App unbundling and mobile first approaches for B2B software are really interesting to me. Awhile back I wrote a post about unbundling LinkedIn. Lately I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about what it would take to compete with and ultimately dethrone Salesforce (or SugarCRM or Microsoft Dynamics for that matter) with a mobile-first approach.
iOS8, Mobility and Making Consumer Security Convenient
Consumer security has been a historically hard category to monetize. I’d argue that desktop anti-virus software market in the 1990s and 2000s was really the heyday of consumer willingness to invest in security software.
Early Thoughts on Lyft Line and Ridepooling
Earlier today I took my first ride on Lyft Line, Lyft’s brand new twist on ridesharing. The concept is simple – you as the rider get a discount on your fare in exchange for being willing to share your trip with another person heading in the same direction. My early experiences with Lyft Line have been good.
Valet Parking Startups and Non-Consumption as the Real Competition
In the past few months I’ve met, read about, or been introduced to a number of companies that are working on solutions to make parking in cities a much easier experience for consumers. Most of these services are focusing on the SF and NYC markets, both of which are know for limited street parking, high […]
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False Positives, False Negatives, and Reading Decks in Advance
As a VC, I take the majority of my meetings without seeing a presentation or “deck” in advance. And when I do get slides, I tend not to study them closely in advance. I’ve never explained why and wanted to do so.
Competing with LinkedIn and the Case Against Unbundling
I’ve been thinking about LinkedIn quite a bit lately. I think LinkedIn is really interesting because in many ways I think it is one of the most durable and hard to disrupt companies that sit at the intersection of SaaS and social networking. I’ve also been meeting a ton of companies that I think are looking to compete with LinkedIn by attacking them on a feature-by-feature basis as opposed to a full frontal assault. There are some interesting and emerging things I’m seeing on this front and I wanted to write down some of my thoughts on the subject.
3 Ways Deep Linking Could Play Out
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 […]
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.