‘Tyrrells have made headlines again!! After three weeks of digging, potting, planting, tractor driving and grass fluffing, we’re delighted to announce that the Tyrrells Harvest Celebration garden won a Silver Gilt medal at the Hampton Court Flower Show (in between Gold and Silver). Our teams have been sampling brand new Chips Nouveau to the thousands of visitors while explaining all the different flowers and attractions of the garden itself, including a stunning vintage tractor. What a great success!’

I remember that Monday morning, January 10, 2000. The day that AOL announced it was buying Time Warner. The word starting seeping out the night before, Sunday night. I went to sleep like it was Christmas eve, and couldn’t wait for what market madness the morning would bring. I was working at Flatiron Partners, and Fred, Jerry, Bob and I had a standing Monday morning breakfast at the Mayrose Diner. We all looked at eachother that Monday morning with our mouths agape, shaking our heads in amazement that this was really happening. In retrospect, that deal was a watershed for the Internet. It announced that new media was going to be bigger than old media. It also marked the final inflation of a bubble that popped painfully only a few months down the road.

I came home tonight to a techmeme filled with news about Amazon’s boffo earnings, rumors about Yahoo! and Microsoft’s interest in acquiring Foursquare, and a Bloomberg Business Week analysis of whether Pincus’s Zynga can continue to extract hundreds of millions of dollars from people buying virtual hoes in his games on Facebook. Brad Stone’s story about sharing credit card transactions in public was already filed for tomorrow New York Times. Waiting for me on the kitchen counter was a copy of this week’s New Yorker, filled with an essay by Ken Auletta “Publish or Perish: The Ipad Takes on the Kindle.” Next to it was New York magazine, whose cover “Life is Tweet” features Sam from drop.io, Karp from Tumblr and Dens from Foursquare. All the while, my mind was still adjusting to the new contours that had been etched into it, first by Twitter’s annotation feature announced at its Chirp conference last week, and then by Facebook’s Open Graph blitzkrieg yesterday. It feels like something big is about to pop, something on the AOL-buys-Time Warner richter scale.

All of which begs the question, what gives? The great recession of 2008 is a distant memory, as we move through the Spring of 2010 with stocks like Apple and Amazon up more than 100% from their lows. The Nasdaq chart from the financial crisis up until now looks something like this:

And to think, the seminal stock of the social media era, Facebook, has yet to trade a single share in the public market. One can only imagine how much pent-up demand there is from mutual funds, hedge funds and retail investors for stock in this company that has established the default identity system for what will soon be over 1 billion people around the world. One could argue that the value of this resource on a macro economic basis is commensurate with that of oil (ie Exxon Mobil) or of the two primary computer operating systems (Apple and Microsoft), and that the “mature” value of Facebook in 2012 might be closer to $300b than $30b.

And yet, against the breathlessness of what might be, is the reality of what once was. All we need to do is look at the Nasdaq chart from the 1998 Russian financial crisis through the dot com bubble of 2000 to give us pause:

Although I am not a market technician, my spider sense is tingling. The wheels of capitalism are back in motion, and liquidity is flowing from the top to the bottom of the cap structure. University endowments are trying to distinguish deal flow quality from the PayPal mafia versus the Xoogler community; Web 1.0 bankers are reuniting to capitalize on the coming Web 2.0 IPO liquidity, and startups with big ideas, hockey stick user growth, but relatively little revenue, are commanding eight figure Series A valuations.

Markets tend to overact on the way up and on the way down, so we may well see an extended period of bullishness over the coming months or even years. The Nasdaq has another 100% to go before it gets into the same trough to peak range we saw 10 years ago. The bubble needs to wait for companies like Facebook, Groupon and Twitter to transition from privately held to publicly traded before bursting. But burst it will, as it always does. Not before, however, some very fortunate entrepreneurs, investors and bankers make out with new fortunes.

In light of all this, it hadn’t occurred to me until now how uncanny my experience last Saturday night was. Tina and I ventured out from Marin into SF to join Kara Swisher and Quincy Smith for what we thought was going to be smallish dinner honoring Bob Pittman. Yes, that Bob Pittman. The one who, along with Steve Case at AOL, bought Time Warner. The one who made us all shake our heads in amazement that Monday morning ten years ago. As we walked into the back room of Tres Agaves, we quickly realized that this was no small dinner party. There had to be at least a hundred friends and colleagues milling around: Google execs, angels, VC’s, Public and startup CEOs. Everybody was enjoying the open bar and free flowing conversations. As I made my way to the back, to take a breath, there was Bob Pittman, off to the corner, looking fit as ever. The only noticeable difference was a fresh shade of sandy gray stubble matching his sandy gray hair. Every few minutes, somebody would venture up to him and shake his hand and reminisce about the last time they met. The younger startup folks seemed to have no idea who he was and were more concerned with putting together their tacos from the cart. Little did they know, however, how much their future will be shaped by his past.

Boom times for tech are here again! Serial entrepreneur Seth Goldstein’s spidey sense is tingling. Recalling the heady Monday back in January, 2000 when new media announced it was going to be bigger than old media (AOL buying Time Warner), Goldstein has a thoughtful, if not bullish post (via peHUB), about the signs that boom times are here again: Amazon’s earnings, rumors of Yahoo and Microsoft acquiring Foursquare, BusinessWeek’s piece on Zynga continuing to rake in millions from a virtual farm game, the New Yorker on the iPad and the Kindle , New York mag’s cover story Life is Tweet, and Facebook’s huge Open Graph news. “It feels like something big is about to pop,” says Goldstein. “The wheels of capitalism are back in motion and liquidity is flowing from the top to the bottom of the cap structure. . . Web 1.0 bankers are reuniting to capitalize on the coming Web 2.0 IPO liquidity, and startups with big ideas, hockey stick user growth, but relatively little revenue, are commanding eight figure Series A valuations.”

It’s comforting to know that in these times of tough mortgages and foreclosures, you can always afford one of these stylish cardboard homes by designer Javier Mariscal. At just £155.00, you can buy a few of them, rent them out, and become mayor of your own little town. Now there’s a thought.

If you have not already embraced digital to enhance and extend your brand - both in offline experiential and promotional marketing campaigns, you may feel as if the world is passing you by.

However, it’s never too late to get started, and begin harnessing the added firepower that digital activation can deliver for your events happening in the real world, in real time.

While there are a myriad of digital channels for you to consider, we believe Twitter is the single-most effective and dynamic social media engine for promoting events and generating consumer dialog around experiential marketing campaigns. One of our favorite examples of using Twitter for a consumer experiential program is the Taco Bell Truck (Link), which shares info on where it will be traveling to give out free tacos, fun trivia and news about all things tacos.

Here are some basic steps on how you can use Twitter to take your experiential marketing campaigns to the next level:

Drive the Conversation - Set up a Twitter account and commit to a regular stream of tweets (posts) about your program, and generate a simple hashtag (#) that you include on every post. Make sure to add value for your followers by providing them with interesting info about your brand and relevant offers, and encourage feedback. For larger experiential campaigns, we recommend setting up a Twitter stream that is specific to your program and separate from any general brand or company Twitter stream you may have in place. This allows followers to self-select to specifically follow updates on your events - and you can still promote this separate stream by selectively re-tweeting your posts within your other brand accounts.

We’re currently utilizing this tactic for our client Coca-Cola via the @WorldCupTrophy Twitter feed, which is being utilized to start conversations with soccer fans around the world and generate excitement about the Coca-Cola-sponsored World Cup Trophy Tour event in Houston in May.

Follow Too - Brands that just broadcast one-way information fail in effectively deploying Twitter, so be sure to listen to your followers and take time to monitor what they are tweeting about. In addition, search on your brand and other relevant terms to find conversations from users who might be interested to attend your events and follow your info. Join their conversations, directly respond to those who ask you questions and thank those to re-tweet your content.

Cross-Promote - Promote your Twitter stream via all of your other communication channels, including email, website and other social media sites like Facebook. In addition, post your account address and hashtag at your events, and offer incentives for consumers to continue following after they have attended your experience such as trivia contests, Twitter-only discounts for your products, etc.

Follow Through - Don’t think of Twitter as just a way to promote your experiential programs before they happen, also be sure to tweet during your events. Tweet photos and video of the activities, and also tweet out thanks to followers who show up. This will encourage more interaction, and allow you to gain feedback about your events in real time. It also allows followers who are not physically present to still share in the experience (further enhancements of tweet photos and video can include posting longer video clips on YouTube or even live streaming the action on sites like Ustream).

Of course, this works both ways, as social media can be utilized to drive event participation as well. We recently executed an experiential campaign for PayPal in New York, Chicago and San Francisco called the PayPal Tweet Hunt (Click here to view photos). Consumers were encouraged to follow PayPal’s @PayPalShopping Twitter account, which made them eligible to participate in the Tweet Hunt and win prizes such as flights, jewelry, gadgets and gift cards.

Listen - After you have started the conversation on Twitter, be sure to follow where it goes. There are many listening tools that allow you to track followers, retweets of your posts and direct mentions of your Twitter account name or related hashtags. All of these metrics can be measured and tracked, and can be used to build a scorecard for how your Twitter activity drives additional connections with consumers around your events.

One of the advantages to Twitter is that it is extremely easy to get started. Plus, it’s free.

We’ve even given you a head start. Just follow these simple suggestions to begin extending your brand’s offline experiential and promotional marketing campaigns into social media.

Although this video is from 2008, we love the passion that Gary has about doing what you love. We’re not saying it’s that easy, but we find him very inspirational.

Another example of great experiential activity

The more, the better. That is the fashionable recipe for nurturing new ideas these days. It emphasizes a kind of Internet-era egalitarianism that celebrates the “wisdom of the crowd” and “open innovation.” Assemble all the contributions in the digital suggestion box, we’re told in books and academic research, and the result will be collective intelligence.

Yet Apple, a creativity factory meticulously built by Steven P. Jobs since he returned to the company in 1997, suggests another innovation formula - one more elitist and individual.

This approach is reflected in the company’s latest potentially game-changing gadget, the iPad tablet, unveiled last week. It may succeed or stumble but it clearly carries the taste and perspective of Mr. Jobs and seems stamped by the company’s earlier marketing motto: Think Different.

Apple represents the “auteur model of innovation,” observes John Kao, a consultant to corporations and governments on innovation. In the auteur model, he said, there is a tight connection between the personality of the project leader and what is created. Movies created by powerful directors, he says, are clear examples, from Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” to James Cameron’s “Avatar.”

At Apple, there is a similar link between the ultimate design-team leader, Mr. Jobs, and the products. From computers to smartphones, Apple products are known for being stylish, powerful and pleasing to use. They are edited products that cut through complexity, by consciously leaving things out - not cramming every feature that came into an engineer’s head, an affliction known as “featuritis” that burdens so many technology products.

“A defining quality of Apple has been design restraint,” says Paul Saffo, a technology forecaster and consultant in Silicon Valley.

That restraint is evident in Mr. Jobs’s personal taste. His black turtleneck, beltless blue jeans and running shoes are a signature look. In his Palo Alto home years ago, he said that he preferred uncluttered, spare interiors and then explained the elegant craftsmanship of the simple wooden chairs in his living room, made by George Nakashima, the 20th-century furniture designer and father of the American craft movement.

Great products, according to Mr. Jobs, are triumphs of “taste.” And taste, he explains, is a byproduct of study, observation and being steeped in the culture of the past and present, of “trying to expose yourself to the best things humans have done and then bring those things into what you are doing.”

His is not a product-design philosophy steered by committee or determined by market research. The Jobs formula, say colleagues, relies heavily on tenacity, patience, belief and instinct. He gets deeply involved in hardware and software design choices, which await his personal nod or veto. Mr. Jobs, of course, is one member of a large team at Apple, even if he is the leader. Indeed, he has often described his role as a team leader. In choosing key members of his team, he looks for the multiplier factor of excellence. Truly outstanding designers, engineers and managers, he says, are not just 10 percent, 20 percent or 30 percent better than merely very good ones, but 10 times better. Their contributions, he adds, are the raw material of “aha” products, which make users rethink their notions of, say, a music player or cellphone.

“Real innovation in technology involves a leap ahead, anticipating needs that no one really knew they had and then delivering capabilities that redefine product categories,” said David B. Yoffie, a professor at the Harvard Business School. “That’s what Steve Jobs has done.”

Timing is essential to make such big steps ahead. Carver Mead, a leading computer scientist at the California Institute of Technology, once said, “Listen to the technology; find out what it’s telling you.”

Mr. Jobs is undeniably a gifted marketer and showman, but he is also a skilled listener to the technology. He calls this “tracking vectors in technology over time,” to judge when an intriguing innovation is ready for the marketplace. Technical progress, affordable pricing and consumer demand all must jell to produce a blockbuster product.

Indeed, Apple designers and engineers have been working on the iPad for years, presenting Mr. Jobs with prototypes periodically. None passed muster, until recently.

The iPad bet could prove a loser for Apple. Some skeptics see it occupying an uncertain ground between an iPod and a notebook computer, and a pricey gadget as well, at $499 to $829. Do recall, though, that when the iPod was introduced in 2001, critics joked that the name was an acronym for “idiots price our devices.” And we know who had the last laugh that time.

To describe futuristic technology, writers often reference Minority Report, the 2002 Spielberg movie set in 2054 with Tom Cruise as a special officer who has his unit’s crime-predicting technology turned against him.

Now, as the New York Times reports, a company named Oblong Industries is making one of the technologies used in the movie - a gesture-activated interface - a reality.

In fact, the team at work on the device is the same team that built the interface for the movie itself. During a demo at the TED conference, participants watched Oblong founder John Underkoffler manipulate a series of images on a screen in any direction he wanted.

“I think in 5 years time, when you buy a computer, you’ll get this,” Underkoffler told the Times.

g-speak overview 1828121108 from john underkoffler on Vimeo.

Startup Lessons for the Proto-Founder

“I started SpeakerText in October 2008 during the financial apocalypse. No one funded us. No one was gonna fund us. And I’m definitely a nobody. We launched in January 2010 after burning through just $4k of cash. While I’m still mostly a clueless hack, there are a few things I learned along the way that I think founders and proto-founders reading this blog might find useful. Here’s a few them, in list form:• Fake it ’till you make it. No one is interested in the company you’re going to start in the future. Starting is a declarative act. Just go for it. People won’t follow unless you lead. And once you convince yourself that you’ve got something, it’s a lot easier to convince others to join you”

• Pitch like a mofo. The difference between your initial idea and your ultimate product is the difference between a slab of rock and the David. There’s a thousand problems you need to solve, and the only way you learn about them–much less solve them–is to pitch, pitch, pitch and pitch again to every smart person you meet. Listen to what they have to say and regardless of how jumbled and contradictory their suggestions or complaints are, try to look for patterns and distill the deeper underlying pain points or problems with your model. Think of it as crowdsourcing. The masses have much to teach you, if you let them.

• Advisors, they’re easier to find than you think. This goes along with my above point about pitching everyone you meet. Most people are afraid of embarrassing themselves, so they keep quiet, especially around successful, important people who could help them. Don’t. I landed my first advisor–Joe Kennedy, the CEO of Pandora–when I pitched him after a talk at Stanford. He gave me his card; I followed up. There was no formal arrangement or anything, but I was persistent, hit him up with questions only when I was truly flummoxed (ie didn’t waste his time), listened and kept him updated on our progress.

• You need a Co-Founder, not an Engineering Bitch. Lots of business-y, idea-type people who say they’re looking for a co-founder are, in reality, looking for what is best described as an “engineering bitch.” Here’s how the pitch sounds from the engineer’s perspective: ‘For ten whole percent of equity, you will slave away to build a prototype out of my shitty idea, not have any say in the decision-making process…and oh yeah, you could be fired at any point.’ This does not make for a happy long term relationship. Instead, find someone you know and trust–I called up an old college friend–who will call you out on your bullshit and push back when you overreach. Date for a bit, then split the equity.

• Recruit college kids. They’re young, hungry and don’t need a living wage. Experienced, talented software engineers have lots of options in life, and most of them involve getting paid. College students, on the other hand, have less options, and probably have their living expenses covered by financial aid. Thus, the opportunity cost of joining your half-baked venture is dramatically lower than it is for legit professionals. For students, your startup is more like a resume-enhancing ‘extra-curricular’ than a regular job. The right person will love the responsibility you’re handing them. Score for you, score for them.

• Go to job fairs. You’ll be the only startup there. This is a corollary to the previous point. I went to the Columbia Engineering Career Fair in October 2009 and left with ~150 resumes. We hired three guys from that batch and paid them in iPhones. Doubtful we’d have access to such a rich employee pool any other way. Bonus: Distinguish yourself by being the approachable guy in the T-shirt. Lots of the attendees will be wearing suits for the first time–and hating it. Your casual garb will looks very enticing.

• Sell the Vision, Not the Reality. You may or may not have a working product. Your product may or may not suck. You “team” may not really exist. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is your vision of what the product will be and how it will change the world. That is what gets people excited. That is what will make people work like dogs for no money, tell all their friends and drop everything just to get a product built.

• Treat everyone you hire like a co-founder. In normal jobs, people put up with a lot of grief and bullshit because they’re getting paid. In a ghetto startup (like mine), that’s not really an option. Treat people well, be honest, and don’t bullshit them. Trust and your rep is all you got. Err on the side of sharing too much. It builds trust and earns buy-in from the people you hire.

• Try before you buy. When you’re hiring folks, don’t promise equity upfront. Specify some sort of trial period where the person is to accomplish a specific, delineated task. Make sure you own all the IP created during this trial period, and make no promises for later. After the month or so is over, then sit down and talk equity. Making this clear from the outset will put both parties at ease.

• “Stealth Mode” = FAIL. Your idea, as it exists today, sucks ass. Ok, let me rephrase that: My idea started off sucking ass. But I pitched smart people…and dumb people–and learned from both. Originally, SpeakerText was going to be a tool for journalists (I was a journo) to automatically transcribe and search within their audio interviews. Tiny, contracting market. Huge upfront software licensing fees. Customers are technophobes.
FAIL just waiting to happen. Had we kept our plans a secret, SpeakerText would probably just be one big bucket of fail today. Instead, after having tons of holes poked into our idea by friends, cousins, VCs, baristas, entrepreneurs and bored women at parties, we turned SpeakerText into a tool for video publishers and even our crappy v1.0 works with the massive market that is YouTube. Outcome: last night a Biz Dev guy from Disney/ABC sent me an email asking about partnering with some of their online properties. Reminder: we launched on just $4k.

• In case you missed it earlier: PITCH PITCH PITCH. Over the last 15 months, I have pitched nearly every sentient being I have met. This includes a guy I met at 4am after doing CPR on his mom (I’m a paramedic). The dude turned out to be a senior partner at a major international corporate law firm, and 6 weeks later he offered to take me on as a pro bono client. My point here is that you never know who can help you and you never will until you open your trap and pitch. Not only will this help you find help, but it will DRAMATICALLY improve your pitch and lower your fear/nervousness when time comes to pitch real investors. Plus, it adds big time on the competition research front, because your friends/acquaintances/ex-girlfriends will see articles about competitors and share them with you on Facebook.

• Vest, young man. Starting a company without vesting your stock is like getting your girlfriend pregnant on the first date. Sure, it could work out, but if it doesn’t, you’re completely hosed.

• Get creative with compensation–use the iPhone Payment Plan. Imagine you’re a highly-trained software engineer. A crazy guy with a “startup” (i.e. me) approaches you about doing some work. Scenario #1: Dude, I’ll pay you $2,000 for 150 hours of work…3-4 months from now. Scenario #2: Dude, promise to build this and I’ll give you an iPhone right now. Plus, as long as you’re working on it, I’ll pay your phone bill. If I like it and it works, I’ll toss in an extra $250 at the end and we’ll talk equity then. If not, you can keep the iPhone and I’ll even cover the cancellation fee if you want to ditch AT&T. We tried both approaches at SpeakerText, and surprisingly, Scenario #2–despite being a lot cheap–actually worked out a lot better. There’s something about the psychology of receiving a cool gadget that doesn’t quite equal out to the cash equivalent. Also, paying up for the iPhone upfront fosters trust, which in turn boosts productivity.

• Yammer is an awesome tool for fostering camaraderie on distributed teams. Use it.

• Build something people want before you attempt to raise money. The word for “visionary investor” is “entrepreneur.” If you’re an unproven schmo with no credentials like me, people generally–and investors in particular–will tend dismiss you and your crazy idea. (If you’re a former Google VP, then you can probably ignore this tidbit.) The only–and the strongest–track record you can have is the product you’ve built and the traction/market feedback you’ve gotten.

• Need legal advice? Do the Lawyer Hop. Every lawyer will give you an hour of their time for free. Remember that. Need 10 hours of legal counsel? Talk to 10 lawyers. Need to learn about IP, patents, etc.? Call a patent lawyer! More questions? Call another one! Don’t feel the need to restrict yourself to a local geography either. You can call up America’s leading legal luminaries and get an hour of their time for free, every time. This won’t work for producing legal documents, but it will work for fundamental questions of “is this legal?” “do I need to patent this?” etc. Also, different lawyers have different perspectives, so the lawyer hop a good way to get a holistic, composite understanding of a particular issue. Plus, when you need to actually hire a lawyer, you’ll know what a good one sounds like–and have a fat rolodex of people you’ve already talked with to draw from.

• Patent lawyers will always want your money…except the good ones. Asking an IP lawyer, “Is my invention patentable?” is like asking a car mechanic “Does my car need any work done?” Unless you find a good one, the answer will always be yes. That’s how they make their money, but not how you make yours. Buyer beware.

• Start a blog. Sound intelligent. Be interesting. The same reason you’re probably dying to pitch Fred Wilson and/or Chris Dixon is the same reason you should start a blog. Again, if you’re a no-name nobody like me, you’ve gotta build a name for yourself from scratch. Writing an intelligent sounding blog and then submitting posts to Hacker News, Digg, etc. is a great way to put yourself on people’s radar. Just last week I met up with an big time seed investor from the Valley. He had messaged me on Facebook after seeing one of my blog posts on Hacker News. Now he’s making intros to other big dogs and generally helping to legitimize our brand.

• Tell a good story. Deep down inside, all Americans love entrepreneurs. People are suckers for the crazy, epic shit we do as founders. Don’t downplay it; wear it your on your sleeve like a badge of honor. Although it may not feel like it now while you’re in the trenches trying not to die, you’re living what lots of people (especially older, middle-management types) consider the dream. Tell your story to the right person (i.e. the frustrated wannabe founder with 3 kids and a mortgage) inside of a big organization and they’ll become your champion, guiding you through the sales process and giving you lots of actionable intel.

• Comment on Brad Feld’s blog. But don’t kiss his ass. Important point to remember: powerful, successful people tend not to like having their ass kissed. People do that to them all the time, and my sense is that they hate it. And if they don’t, fuck ‘em–don’t waste your time on people who want you to kiss their ass. More often, people in positions of power crave genuine interaction. The more powerful the person, the more they are surrounded by sycophants. Don’t be a sycophant. Outside of intros, a good way to approach these guys is to comment intelligently on their blog. I turned an exchange in the comments section of Brad Feld’s blog into a pitch for SpeakerText that turned into an intro to someone else. Never met Señor Feld before, but we had a legit exchange in the comments and took it from there.

• Help people. It just feels good. Honestly, I feel very lucky to have been helped and guided by lots of smart people who probably had much better things to do with their time. Guys like Seth Sternberg, the Founder/CEO of Meebo. Awesome dude. Sequoia-backed. Ridiculously helpful. When I grow up, I want to be like him. Starting a company can be really stressful and scary; depending on the day, it’s easy to lose hope and dwell on how fuct/clueless/ready-to-fail you and your startup are. If for no other reason, helping people who know even less than you do will make you feel good about yourself, boost your ego and as a result, make you into a more productive founder. Win-win-win.

• Tenacity is impressive. A lot of people “start” companies, but very few actually have the tenacity and drive to bring a product to market, hire people, etc. People will expect you to quit, and part of how you will impress them is by simply keeping at it, iterating your idea/product/vision, and making progress. As my Dad likes to say: Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.
http://www.metamorphblog.com/2010/02/startup-lessons-for-the-protofounder.html