Namita Bhasin

Daniel Brusilovsky, renowned teen entrepreneur, wrote a post debating whether or not to go to college. As I tend to do, I got a little emotional in my response, but I find the subject important enough to repost it here.

Daniel,

I really admire what you’ve accomplished already – more than I have at 22 – but I really think you’re young and inexperienced enough that college may have something to teach you.

For you, college wouldn’t be about starting you on your career path. It would be more about finding people (friends, partners, significant others – especially valuable since there’s a relatively limited selection of people your age in your current circles) and expanding your knowledge of other things. Most entrepreneurs ignore me when I say this, but there is (at least a little) more to life than your startup. There is more to learn and be interested in than just what Silicon Valley and your current area of knowledge have to offer. It’s too early to isolate yourself from other opportunities.

Personally, I’m deeply involved in SV too, but I majored in Political Economy and Linguistics, two things that made little practical sense but were incredibly valuable for my own interest and enrichment. Academics aside, I lived on my own, got a taste of a different place and lifestyle, met different kinds of people, grew up, and had a little bit of fun. Four years of college was anything but a waste of time.

I really hope you decide to go to college. Continue what you’re doing by all means – being in school doesn’t mean you have to stop working – but I promise it’s worth going.

Mugasha - the premier destination for electronic music from the best DJs worldwide - has offically opened its doors to the public.

A year of hard work has gone into creating a beautiful and functional portal for electronic music fan community to find sets (parsed by track) by their favorite DJs, along with information about them and tickets to upcoming shows. And there’s a lot more in the pipeline! Subscribe to their blog to keep up to date with all the exciting things they’ve got coming. For those of you that are particularly diehard, they have an auxiliary blog where fans can write posts too.

Mugasha was founded at Startup Weekend in Portland last summer. They were selected to be part of SXSW’s super competitive Accelerator program in March, where they had a bunch of publicity and a bunch of fun (”spring break for developers,” as described by cofounder/visionary Akshay Dodeja).

They’ve been featured on TechCrunch twice already since launch day:

If You Like Electronic Music, You’ll Love Mugasha (reposted by the Washington Post)

Your Guide to Music on the Web

Akshay was intereviewed by Robert Scoble in the early days, and there was a great post about Mugasha on ReadWriteWeb. They have been faithfully followed by Silicon Florist, a Portland tech blog, since the very beginning.

Cofounders Akshay Dodeja and Justin Thiele currently live in Portland, OR. They are the most dedicated startup guys I know, and I know a lot of startup guys. The two of them have bootstrapped the company thus far, but plan on expanding beyond the resources of their living rooms and interns in the future. Meanwhile, they will continue to add new sets by more world-famous DJs and explode the site with incredible features.

http://www.web2expo.com/webexsf2009/public/content/landing?_discount=websf09pd1

Posted via web from namita’s posterous

Google 3, Mozilla 0.

Once upon a time, Google played warm and fuzzy and gave non-profit Mozilla a bunch of money to embed their smooth and sexy search in Mozilla’s super-cool new browser, Firefox. So far, so good; everyone’s happy. Google search grows and they aren’t being evil, and Mozilla has the money for R&D on awesome new things.

Years pass, and Google quietly develops their own browser in-house. Plenty of people figured they might do that, but plenty of others figured there was no point - wasn’t that what the Mozilla partnership was for? Personally, I don’t know what that partnership was for. Mozilla has plenty of money for now, but Google isn’t going to be using that distribution channel after 2011, so they’re going to have to find a new source for 88% of their income. Uh-oh. Like any company whose business lies on the web, that won’t be easy.

Why did Google renew the Firefox deal right before releasing Chrome? I can’t find numbers on what kind of market share Google grabbed through the Firefox channel, but given that the open-source browser is still working on critical mass, I’m going to assume it wasn’t a great ROI for the search behemoth.

Anyway, today it appears that others are jumping on the screw-Firefox-let’s-use-Chrome bandwagon: Flock, a ’social browser’ with less market share than the discontinued Netscape (even though it’s been around for 3 years; I tried it back in ‘06 and didn’t derive any value from it. For their sake I hope it’s improved). They claim Mozilla folks are unresponsive and Chrome is easier to work with. Is this the beginning of another browser trend? Or is it a silly decision by one small company that just happened to attract TechCrunch’s attention (Flock is a TC darling, after all)? Is anyone else going this direction? I’m waiting to hear the followup on this story.

Something else to think about - the mobile web is exploding. Microsoft bundles IE with Windows Mobile , just like they do with computer operating systems. Android phones will soon offer a version of Chrome. Apple’s Safari is spreading with iPhones. Even Opera, barely found on 1 of 50 computers, has ridiculous command over the tiny screen. But who’s pushing mobile Firefox?

(okay, so this isn’t quite live. It was messy and contained too much stuff I didn’t want to publish so I edited very very slightly before releasing. *insert props for Wordpress iPhone app here* *also insert plea for netbook*)

Session 1: Being a woman entrepreneur

I think I’m fortunate to be a female in a ridiculously male-dominated industry. I never really realized that until the current session. I don’t encounter “boys’ club” discrimination like many of these women say they do. I don’t think people see me as bitchy, or inferior, or as the secretary. I think an advantage of how people see you is, well, that they see you. And then you gauge how to deal with them accordingly - impression management was a big point here.

check out: Springboardenterprises.org

Importance of business plan - half say very, half say eh. I say very. Will explain why in a GSVC post.

Session 2: Social media beyond Twitter

I’m hoping this session will help me figure out how to get my get-people-online deal going.

What’s your aim? Personal brand, community management, customer acquisition, sales? Be where your audience as competitors are (duh).

Note to self: check out Pipl - the ‘creepy’ way to stalk people on the internet

Private vs. public personas: should they be separate? People that think so seem to generally be concerned about security and conservative audiences. I said no and I think the gap fell largely around generational lines.

Check out radian6.

Adobe and social media: press releases on Twitter, blog posts, facebook… Sounds like that’s all. Okay.

Importance of consistent branding? Maybe not so much.

Social media is a channel for marketing, PR, engineering, customer support, etc. (no way)

Finally, something not-Twitter: RSS to collect information. (no WAY!)

Basically, nothing I didn’t already know or haven’t yet beaten to death here. I was intrigued by the “beyond Twitter” part of the title. Oh well.

Session 3: Voiding your warranty

I came here to see what other toys I could screw around with besides my jailbreak-able iPhone. They showed us a lot of snazzy hacked electronics, and I saw E-Ink for real for the first time since I heard about it ~3yrs ago! The women running this session were REAL hardcore geeks and they were awesome.

Adafruit.com. Wiihomebrew.com. Xoxbox.

Session 4: Finding a job in this economy

I won’t include the usual suggestions because everyone knows them already, or should. Experience, networking, job boards, etc. You know the drill.

check out Sdforum.org

Volunteer to get time away and do good things and get glowing recommendations.

PARS: problem assessment result solution

Sunnyvale EDD one stop career counseling (free!) novaworks.org

Simplyhired.com, Indeed.com, Startuply.com, Cupertino rotary club

New rounds of funding have to be publicly announced, look for places that info might be

People here are uncomfortable asking for help. I don’t think I am, and I think that’s a good thing.

Sometimes a person with less than enough experience is better hire because they are trainable and not set in their ways.

Ebawis.org (women in science)

Session 5: Semantic web

I was super excited about this. Soo ready to hammer out a solid definition for what this really means.

First things first, apparently web 2.0 is “silly.” I disagree. We won’t get into that.

Does semantic web rely on tags? It shouldn’t because people suck at tagging. Myself included; it’s a wonder anyone ever finds my blog.

Is it for marketing? For ad suggesting? Cultural context is important.

Important info sources: APIs and geotagging, IMDB, Yelp, Amazon (opened their database).

Natural language is important because not all web content is in databases.

See ‘linking open data,’ Freebase

Conversation has been on the verge of technical linguistic topics many times, but so far I’m the only one that’s said anything close to that effect.

Web grows decentralized and organically. Will that die with the semantic web? Doubt it. Moving on…

Open social graph (google), Alex Iskold (adaptive blue)

I introduced this crowd to Searchme and Cuil. Someone else just brought up Twine - oops, I think I played around with it in its early days then forgot about it. I also mentioned my disappointment with Powerset.

There are lots of librarians here.

Check out Aurora browser

————————————————————————————————-

Those are my random cursory observations from today; full detailed notes from all sessions on both days will be available on a wiki at shesgeeky.org.

As some of you know, I have recently experienced a mild crisis of indecision. It’s not that I don’t know what I want to do with my life, but more that I’m not sure how to do it.

I love technology and the internet; this is absolutely certain. I want to spend many of my waking moments and brainwaves in those arenas; this is [at least currently] true. However, I would like to this in such a way that is at least marginally relevant and helpful to some portion of humanity.

Quite relevant and helpful: physical and mental health, connecting people

Less relevant and helpful: throwing sheep, celebrities and makeup

You get the idea.

This presents a bit of a conundrum as I search for my first “real” job. The good news is that a lot of new technology being developed is for relevant and helpful things. The bad news is that a lot of internet business (specifically Web2.0 - do not give me grief for use of the term) is not. And unfortunately, all I really know is the internet.

So here’s an idea. It involves freelancing, and since I don’t have the network for this, I don’t know how to begin. Help and advice would be greatly appreciated.

I want to bring people online. First of all, everyone should love the internet, because it makes the universe a better place even - no, especially - if you’re not a techie. There is a ridiculous wealth of information out there about everything, just waiting to be consumed and shared by people it applies (and doesn’t apply) to. Allow me to explain.

The world I inhabit is disproportionately inhabited by technologically adept people. I don’t often encounter people whose lives take place offline. However, when I do, I usually feel that they would benefit by changing that. Their personal lives would be augmented, sure, but more often I think of how it would improve their livelihood, whatever it is. Areas this applies to:

- education

- medicine

- small retail/food/other brick-and-mortar establishments

So many easy improvements jump out at me; so much difference the simplest technology could make. Marketing, organizing information, operating costs, staying current… it depends on the entity in question, of course, but the list goes on. And I could do it for them - either myself or through resources I have. I can at least help them get started.

So this is something I want to do. I want to help bring people online. Except, in my world, I don’t know a lot of people like that to help. I don’t know a lot about freelancing either. I just know that I want to do something helpful to humanity, and that the internet is important, and that I want to learn more about industries other than the one I’ve chosen - this seems like a good way to do all of that.

Now, how do I get started?

Tonight I attended an event for the only club I’m active in, St@b (Startup at Berkeley). They have mixers every so often for the purpose of socializing entrepreneurially-minded - therefore often antisocial - students and others connected to the Berkeley startup culture. I found it nearly by accident, since it’s rather underground (literally - the mixers are held in the basement of Blake’s, which on other nights of the week is a somewhat irreputable East Bay nightclub). I’m so very glad I did. It has connected me with incredible resources and opportunities, like volunteer entry to TechCrunch50, even with my previously limited involvement. Moreover, it’s connected me with a great network of people who share my eagerness to forge our way on the web. Most of these brilliant and amazing gentlemen rarely ever encounter ladies, which is quite a shame. What a wonderful untapped source of guys gone to waste! But I digress.

The speaker at tonight’s event was Matt Mullenweg, founder and Chief Barbecue Taster of Automattic (better known through Wordpress). He’s a 24 year old open-source-loving hippie. He’s also the first entrepreneur I’ve ever heard of that seems perfectly content with exactly where he is at the moment. The way he runs his business (or at least the way he talks about it), there is no push for mo’ money, expansion, Harder Better Faster Stronger. This is not to be confused with any kind of aversion to venture capital or growth - Wordpress and Akismet are both well-funded, profitable and growing brands, and Automattic is midway through a string of acquisitions. There’s just a lack of greed. The Wordpress community comes first, and since all 30 (yes, just 30) employees seem well-fed, Matt seems to have no further pecuniary purposes.

Automattic holds no IP and there are no ads to be found on any sites. They make money simply by charging people for the product, a strange and unheard-of concept on the web these days. “We keep raising the price and they keep paying it,” he said, shaking his head at the silly people who provide his income.

In the interest of holding your interest, I’ll cut this short and touch upon two other items of note.

First, a catchy and true sound bite that I felt the need to disrespectfully Twitter about in the middle of his talk: “That’s the thing with entrepreneurs; they don’t mind being on the Titanic, but they have to be steering it.” Entrepreneurs are control freaks, as they very well should be at the outset of a venture. But I’ve seen problems when they can’t or won’t deal with changes in the game plan, and this can be a fatal mistake.

Second, the question I asked about the decentralized nature of the Wordpress team and working virtually. They meet twice a year, have lots of drunken family-reunion-meets-hackathon fun, and then go back to their respective cities and schedules. He says that maximum productivity is captured this way, because employees choose their best hours to work and don’t have the stress of managing their lives around that. This creates happy, calm, Zen-like people, which of course is what a proper hippie entrepreneur is all about

On a side note, MAJOR props to the Wordpress iPhone app. I liveblogged two full days of TC50 on it. If I haven’t mentioned this before, it’s my favorite app in the whole store right now. Go Wordpress!

Good morning everyone. Welcome to day 3 of Techcrunch!

So, the rich media section just ended. First of all, this is definitely a business I’m familiar with (I’ve worked in that area longer than any other). So I think I can say with a little authority that as cool as a lot of this is, I have seen it before and I don’t really understand how it is differentiated. More on those companies later.

I ran to the demopit between sessions and talked to Grooveshark, which is awesome. They’re similar to FF in that they’re a mostly-student company that sprang from research done at school (UF in their case). However, they have much better backing. The university took care of the patent and they’ve got angels, not to mention a neatly figured business model that’s already making multiple streams of revenue.

Next: the gaming session. I missed grockit, which is a learning game of some kind. I hear they have GMAT questions, so maybe I’ll play.

Akoha is a pay-it-forward game that encourages people doing nice things, like giving books to schoolkids or chocolate to couples in love. It’s a nice idea, and since I decided I’d take the starter kit, I just got a gift card for the value of an iPod touch. Pays to be nice, haha. I wonder who I’ll give it to.

Atmosphir is a 3D video game collaborative creation tool. They positioned themselves as the equivalent of Lego. Looks very cool, and if this doesn’t exist yet, then they can do very well because this is something that needs to exist soon. I think my brother would like it, as he makes games in his spare time (see them at Neal.Bhasin.com).

Skipped vertical social networks because I’m rather sick of social networks altogether. Stuff for them, fine; another one OF them, hell no.
I worked the demopit again and learned some really great stuff. I won’t detail them but check out: MaxRoam (cheap international SIM cards; most efficient company I’ve ever seen), Searchme (especially if you have an opinion about Cuil), keibe (social network content monitoring system), 911ICE (great implementation of an emergency contact system, I find this VERY important), and Yahoo Boss (search engine licensing).

Last session: research and recommendations. First is GoodGuide, which is a search engine for products that are green, healthy, socially responsible, whatever. Good solid idea that isn’t messed up by UGC (user generated content); this is very much the kind of content that should be carefully moderated by experts. I’ll use it.

So to wrap up today: these are probably the most interesting posts I’ll have on this blog ever. TechCrunch has been an absolutely amazing time and I’ve loved every minute of it. Met some awesome people and may even get a job (or at least a lead) from someone. Not to mention all the free stuff, haha. And last but not least, Wordpress is my new favorite iPhone app.

In session 2 of TC50 day 2. So far I like Popego, wish I had seen MixTT, don’t get imindi. Apparently the judges don’t either, because they shat all over it (pardon my French).

We’re listening to the finance presentations, which are definitely above my head but look like potentially useful products. More in a few minutes.
ExchangeP: playing stock market, basically. Neat idea in a crowded market, no business model explicitly mentioned. If they do make critical mass, they might help people out for real. I remember this one study about predictive markets being more accurate than real ones for stuff like elections.

Me-trics: now this looks interesting. I think I will give it a shot. Knowing me, of course, it’s not certain how often I would use it after the initial try. But it’s info that’s good to know anyway. Main issues: manual data entry (especially for the useful metrics) and the fact that correlation does not mean causation.
iCharts: cooler than I expected. Simple product with a definite existing need. I agree with Mark Cuban in that I don’t think they will be huge, but solid.

VC panel: is innovation dying in Silicon valley? Personally I feel that innovation of the Web 2.0 sort is. Something new needs to - and will - emerge soon enough. I hope it’s stuff of a more substantial nature.

Pitch problems: entrepreneurs need to be more succint (who hasn’t heard that one before?). They need to focus on reality - recognize and fix mistakes ASAP. The best ideas are not always the best pitches. The best entrepreneurs are good listeners. Storytelling and other credibility-building activities are vital. To VCs: when you find a company you like, try to cause less friction and release money faster (haha, right). The debate arises again as to the success rate of repeat entrepreneurs. The oft-repeated marriage analogy is discussed. VCs explain why they’re so (sometimes overly) cautious - they manage other people’s money.

I like Raj Kapoor. He seems like a fair guy who actually has founders’ interests at heart, or at least in mind.

Most important factors of startups: Engineers who can build and people with vision and people who can execute on vision. Those who take money for non-calendar milestones. People with passion. People who can see and understand what works and not; people who can adapt.

How quick is too quick to say no? It never is; a quick no is showing respect. How do VCs prevent information leaking? They don’t, really. And Arrington doesn’t think they should

Lunch talk, hosted by Navin Chaddha (my neighbor, incidentally): first things first, that entrepreneurs should die of indigestion, not starvation.

Rather than focusing on viral things to acquire users, work on the core product to attract them organically. Theoretically that works, and I’ve done a few things in the past to that effect, but I still don’t think purely organic explosive growth is a realistic expectation. Especially not right now with the sheer volume of stuff on the Internet and the pressure to build and grow faster and faster.

All these guys are really pressing the point of hiring the right people. Right doesn’t mean best, it means most driven and passionate for the company. This means that the perfect resume and experience can not necessarily matter. I really hope this is true. I suppose I shall find out this year. I would love to find a company that makes me feel that way (and reciprocates).

Mobile session: first up is mytopia. They run multiplayer applications natively on many different mobile OSs. This was done quick and cheap with one devloper and one designer. The rest is rather technical but I think the gist of it is solving the problem of cross-platform programming. Write it once, run it on everything.
One of the judges is asking why anyone would be interested in multi-platform capability. I think that’s a slightly unintelligent question. Not everyone in the world has a jesusphone or a crackberry.

BEST DEMO OF TODAY: tonchidot’s sekaicamera. HILARIOUS. YouTube it, I’m sure it was up the second it ended. I hope someone put up the whole presentation. I have no words for this.

Fitbit: first company I’ve seen with hardware. It’s a super-creepy-advanced wifi pedometer. Tracks everything pretty much. Only $99. I would definitely buy this. I think this is going to be the winner.

Language and platform tools: alfabetic is a real-time translation engine/ad network to reach the 70% of Internet users that do not speak English. Judges bring up World Lexicon. Must look into that. I just wish more of these companies would diversify revenue streams. I really don’t think any ad-based model, no matter how good or innovative, is entirely dependable. The world of advertising is generally slow on the whole internet thing. By the time they catch up, users may have eliminated the effectiveness of ads altogether.

I haven’t been to the demopit all day and I’m dying to head out there but this section looks to be a good one. Then I can’t miss tonight’s keynote either (Calacanis and Cuban) so I guess I’ll see who’s still around after 6.

Postbox: desktop email client. I think I would appreciate this greatly - not all my related messages have any common text, and i can’t search for all messages with images. It’s kind of filtering into folders but more customizable and much cooler. What I want to know is how compatible it is with webmail. Does the organization hold? Is there really value to web search within email?

Okay, another wow. Swype, from the creators of T9. Solid team with deep mobile background. It was hyped up before their presentation and definitely did not disappoint. Fitbit may be displaced by a new winner. This is going to be awesome beyond any cell phone screen. Here comes the new way to input text!

Last company today (sorry for the really long post), dropbox. Sync across machines. Nice implementation of obvious usage of the cloud. Unfortunately, their demo didn’t work right off. I will be signing up for the free premium account shortly

Damn. They ran out. Oh well.

Watching Jason Calacanis and Mark Cuban. He’s done a lot more than I had any idea about. And he’s hot, especially for a guy his age. He did everything he did out of stubbornness and contrariness. That’s created the sort of cockiness that’s definitely allowed but still sort of crass. I guess he’s one of the few that can get away with it.

Okay, I think I’m done for today. If you slogged through this whole thing, thanks haha - especially since I typed the whole thing on my iPhone. Will repeat tomorrow!