If you're an entrpreneur with strong ethical standards, then never ever accept investment capital.
Investors could not give a shit about your ethical qualms or objections, and they are most certainly not going to accept a lower exit because of them If you don't play ball, they simply replace you with someone who will. Whenever I read about an entrepreneur joyously announcing that he got such-and-such amount of venture capital, I think to myself, "Dude (or dudess), I hope you realize that you have just sold your soul and handed over control of your destiny to someone else." On Apr 10, 4:23 pm, "M. Edward (Ed) Borasky" <zn...@comcast.net> wrote: > On 04/10/2010 11:45 AM, Arnaud Meunier wrote: > > > We shouldn’t “fill holes” anymore, Wilson said. The thing is Twitter > > has deliberately kept a lot of holes opened, encouraging us to fill > > them (and lots of applications have been doing it with innovation, by > > the way). > > I don't know that it's "deliberate" - a lot of it has to do with the > growth dynamics of the Twitter ecosystem in particular and "social > media" in general. I've been on Twitter since early 2007 - in fact, > @znmeb predates @twitter. ;-) It was an "exclusive club" and something > that relatively few people knew about. > > I used Twitter rarely until the "financial crisis" of fall 2008. Maybe > it's a coincidence, but I don't think it is, that the main growth spurt > in Twitter user IDs (http://meb.tw/b6WCzv) began towards the end of 2008 > after the election of Barack Obama brought national media attention to > Twitter. That was when I discovered the Portland Twitter community and > began using Twitter "in earnest." > > Wilson is a venture capitalist - he takes *calculated* risks. He blogs > to help his investments pay off, so his clients make money, thereby > attracting more money to his firm. He is on the board of *directors* of > Twitter. Directors *direct*. They may also advise, but I'm not privy to > the exact mix of direction and advice he provides. In any event, he is > no doubt keenly aware of the dynamics of the ecosystem. His advice, as > expressed in his blog post, is worth consideration. > > > > > Now we’re supposed to dig, create new holes, and fill them. Okay! > > There are a lot of ideas to have around Twitter, lots of new holes to > > dig. > > There are also numerous open positions at Twitter. Some of the holes > Twitter wants to fill appear to be "revealed" in the job descriptions. ;-) > > > But the question is still the same: "What will be left up to the > > ecosystem and what will be created on the platform?" > > Because of the growth dynamics in social media, I don't think anyone, in > the Twitter ecosystem or outside of it, can answer that. There are some > (fairly) simple models of such things, but human behavior is hard to > predict and bloggers and pundits and VCs can only speculate, collect as > many hard numbers as possible and build models with them. > > > I think I'm not the only one here to fear that Twitter itself begins > > to compete with the applications I created (or I plan to create). Yes, > > it's fun to dig holes and to fill them. But it also takes time and > > money, and it's like the game was going to be much more risky than it > > used to be. > > Again, that's not necessarily certain as long as there are uncertainties > in Twitter usage patterns and in the competitive landscape of "social > media". Wilson's blog post is, I believe, a pretty good overview of the > current state of the ecosystem, but how it evolves is not independent of > the competition and the consumer. And neither is the allocation of > resources between the Twitter entity and third party developers, large > and small. > > -- > M. Edward (Ed) Boraskyhttp://borasky-research.net/about-smartznmeb/@znmeb > > "A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems." ~ Paul Erdős -- To unsubscribe, reply using "remove me" as the subject.
