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Master of 500 Hats

A blog about Geeks, Entrepreneurs, & Startups in Silicon Valley, by Dave McClure. The Internet Revolution, Act II.

Some new & old startup blogs & presos i'm in love withNovember 15

in no particular order, here are links to a few new books, blogs, & presentations i'm falling in love with lately (plus a few not-so-new-but-awesome old ones too).

• Startup Lessons Learned (blog, Eric Ries)
• Customer Development Methodology (preso, Steve Blank)
• Four Steps to the Epiphany (book, Steve Blank)
• LaserLike (blog, Mike Speiser)
• Revenue Metrics (preso, Andrew Chen)
• Futuristic Play (blog, Andrew Chen)
• Startup-Marketing (blog, Sean Ellis)
• Sit, Stay, Click!  Making Users Beg for More (preso, Ted Rheingold)
• Zappo's: Customer Service & Company Culture (video, Tony Hsieh)
• Designing & Optimizing the DNA

The Secret History of Silicon Valley: Thu 11/20 Brown Bag Lunch @ Computer History Museum (Mt View)November 11

Steve Blank is a pretty sharp guy, and one of the best folks in the valley on technology marketing.  He teaches at both Stanford and Haas/Berkeley, and besides being an academic he's been involved in several startups and actually knows his shit.  His book "The Four Steps to the Epiphany" and his presentation on "Customer Development Methodology" are must reads for tech entrepreneurs.

Next Thursday, November 20th, Steve will be giving a lunchtime talk at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View on the Secret History of Silicon Valley.  You can check out a previous video of his talk below:

Successful Developer Platforms Have 3 Things: Features, Users, Money.November 8

[note: this post was originally a comment on TechCrunch post summarizing Max Levchin's panel on web platforms from the Web 2.0 Summit, with Facebook, MySpace, Google, & Microsoft.  i decided since my comment went past 3 paragraphs, i should probably expand it on my own blog...]

this is gross over-generalization/simplification, but platforms are successful if/when they have:
1) code libraries / feature abstraction -- so developers don't have to build everything
2) customer distribution -- so developers don't have to market everything
3) monetization -- so developers don't have to implement/collect payment

it's arguable there are many other platform issues & requirements -- security, scalability, standards, metrics, user authentication & support, etc.  however these 3 primary aspects are what make platforms tick.  sometimes platforms can be successful if only 1 or 2 of the items above are working, altho if you want a dominant platform it's helpful to have all 3.

Here are my incredibly unscientific and from-the-gut "Platform Bookmaker Odds" on Dominant Futur

Well whaddya know... Yes, We CAN.November 8

thank you america.  now, let's get to work.

Barack Obama: American Stories, American SolutionsOctober 30

a Story of Hope & Change, from the 44th President of the United States of America:

Help Make His Story, Our Story.

Help Make History.