May 2012
1 post
New blog post on signaling!
Hi everybody. Sorry that it has been a while since I wrote a blog post. I’ve been busy ramping up in my new role at Boundless. I had a conversation today about signaling with a friend of mine who is raising money and he suggested I share my advice to him on the interwebs.
The question: Whether to include institutional investors in your seed round?
The answer: Yes.
Why:
The entire...
April 2012
2 posts
March 2012
4 posts
3 take aways and my favorite pin
Hi everyone. I am going to start posting key take aways from 3 articles that had an impact on me and my favorite pin of each week here on my blog. As always, I’d love your feedback. ~ Nick
Stories are the Last Mile in Big Data
“The point is simple. Data is not the target. Data is not the answer. Data is not the insight. Rather, data is the enabler for the real target: Insight that...
January 2012
1 post
December 2011
2 posts
The Friend Fund
As I gear up for my move to Boston, I’ve been thinking about how best to keep track of all of my friends and their startups. As a CRM freak, I made a spreadsheet and thought I’d share with you a sampling of the amazing companies my friends have started. If you haven’t heard of some of them, you should add them to your radar. Below I’ve broken it down by region. I’ve...
The Next Chapter
I recently stepped down as CEO of Infochimps. You can read my post on the Infochimps blog here. It has been an incredible experience and I look forward to my continued involvement, though I’m also excited about the next chapter.
My wife, Elizabeth, and I will be moving to Boston in January. Yes, it will be cold, but we will be close to family and the Boston startup scene is thriving with...
October 2011
2 posts
August 2011
2 posts
Washington Post →
My TechCrunch guest post was republished in the Washington Post!
Austin Emigration
As the top city for young people, Austin seems to be losing a number of them to San Francisco. Have you recently moved or are considered moving? I’d like to maintain a list, so please send me more startups or individuals that you know have recently left Austin for San Francisco.
Here are some startups that have recently moved or are considering moving:
TweetReach
BorrowedSugar
Piryx (dba...
July 2011
4 posts
Capital --> Startups --> Talent
In my 10 or so years in the startup community there have been a number of cities trying to make a name for themselves as startup hubs, most notably (in alphabetical order): Austin, Boise, Boston, Boulder, Chicago, NYC and Seattle. So how do these rank, and how do you make a city that wants to be a startup hub successful as one?
Austin has had a number of recent IPOs, including: Bazaarvoice (about...
“One of the things you learn as a college president is that if an undergraduate...”
– Larry Summers, former president of Harvard University (source: Techcrunch)
A few things I've learned...
*Reading startup blogs is not equivalent to having startup experience.
*You’re not ready to leave your cushy job until you actually do it.
*Start something small before you start something big.
*Don’t scale your team until you can affect your KPIs.
*Trust your informed intuition until you have data that indicates that its wrong. “When the facts change, I change my...
June 2011
1 post
May 2011
1 post
“Make decisions with intuition but validate them with analytics.”
– This quote by the CEO of chip-maker Nvidia is one of many gems in The Corner Office by Adam Bryan. The book is a must read for any first-time CEO, and I would venture to say for anyone at a startup. My friend Ben Pieratt’s honest blog post inspired me to read it. Below are some of the...
April 2011
3 posts
Recruiting
Fred Wilson says a CEO does 3 things: 1) sets the overall vision and strategy of the company and communicates it to all stakeholders, 2) recruits, hires, and retains the very best talent for the company, and 3) makes sure there is always enough cash in the bank. These 3 things have varying relative difficulty depending on the economic climate. During the financial crisis recruiting was a lot...
OH: Data
I recently had the opportunity at SXSW to hear LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman speak about Data 3.0. Today I went back to the future at Data 2.0 Conference, at which I was a panelist and on the Program Committee. There were over 500 in attendance and many familiar faces, such as Mike Driscoll, Hjalmar Gislason, Gil Elbaz, and OrenMichels. It is becoming very clear to me about where we are and...
March 2011
2 posts
Open Letter to Twitter Using Others' Tweets
Dear twitter, FIX YO SELF. We need to talk, I need some clarity. Seems that many cool third party twitter tools and services are being shut down due to Twitter Terms of Service enforcement notices. Sad :-( Let’s make Twitter a gr8 platform for us to connect, build & inspire!! =D Unfortunately we’re limited by Twitter’s terms of service which is quite restrictive. We’ll...
February 2011
4 posts
Biz book review in haiku: The Mesh by Lisa Gansky
Sharing is ripe for
High cost frequently used goods
Such as Car2Go
Strata
Flip, Dennis and I spent the past week at the Strata Conference hosted by O’Reilly in Santa Clara, CA. It was a “Woodstock of Data” as Geek Austin’s Lynn Bender tweeted. Data marketplaces were a hot topic and we were mentioned frequently, including here, here and here. We’re very grateful that our fans love us! Mike Olson, our advisor and CEO of Cloudera, said it...
Interesting Article on Factual (With Nod to...
Factual is very ambitious and we share their desire to “liberate the world’s data”. That being said, they are building an open-source database and we are building a frictionless data marketplace. These are two different things, and don’t preclude us from working together towards our shared desire. If we are successful in disrupting the $100 billion data services market,...
January 2011
3 posts
This is how you change pricing.
Jan 19, 2011 Dear Pivotal Tracker User, First, thank you for using Pivotal Tracker. We couldn’t be more grateful for all of the support and feedback we’ve received from all of you. We’re writing today to tell you that we’re introducing pricing for Tracker. All of the details, including price plans and transition information, are in this email. Over 180,000 users have used Tracker at no charge for...
Thoughts on "Big Data"
I came across a recent Quora thread I thought I would share and comment on here: Q: Why the Current Obsession with Big Data? There are quite a few thoughtful responses from the data community including LinkedIn’s Peter Skomoroch and Cloudera’s Jeff Hammerbacher (formerly a Facebooker). Peter and Jeff think big data is interesting because we now have larger and more complete samples...
Funding a Startup - Prezo to UT Venture Fellows
Funding a Startup
View more presentations from Nick Ducoff.
December 2010
2 posts
We're Not in a Tech Bubble
Following the recent buzz around the Google/Groupon rumor, the NY Times is shouting fire in a crowded theater but I agree with the SF Chronicle who says nish nish. Being based in Austin and spending a lot of time on both coasts, I feel like I’ve heard a fairly representative sample of opinions on this topic. The folks who think we’re in a tech bubble don’t get what’s going...
November 2010
2 posts
Mo Money Mo Problems
Since our funding news broke today (so much for embargoes…) I thought I’d share a few best practices I learned about fundraising along the way. 1) Leverage your network. It is easy to get face time with VCs but hard to get mind share. The best intros typically come from execs of their portfolio companies and other VCs. Initially ask for advice not money. 2) Start local. The west coast...
October 2010
2 posts
A haiku to our angel investors
You believed in us
Thank you thank you thank you please
Send us your sig page
September 2010
2 posts
When the hors d'eourves tray comes take two... →
Since it is out in the open, I thought I’d share my thoughts on raising angel financing. First, I’d like to thank those that stepped up and believed in us. Making an angel investment takes balls because in most cases angels aren’t prepared to fund the company through subsequent rounds. This means that the company needs to take that money far enough to be self sustaining (read:...
Wolfram Data Summit
Our friends at Wolfram|Alpha were kind enough to invite us to their invite-only data love fest in Washington D.C., their inaugural Wolfram Data Summit. It was a veritable who’s who of the big data world, including heavy weights from big companies (i.e. Microsoft, D&B), government agencies (i.e. NASA, the Federal Reserve), and research institutions (i.e. Stanford).
The conference kicked...
August 2010
3 posts
Response to Adam Smith (not that Adam Smith)
Adam Smith, a co-founder of Xobni and Y Combinator alum recently blogged about this year’s YC class and some trends he saw. I had a pretty strong reaction to his post so I thought I would share my thoughts (indicated by “ND”). As always, please leave your thoughts in the comments.
The Index Fund Strategy
Ron Conway and Keith Rabois invested in a number of these new YC...
A startup story, and a few lessons learned.
Five years ago this month, I had just started my third year of law school after clerking at a big law firm in New York. I still wasn’t sure I wanted to practice law and was much more interested in finding an operational role. Everyone always said you could do anything with a law degree. Well, I suppose that might be true, but the traditional channels of finding an entry level position (on...
Data for Marketers: A guest post by @mbaconsultant
In sharing a home with the latest addition to the Infochimps team, it’s no wonder I have data on my mind. I’ve been thinking about how marketing groups at startups to CPG multinationals alike are allocating more mindshare and budget to data-centric intelligence in the form of new partners, reports and employees. This signals a call to action for me that applies to brands as well: to stay ahead of...
July 2010
1 post
For every foursquare there are a dozen wesabes.
June 2010
1 post
Do you have a net worth of $1 million?
Some of you probably do and some of you probably don’t, but I bet that most if not all of you think you are sophisticated enough to invest in startups. Unfortunately for those of you who don’t meet that standard or any of the other accredited investor exemptions promulgated by the Securities Act, most startups won’t take your money. This post is not about whether startups should...
May 2010
1 post
M&A Transaction of the Week →
I recently closed an M&A transaction for some close Kinkaid friends: Mark Schmulen and David Lyman. Nirav Batavia was also on the team. It was rewarding in a lot of ways, as it was great working with friends and helping them achieve a significant milestone in their careers. Financial terms were not disclosed but it was a big win for everyone, which always makes it more enjoyable. A few lessons...
April 2010
2 posts
What's a 'fan' really worth?
A social branding firm in Atlanta says $3.60 based on the following formula:
1M impressions x 2 posts x 30 days = 60M impressions
60M impressions / 1000 x $5 CPM = $300,000
Of course this will be debated ad nauseum in comments to blogs, including this one. In today’s marketing metrics driven environment it is important to determine the value of your social media efforts. That being...
March 2010
4 posts
I couldn't have said it better myself... →
The GP of Andreessen Horowitz simplifies startup success:
Find the product that 1,000 enterprise or 50 million consumers want to buy and grab those customers before your competitors do.
Raise enough cash and spend it intelligently so that you don’t go broke along the way.
His thesis is that the goal isn’t to be ramen profitable and it doesn’t matter if you blow your VC cash...