dickhead traders who spend thousands." One more thing: "My partner gets to kick me in the balls if he catches me wearing those reflective silvered sunglasses that asshole Europeans wear indoors. I can do the same to him."

What to Ignore - Startup Edition

Marc Hedlund, a co-founder of personal finance site Wesable, has some nice advice on what to ignore when you're running a start-up:

"Running a startup is a great way to learn how to, and how not to, ignore the right things. You should mostly ignore your competitors and mostly ignore the minor ups and downs that feel fantastic or terrible when they happen. You should pay a huge amount of attention to the unbiased people who are actually using your product or service -- not friends or enemies or professional commentators, but people who show up through a search, sign up and give it a try. Ignore everything that makes you miserable, pay tons of attention to everything that makes you happy and productive. Ask someone for help every day. And call your friends, you nincompoop."

The Avatar is the Mirror

In discussing the tendency for marketers to sometimes dismiss virtual worlds because "people setting up avatars in virtual worlds are probably creating fantasy figures so their actions may be less useful to advertisers," Giff from Electric Sheep Co notes that "The avatar look can often be a red herring in my opinion, unless you are able to track someone’s avatar and behavioral choices over a longer period of time."

In some ways the avatar is a marketer's dream because it's both aspirational and measurable. Whereas in the real world you're constrained by genetics, wallet, etc, many of these limitations are lifted or less formidable in a virtual world. And since at the end of the day it's all code, you can actually analyze an avatar in interesting ways. More on that later....

Questions Not Asked

"No one has ever asked me that before" -- that's what i heard last night from a job applicant and this morning over breakfast with a prominent venture capitalist. Here are the questions:

To job applicant:
> Among all your accomplishments, what's something you're especially proud of and why?
[note: this is my standard first interview question because it tells me a lot about what you value]

To VC:
> What have been your most contrarian investments?

Seemed like pretty basic questions to me. Maybe they were just buttering me up :)

Frustration > Stress = Death

"I hear Google isn't too stressful," said the first year Yale MBA student, a statement which caused me to swerve wildly during my drive south on US 1. "Um, that's not true," I replied, "it's really high stress but traditionally low frustration."

It's always been my belief that it's not stress which makes a job intolerable, it's frustration. Especially in technology I've got to assume that stress is a given - the markets are moving too quickly, the people are too smart and self-motivated with high expectations, the condensed cycles of entrepreneurism and the impact of luck throws too much asunder. So yeah, Google is an incredibly stressful place.

But frustration is what does you in, not stress. Frustration is being micro-managed, not getting to control your own destiny. Frustration is trying to play an A game with a B team. Frustration is office politics, irrational decisions and not being told the truth.

Google has always been very low frustration - small bits of executive capriciousness but generally you get to sink or swim based upon your own decisions, surrounded by great colleagues. Amazing resources and work environment. A brand that stands for something.

So when you assess what's killing you at work, ask whether it's stress or frustration. I'll bet it's the latter.

No, really, i rather be in San Francisco next weekend

Party invite in my mailbox: "Ford Models invites to you celebrate the holidays, . This invitation admits one. non-transferable."

Unfortunately it's in NYC and I'll be in SF. But if any models want to hang out as a consolation prize, let me know.

*Note to my wife: Ford Models employs both men and women so it would be equal opportunity eye candy.

Prove It

Loved this image from a NYTimes article on fans of "Gossip Girl." The teens were hanging outside of the show's filming and displaying "proof" of their experiences -- pictures with the actors.

When we do diary studies at YouTube to understand mobile video usage, "proof" often comes up as an important use case for mobile video. People want to prove they saw a celebrity, dated a certain guy, were at a specific party, finished a race, made it to the top of the mountain, etc.