It was the mid 1990s and I was inspired by the “view source” tool in Internet Explorer when surfing the Internet. I recognized there was a pattern in all these documents, and I was a relatively artistic young kid, playing music and doing charcoal drawings, so I decided to explore it. I hand coded every page I produced in Notepad on my Windows 95 machine, and then uploaded everything painfully through WS_FTP back in those days. I searched desperately for serial numbers for Adobe Photoshop so that I could make cool graphics; and I relied heavily on the Alien Skin Software plug-ins to make drop shadows and raised typefaces. I got so into the process of coding that I worked on an HTML tutorial with a friend and published it on Timez.com, my domain at the time. I created an HTML fans Webring, which was a basically an ad network that linked people together by their interest in HTML/web publishing.

Inspired by David Siegel’s book “Creating Killer Web Sites,” I was obsessed with the design aspect of web development rather than the dynamic programming languages and database technologies that would really make it possible for the Internet to sing and dance for users. (I also had no money and open-source web frameworks weren’t around, so the only free part of a web development process was manual HTML!) I would play with tables and pixels to get just the right spacing, and worked tirelessly to understand how it was possible to make good graphics load faster. And by “good,” I generally meant shiny 3D graphics, as you can tell. Looking back, I should have probably spent more time on the discipline of programming and I should have continued my obsession. It would have been far more lucrative than going to college.

Timez, if you were wondering, was the domain I chose because my (cough) ‘handle’ online was AiRTiMeZ. You can see the spoof of the “Netscape Now!” button that shows my IRC handle and AOL screen name at the bottom of the page, and it links to my email address at Digiweb, the company where I hosted the page. (I created that new button pixel by pixel in Microsoft Paint.) It was a huge expense to host a domain at Digiweb during those days, when we got a whopping 5MB of storage and I paid about $100 a year in domain registration fees. (Well, at 14, I was fortunate enough that my parents paid for it. When I’d bring him into my room, my grandfather was especially impressed with the designs, even though he had no clue what the hell I was pointing at.)

One other funny artifact from the site: my parents had just purchased their house in the Florida Keys, and they begged me to put their place on the Internet so that we could get some vacation rental clients. This page, pathetically, was the best I could do; I was not interested in prostituting my site for their commerce, which in retrospect was a stubbornness that probably kept me from discovering how huge the Internet economy could be to everyone’s daily life and to my career.

JetBlue, why have you made such a stupid move?

Sure, they’re offering wifi in their airplanes, but they’re limiting the connections to Blackberry email services and Yahoo instant messaging, it seems. I suppose it shouldn’t come as a surprise, with JetBlue’s legacy for partnering with recognizable brands for their additional services — including DirecTV, Dunkin’ Donuts coffee, Terra Blue chips, and Bliss Spa redeye bags.

For me, the biggest issue with not having connectivity on the airplane is more than just communication like email and instant messaging. It’s about reading fresh content from the news and information sources you trust; it’s about allowing a business traveler to feel like he/she is in a quiet office between meetings in different cities; and, more than anything, it’s about feeling like you’re on the ground, or feeling “connected.”

I’ll look forward to Virgin America’s decision to put full wi-fi for a fee on their plane. I’m planning to fly their airline between the Bay Area and the Consumer Electronics Show in January (email me if you’ll be in Las Vegas at that time!). I’m happy to pay a fee ($10, people expect) if it’s the Internet connectivity that lets me enjoy the freedom of my home or office.

Some might say it’s dishonest to accept an offer at one firm, and then later decline if something better comes along. In most cases, I would agree: I think when you make a commitment to someone else, you are absolutely obligated to stick to it. Especially in environments like recruiting, where it costs a lot of money to recruit and these firms are making commitments several months in advance, you owe it to the firm to be honest.

However, I think it’s unfortunate that these firms, who count on the honesty and commitment of their applicants, are creating deadlines and blatantly disregarding the policies of the recruiting office that makes it possible for them to come on campus. In that context, I don’t necessarily feel too bad for them if students are forced to make commitments they do not truly feel comfortable with, and instead have to renegotiate to get to the company they like most.

This doesn’t just happen in recruiting, by the way: when environments are created in which commitments are forced or made too early, the probably of closing drops precipitously. There are specific venture firms, and entire industries/countries, where term sheets don’t necessarily mean you’re funded. Likewise, people are having trouble closing on their real estate transactions these days, when decisions get made before the financing is assured. It makes no sense to pressure the other side when the only thing keeping the deal together is a half-hearted commitment and some company letterhead.

Most of all, I think it’s symptomatic of an inefficient and distorted way of handling job recruiting in the academic world (it’s nothing new at colleges, either). Luckily, I haven’t participated in recruiting since my sophomore year of college, but I’ve observed it from the outside. Firms compete with each other furiously, providing incomplete and sometimes inaccurate information to students, hoping they make commitments as quickly as possible. They hold lavish dinners, or invite students to spend weekends in new cities, and they sometimes try to court new employees with fancy pickup lines rather than real substance. I think the spending and distortion are largely a function of:

• The simultaneity of all these firms’ efforts, on campus at once; and
• The willingness of students to interview with and entertain offers from companies they’re truly not interested in.

With a process like this, it’s no wonder that the firms are jostling aggressively for applicants to sign their offers dispassionately and the average tenure of a business school student in their job following school is about 18 months on average.

First, he said, he thought those seeking venture capital gigs should ask themselves, “Would I want me (or someone like me) on my board?” It was an simple hypothetical that illustrated some of the qualifications for a good VC investor — a deep and authentic network, a sixth sense for pattern recognition, and some pretty good war stories to guide one’s own judgment and the decisions of portfolio CEOs. But mostly, it gets that point across in a way that sounds as intuitive as a “golden rule.” (Do unto others as you would have done unto you.)

Second, he said that the most glamorous time in a venture capitalist’s career is when s/he is a partner. You’ll be able to have influence on the partnership, and can make your own decisions. Even if there are two paths to get there — operating experience in entrepreneurial ventures, or a partner track role within a firm — the number of years required to get to that coveted spot aren’t all that different. Wouldn’t you rather take a chance as an entrepreneur now?

I’ll only add that I think personal brand is a huge factor in your success as a venture capitalist at any level. I’ve had the privilege of seeing a number of venture capitalists be introduced in meetings, introduce themselves to entrepreneurs, or be profiled in publications. In almost every case, there’s a mention of a venture capitalist’s life before venture capital. They founded a well-known brand, participated in the technical design of a recognizable disruptive technology, or they’ve enjoyed a string of successes as a general manager at a large and influential company.

Unlike public investing, where participation is less scarce but being smart about your moves is your asset, venture capital seems to be about having access to the best entrepreneurs and closing deals despite competition from other hungry firms. The firm’s reputation will take the partner only so far; after that, it will be about how the person within the firm sells himself as an ideal contributor to the startup’s vision. With only so many good deals to go around and a high probability that you are competing against other top funds to participate in them, the personal brand of the partners involved will be critical. If you can’t tell your career story in a way that entices an entrepreneur to partner with you, the individual, you’ll lose deals to the great storytellers down the road.

We arrived at SFO about 3 hours late, not because of any delays in Boston or in San Francisco, but because we needed to stop for gas in Salt Lake City. Apparently, the headwinds were around 200 miles per hour and facing our aircraft right in the nose. As a result of this, of course, the plane consumed more fuel to head the same distance more slowly, and they scheduled the refill in Salt Lake City, because it’s a major hub for them.

I’ve never experienced this before, and if it weren’t for free DirecTV, I might have been extremely mad. Instead, I just wished there were a slushy or hot dog machine, as there usually are at gas stations. Luckily, Nikki packed me a sandwich and an apple, so that feeling went away quickly, too.

Verizon Wireless today announced that it will provide customers the option to use, on its nationwide wireless network, wireless devices, software and applications not offered by the company. Verizon Wireless plans to have this new choice available to customers throughout the country by the end of 2008. 

In early 2008, the company will publish the technical standards the development community will need to design products to interface with the Verizon Wireless network. Any device that meets the minimum technical standard will be activated on the network. Devices will be tested and approved in a $20 million state-of-the-art testing lab which received an additional investment this year to gear up for the anticipated new demand. Any application the customer chooses will be allowed on these devices.

My first question was: how many beers did I drink? This is impossible!

I am a Verizon user and have been for a long time: they’ve got the best coverage in the country, have some fantastic data speeds over their EVDO network, and their store service is actually quite good compared to the competitors. But one thing that always bugged me was their phone selection and the tight grip they always maintained on content for the phone. Their VCAST solution and the difficulty of getting any off-deck applications into the phone made Verizon a dangerous place for most mobile applications companies to play. For quite a while, when I was looking for companies to start or help, one of my few criteria was: does this company make the wireless world less complicated?

In 2008, it seems that it all changes, and I’m excited. I’m stoked for any companies (and I know a few) working on innovative new form factors and interfaces for connected devices, and I’m stoked for all the companies that will want to deliver content through the network. This will surely entail a shift in the economics of the mobile business, explained pretty well in this paper, and hopefully it will make it a far less complicated environment for entrepreneurs, investors, and end-users.

No doubt, the chilling fear of Google encouraged them to make this move.

I’m flattered to be considered an affiliate of such a successful business, but unfortunately it’s not an exclusive club. Business 2.0 had an interesting article a couple months ago about an entrepreneur in the Pacific Northwest, Kevin Ham, who made a deal with the government of Cameroon to forward all the domains under their TLD (”.cm”) to his servers. His servers then serve up a few targeted ads from Yahoo or Google that send visitors off to the right sites, collecting a small fee in the process. Type in techcrunch.cm, or mayfield.cm, and you’ll get to Agoga.

A violation of trademark law, perhaps? Or, in my case, an onliny identity theft? Not according to those cited in the Business 2.0 article:

Several companies have already tracked down Ham’s attorneys, claiming trademark infringement. Ham argues that his system is legally in the clear because it treats every.cm typo equally and doesn’t filter out trademarked names. 

[Top domain attorney John] Berryhill concurs. “You can’t really say that [wildcarding] is targeting trade-marks,” he says. “It captures all the traffic, not just trademark traffic.” Moreover, the anti-cybersquatting statute applies only to people who register a trademarked domain; using a wildcard doesn’t require registering names.

If your company isn’t interested in taking the time to capture all the myriad ways that customers will express their intent online, someone else will capture that value. Even if it means a flight to Cameroon for one guy from Seattle.

Unfortunately, I also happened to run into one of my pet peeves during that conference, the infamous “quitch,” and it happened twice. I call it infamous, but I doubt anyone really notices as much as I do. The quitch is half-question and half-pitch, and it almost always ruins the rhythm of a panel discussion or keynote presentation. It usually happens when the Q&A opens up, and someone asks the panelist a question:

1. About something s/he is not directly responsible for in the business or industry
2. Asking the panelist to confirm some general trend(s) that the audience member is betting on for his startup to succeed; and
3. Usually phrased in the form, “Wouldn’t it be better if…” or “Don’t you think that there’s room for a service that…” in order to get solid confirmation that what s/he is working on is worthwhile.

Those panelists are there to educate the audience about the subject line of the panel, not validate your idea that’s indirectly related. While the quitch is useful for the person asking, it’s often not useful for those wanting to learn from the panelists. If you want to run your business idea by someone knowledgeable, get up and talk to them one-on-one, and don’t obscure the pitch by trying to get the panelist to agree to all the complicated features of your strategy/product in public. 

With ownership of CollegeHumor.com and now 23/6, IAC has some compelling original comedy content online. And is that an example of what’s to come? IAC has been performing poorly in the public markets, mostly because investors are discounting their confusing conglomerate strategy and because of their exposure to mortgages through LendingTree.com. It’s been so bad that Diller has decided to split the company:

“We’ve been a complex enterprise almost from the very beginning 12 years ago, with hundreds of transactions over those years. And while we’ve created a lot of value, I’ve always believed our complexity and many mouthfuls of sentences to explain who we are and what our strategy is have hampered clarity and understanding with all our constituencies, particularly investors,” Diller said in a statement. (via AP)  

So it seems the strategy is to leave transaction/e-commerce businesses and poor their efforts into content-based businesses. They spun off Expedia in 2005, and now they’re spinning off LendingTree, Ticketmaster, and HSN. They’re pushing harder on Ask.com, Match.com, Evite, and their original content businesses. To bolster their content efforts, I think they’ll need to make a move into more distribution, by buying a social network and emphasizing their ownership of Ask.com  and Vimeo (a video sharing network).

I’m pretty bullish on the company, because I have a lot of respect for their creative talent, and Diller is going back to his roots (running Fox, Paramount, ABC) to grow a pure media business again. If they successfully split up the company, though, how will they fill up that beautiful Manhattan headquarters designed by Frank Gehry? Hey, I’m always up for a cheap sublet in New York. :)