Parallel Entrepreneurism: I'm as smart as Fred Wilson was in 2006

The other day i had a brilliant flash of inspiration. It's no longer about serial entrepreneurism, it's about being a parallel entrepreneur. What a brilliant turn of phrase to explain the activities of friends like Shervin Pishevar who build companies, advise world leaders, inspire students and raise a family.

Googled the term and found i was late to the party. The #1 result for "parallel entrepreneur" is a 2006 blog post by Fred Wilson. I guess this means i'm as insightful in 2010 as Fred Wilson was in 2006. Hmm, four years late although compared to Fred's proclivity for early insights, i might still be ahead of the curve.

In re-reading his post, there are some great quotes re: Evan Williams/Odeo and Kevin Rose which in retrospect suggest true largescale parallel entrepreneurism is a challenge.

Ev talk about Obvious Labs being a place where they will spin off projects. Fred notes how they're able to work on projects like Odeo and Twitter at the same time.

Similarly, the post recounts speculation how Kevin Rose is going to build Revision3 while still running Digg.

So looking at those two examples, we might draw two conclusions about parallel entrepreneurism:
1. In the Obvious Labs case, when you've got a project of meaning, it often requires you to forget the dreams of multitasking and do one thing really well.
2. In the Kevin Rose case (and i don't know him at all), he was able to build Revision3 but was it at the expense of Digg? If he'd remained CEO of Digg would it be something even greater today instead of the challenges they currently face?

WSJ: Guys entering women's running races

Fun article on guys entering runs aimed at women: 


"Ahead of its Oct. 2 inaugural half marathon, Run Like a Diva announced that finishers' medals will be awarded by bare-chested male firefighters. "We had four men signed up, but two dropped out when they heard about the firemen," says Mr. Pozo, the race organizer. "We're making this race so girly that men won't want any part of it.""

TV show, webisode, mobile video, whatever: it's all just audience

YouTube's hyperactive six year old Fred just drew 7.6 millions viewers for a TV movie on Nickelodeon, making him the #1 tv movie for kids 2-11 this year. Some people were surprised. Like duh. He's been drawing millions and millions of viewers on YouTube for the past several years.

The world of the VideoOS, where i can get all my content on any device at any time, is going to need terminology changes in order to stay relevant. New content creators, new formats, new devices will make words like "tv show" less relevant. When Fred's next episode is seen by 10 million viewers - 5 million on GoogleTV, 4 million on a laptop and 1 million on mobile phones - what do you call it? A webisode? A tv show? Doesn't matter. What you call it is "AUDIENCE" and this increasingly is going to be what advertisers target independent of delivery hardware. The business model will follow the content to the viewer.

YouTube: moving towards the VideoOS

The future of video is user-centric, IP-delivered content. That's a fancy way of saying you're going to be able to get the content you want on any device. For YouTube this means the transformation from being a "video website" to what i think about as the Video Operating System. The VideoOS will be about the ability for anyone to broadcast themselves to millions of worldwide users across laptops, tablets, phones and living rooms. The world has never had a single TV station available where anyone can access any piece of content. 

Getting to this exciting future is a product, technology and business challenge. Fortunately i'm amazed every day by the quality of my colleagues at YouTube working hard to figure this all out. Today i'm especially proud because we've brought on two excellent new business hires - Dean Gilbert as our Global Head of Content and Robert Kyncl as Global Head of TV and Film Entertainment. Dean has been at the forefront of the cable industry for many years. Robert was the guy at Netflix who negotiated and signed all their streaming deals. He's the guy who is making the DVD obsolete. 

We're continuing to grow quickly across all teams - here's our job page. Personally i'm especially interested in product managers who want to help figure out the VideoOS future with me. My YouTube and TV&Film teams are growing so if you want to learn more, shoot me a note about why you're so amped up about how media is changing.