I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about how deep-linking is going to play out. For those who are not familiar, deep-linking is a technology that allows app-to-app communication to function very similarly to the way that web pages work. In the same way that a hyperlink to a website need not drop you […]
Author: charles
The Potentially Divergent Paths for Facebook and Twitter Mobile Ads
Mobile ads, particularly app install and direct response ads, have become a big business for Facebook and are likely to become a big business for Twitter very soon. Much of the focus has been on the app install business and how large that line of business can become. But I think Twitter and Facebook could head in different directions.
Vertical Marketplaces and the Durability of Craigslist
I’ve been thinking a lot about what makes Craigslist so durable and why lots of vertical marketplaces have succeeded and failed in trying to unbundle the company’s myriad offerings.
Making City Living Better as an Investment Theme
I recently took a look back at a lot of the companies that I found really interesting, regardless of whether I invested or not, and tried to group them. It turns out that there is a large cluster in one theme – city living. While San Francisco is not as dense as New York or Tokyo, it does have sufficient density to unlock some really interesting businesses that maybe wouldn’t work as well in a more sparsely-populated area.
On-Demand Music Streaming is Winner-Take-All, Right?
This is a quick full blog post that is a follow up to a question I posted on Quora. One thing I’ve been thinking about is whether the battle between Spotify, Deezer, Rdio, Beats Music, and the various other competitors from Google, Amazon, and others will result in a winner-take-all scenario. I have a few […]
Commerce Marketplaces, Network Effects, and Winner-Take-All Outcomes
In the past few months I’ve looked at quite a few commerce marketplaces and social networks. One thing I’ve been trying to understand more deeply is the set of circumstances when commerce networks tip toward winner-take-all outcomes, with one dominant network accounting for the bulk of transactional activity. This blog post is very much a […]
Only Apple Can Fix Its App Store Search
A few days ago I was trying to find two new-ish apps, Jelly and Secret and I went to the App Store and just tried to find them via search. The results were not encouraging. I got a lot of results that were not at all what I was looking for. It turns out that […]
Marketplaces, Rating Systems, and Leakage
In the past three years I have had the pleasure of meeting many marketplace companies looking for seed funding. I have also had the privilege of investing in quite and continue to learn along the way. One of the things I spend a lot of time thinking about and exploring is what drives “leakage” and […]
iOS7 and the Need for Smart Notifications for the Pebble
I’ve been wearing and using my Pebble a lot more since they announced support for a broader framework of notifications with the release of iOS 7. I was excited to learn that I’d be able to get notifications from a broader set of applications as I thought it would make the watch more useful and […]
Lessons Learned from Sharing Twist With My Network
I’ve written a few posts about how I think about location sharing and location sharing applications, the latest of which is this one. One of the most interesting experiences I’ve had of late is trying to activate my network to start using Twist. For those who are unfamiliar, Twist is a mobile app that allows […]