5 things you probably don't know about me

So I’ve been watching this meme travel around the blogosphere, thanks to Jeff Pulver who started the whole thing.  Incidentally, Jeff has now become the recipient of some severe tongue lashing by several folks regarding his spurious marketing tactics in promoting this meme.  In any case, you’re supposed to list 5 things people don’t know about you and then tag 5 more people to see how far the meme travels.

If not for this game, I would have never otherwise known that Dave McClure used to be a donut eating champion, Robert Scoble is a closet nose picker, Stephen O’Grady has a rubber band fetish, Jim Jagielski has never lived more than 25 miles away from where he grew up (!), and Sam Ruby has only ever dated one person in his life (!).   I also had a good laugh watching Loren Feldman’s response, which I found by following a thread to Jason Calacanis’ list.

I love this game – I’m really fascinated by and enjoy learning about people.  I got tagged by Kevin Burton, so here’s my 5 things:

1. I am addicted to Pirate’s Booty.  I eat 5 bags of Pirate’s Booty a week.  I love all kinds of cheese puffs, but Pirate’s Booty is definitely the best.
2. I once made a living as a jewelry designer.  I like manual labor a lot.  It’s like meditating, in a way.  Here are some photos of stuff I created:



3. My first official, paycheck paying job was as a waitress when I was 14.  The job paid $4 an hour.  It never paid any tips either, because it was in the dining room of a retirement home in Irvine, CA.  This job sucked.  I had to buy pink oxford shirts and khaki pants that I would have never worn otherwise.  However, I learned one important lesson: waiting on tables is hard, thankless work.  I don’t have a natural talent for it because I have a crappy memory.
4. When I was in my early 20s, I cofounded and wrote the business plan for a company that we took public a couple of years later at a $600 million+ valuation.  The company never reached its potential and innumerable mistakes were made along the way.  The most important thing I learned can be recited directly out of “The 10 Commandments of Entrepreneurship”: the first handful of hires will set the tone, culture, and values for the entire company, so make these choices carefully.  Are the people you’re surrounding yourself with people you would trust your life to in the trenches? If not, it’s better to err on the side of being conservative and grow more slowly.   The culture you build compounds exponentially in often unpredictable ways, so plant those seeds very carefully.  I hope to never make this mistake again.
5. I felt most alive when swimming off the shore of Kailua (in Oahu, Hawaii) this summer.

VC Lifestyle Myths

This year’s holiday card from Blueprint Ventures totally made me crack up.  Like all things that are comic genius, there’s so much in it that resonates as true. 

Gary Snowman is a successful entrepreneur who fantasizes about the decadent and jetset lifestyle he imagines venture capitalists lead.  Ah, yes, Venture Capital is a ‘lifestyle’ job, but as he says towards the end of the video, “Life as a VC isn’t exactly as I expected.”

Disappointingly for Gary Snowman, it turns out that being a VC involves long hours, lots of hard work, and a lot of hustling.  His assistant interrupts his reverie with, ”I have your itinerary for your trip.  You have a 6:30am to Boston, an 8pm to Minneapolis, a 10am to Chicago, and a 2pm to New York. And business class was too pricey so you’re going all coach.”

This is funny because it’s so true.  It made me think of my typical week here, which basically involves running from meeting to meeting to meeting.  Here’s what my average week has looked like:

And lest you think it’s because I’m the newest person of our team, I would have to say that the partners here work even harder.  It reminds me of my days as a cofounder of a startup – you’re fighting for market share in a ruthlessly competitive environment and ultimately, the company is no more and no less than what YOU put into it. 

There is also this interesting dynamic – all of these meetings on my calendar are with other people – with entrepreneurs, potential portfolio company hires, potential partners of some kind – so I spend the bulk of my day socializing with other people, yet as Seth Levine has noted, it can still be somewhat of a lonely business.  Fortunately for me, it suits my personality type and interests well, but it is an interesting dynamic.   More on this later. 

Raph Koster announces Areae – Web 2.0 meets MMOGs

Raph Koster announces his new company, Areae - and we at Charles River Ventures are very excited to be part of this journey.   I’ve known Raph since 1994 or so – back when we were MUD developers, and I’m excited to support him in finally realizing the dream he’s had since starting Legend MUD. 

Though Areae is still very stealthy, Areae sits at the intersection between Web 2.0 and MMOGs.  If you think about it, the Web 2.0 and the Massively Multiplayer Online Gaming communities have largely been pretty siloed – gamer developers go to game industry conferences and Web 2.0 folks go to Web 2.0 conferences, and there has not been enough intermingling between the two communities. 

But both industries have been inching closer and closer together.  I predict that the successful online communities in the future will continue to more strongly resemble MMOGs.  And MMOGs will continue to extend their reach and exposing their data to other Web applications – either formally, by the developers/publishers themselves, or informally by folks like Rupture. 

Here’s what the 2 communities can learn from each other: Game designers have been creating rich, fully immersive environments for years.   All of the design principles that I thought about when I was designing MUDs are identical to the issues facing Web designers today – how do I create more immersive environments? How do I give participants -equity- in this virtual world? How do I make users feel like real citizens in my social ecosystem? How do I create better scale around world and object creation? How can I expose building tools that were previously available only to Admins and Devs to the end users – and make them dead simple to use?   How much content should I pre-seed and what content containers do I think users are going to be more likely to want to customize and make their own? 

For Web 2.0 designers, there is a brilliant, must-read presentation that Amy Jo Kim put together about how to intelligently apply game design principles to Web 2.0 services to make them richer, more compelling, and more immersive (read: “sticky.”)

Yet, the Web 2.0 crowd knows a lot that the game devs don’t: how to create massively scalable, low barrier to entry, micro-chunked experiences.  How to create appealing, mass market products that are appealing to a diverse demographic.  How to iterate quickly and create production processes that give you tremendous economies of scale around innovation. 

I’m excited by the possibilities – Raph has brought on an excellent team and advisory board.  It’s time the Web 2.0 and Gaming communities begin collaborating for the betterment of all users, everywhere. 

Here’s some of the coverage on Areae thus far:

GameBiz Daily:

“I would describe what we’re trying to do as marrying together a lot of the philosophy of the web and web 2.0 with virtual worlds,” Koster told GameDaily BIZ. “We’ve been paying a lot of attention to how the Internet is going. If you remember my speech at the Austin Game Conference last year about whether or not the games business is full of giant dinosaurs… a lot of that ties into this.”

CNet:

Koster is not divulging much about Areae, but the company’s site alludes to its pure, massively-multiplayer online game DNA: “We’re working on some new tech that will literally change how virtual worlds are made. We’ve got a cool world or two incubating on the back burner.”

Gamasutra:

With what sounds like a firm emphasis on user participation, as well as user customization and content, all central tenants of the Web 2.0 ethos, we make an obvious leap toward the current open virtual world leader, Second Life, which Koster laughingly dismisses. “See, you’re already jumping to conclusions about what we’re making! Honestly, there are as many differences from Second Life as there are from Everquest.” He pauses, but concludes, “I’ll just have to leave you tantalized.”

Link Love: today's attention bucket

One of my favorite features of other peoples’ blogs is seeing what they are paying attention to, so voila…

• All but Ageless, Turtles Face Their Biggest Threat: Humans, NY Times
  [made me think about the giant turtles I saw when visiting the Galapagos Islands a few years back. Here's a photo of one that the turtle expert said was probably 120-140 years old.]



• China’s virtual currency threatens the yuan, Asia Times Online
  “The so-called “QQ” coin – issued by Tencent, China’s largest instant-messaging service provider – has become so popular that the country’s central bank is worried that it could affect the value of the yuan. Li Chao, spokesman and director of the General Office of the People’s Bank of China (PBOC), has expressed his concern in the Chinese media and announced that the central bank will draft regulations next year governing virtual transactions.”
• Physiologist and Music expert releases research naming the top 5 happiest, saddest, and most exhilirating songs, Ireland Online
  “The Drugs Don’t Work by The Verve tops a list of songs which make us sad, according to a scientist.”