Brian Grey Blog

Bet you thought I was talking about Dan Rosensweig didn’t you?  Nope, I haven’t circled back with Dan R just yet — I’m sure he’s working on his guitar work leading up to his new gig.

No, the Big Dan I’m referring to is my old Yahoo! pal Dan Finnigan — former head of Yahoo! Hot Jobs and current CEO of Jobvite.com.  Dan’s one of those guys who I always enjoy catching up with because I really admire people who know their business cold — and Dan knows more about the recruitment/career listings category than anyone I know.

He’s also one funny dude.  I actually think he may have missed his calling as a comedy actor!

From an investor perspective, meeting up with Dan reminded me how much “investing” is about making bets on people — particularly leaders.  When you find a smart, passionate leader who knows how to manage, that’s a really great place to start.  As a content guy, I don’t know diddly about Dan’s category, but he’s definitely the kind of CEO that every investor would love to place in one of their companies.

Go Big Dan!

Today I had one of those impromptu meetings with someone I just got introduced to last week by email — and it ended up being a real highlight of my day.

Eric Ries is a young engineer and entrepreneur who is well beyond his years in the way he thoughtfully thinks and talks about how to approach product development in a startup environment.  A lot of Eric’s thoughts and related links about how he sees the application of Agile product development can be found at his blog “Lessons Learned”.

I hope Eric doesn’t get mad that I picked a photo of him in a tie!  He was much more casually dressed when we met at Peet’s this afternoon.

One of the interesting points we were both in agreement on is the importance of developing really rapid interative product development loops that quickly churn out new revs of a product or service and solicit customer feedback in a way that can inform the next rev.

Why is this so critical?  Well, in today’s environment the big monster staring down most startups is “time” — or the lack of it to be precise.  For any company running with a negative net burn, the race is to crack the code on what your customers want and how to turn that in to revenue.

I like the Italian kitchen metaphor:  you need to be throwing a lot of spagehtti against the wall early on to see what sticks.  And the only way to throw a lot of spaghetti is to be able to reach in to the pot and fire it quickly against the wall…over and over again.

So if you want a fresh perspective on product development take a read of Eric’s blog.

Wow, quite a dry spell from my last post – more than a week. Pretty lame I know, but hey, I’ve been on the road and let’s face it, booting up a laptop while you’re running around to meetings is such a hassle. I really live off my iPhone while on the road, and have come to love posting to this blog via the WordPress iPhone app.

Here’s a quick synopsis of the last week – to at least convince you all that I wasn’t at the beach or on the slopes:

Monday 3/2

Made my way to Boston via LA since the massive NE snowstorm kept me from taking the redeye Sunday. I flew Virgin America for the first time – I describe VA as flying in the lobby of a W Hotel. In fact, I knew my first leg was going through LAX when I noticed that the guys across the aisle were wearing white Ferragamos and thumb rings.

Tuesday 3/3

Spent the day out at Polaris HQ in Waltham. Was like minus 10 degrees with the wind chill. Not sure how people back East handle those winters – guess they’re just tougher than us soy latte drinking Californians. Of course I had to race back to Boston late in the day to buy a shirt and tie for the LP dinner that night. I was actually surprised I remembered how to tie a tie – it had been awhile!

Wednesday 3/4

Most of the day was dedicated to the Polaris annual partnership meeting. This was my first such meeting, and as a guy who has been on the operating side for most of my working years, I found it to be quite interesting. It felt a little like budget season in a company, but there was an impressive amount of financial rigor and analysis behind how the Limited Partners were updated on the status of their investments.

Thursday 3/5

A quick day trip down to NYC – the leg down was by air. First meeting was with Avner, the founder and CEO of Boxee.tv. He had just returned from meetings on the west coast with some content partners you can probably guess. I spent the rest of my day in NY catching up with a few friends and colleagues from various walks of professional life, including my good friend Hal who I worked closely with at Yahoo!, and who is now at AOL. The return leg was on the Acela train – have to say Penn Station is a little shabby these days.

Friday 3/6

Back in Boston and out at PVP for the day. That evening I had dinner in Cambridge with a couple friends and Dr. John Ratey, a Harvard professor and author of the book “Spark”.

A quick comment here about Boston/Cambridge and driving: easily the most difficult city to drive around. I must have circled the restaurant for 45 minutes before I could figure out how to get on the actual road that went by it.

Now, back to Dr. Ratey. If you are at all intrigued about the brain and how it can be influenced by exercise, you should read “Spark”. It’s relevant for understanding how exercise helps the brain learn at all ages, deal with ADHD and addiction, and slow down the aging process.

Saturday 3/7

Last day in Boston. Spent most of the day over at the Sports Analytics Conference at MIT with my friend Rudy and his wife Trish. The conference takes an interesting angle on some of the major topics in sports, but also delves in to less mass market areas like talent evaluation and analytics for specific sports like basketball and baseball. Overall they had pretty solid panels – I even ran in to NBA Deputy Commissioner Adam Silver, one of my favorite guys in the sports business.

So that was my week. Saturday night I climbed back on the “W Hotel” in the air and got back to my house in SF around 10:30 pm.

And now here it is Monday night the 9th and I’m writing this post from my flight to LAX as I head down to the Montgomery & Co. conference. Should have some interesting updates from there.

This post has been a long time coming, well, say four months in coming. I get a lot of questions from my friends regarding what is life like as an EIR with Polaris Ventures. Well, take a walk with me as I share with you what today — a typical “day in the life” entailed:

8:21 am — Drop daughters off at SF Friends School. Yes, I did bring the Prius to a full stop to let them out. Some mornings I make them jump out as I am still rolling at 15 mph — all part of the tough love program (insert visual of Robert Duvall in “The Great Santini” here). I am waiting for the Friends School exchange program where the “Obama Girls” do a swap with the “Grey Girls” for a weekend.

8:49 am — Met with Kara Swisher at Philz Coffee on 18th Street…yes, that Kara Swisher of BoomTown and All Things Digital fame. Had a rousing chat with Kara about some our mutual friends at YHOO and other fun topics related to the digital world that we both live in. Gave Kara a lift home in the messy Prius (sorry Kara) — but forgot to ask her if she’s at all related to former Cubs catcher Steve Swisher? or current Yankee outfielder Nick Swisher?

9:39 am — Was late for my 9:30 am call with PITCH #1 (name of company concealed to protect privacy …and so some other sneaky VC doesn’t bid up the deal!). To be fair, this company is moving slowly in to the fundraising stage and I had the honor of bestowing a bit of my sports and EIR expertise on the young co-founder.

10:03 am — Dropped by the offices of TRUE Ventures at Pier 38 to meet up with Tony Conrad, founder of Sphere and TRUE partner. Tony and I cruised over to Crossroads Cafe for a tasty beverage where I think we were able to solve at least six or seven of the most pressing issues in the Valley.

11:51 am — Met with the two guys from PITCH #2 (again, PITCH #2 is not really the name of the company…it’s a placeholder name so that other VCs reading this blog don’t weasel in on the deal). Really enjoyed the conversation with the guys — who were in town visiting from another U.S. city (that shall remain nameless for fear of savvy VCs figuring out who I met with!). Hint: we met at the SF Ferry Building, so if anyone saw me there with two guys you can try to pull a “CSI SF” and figure it out.

1:05 pm — Conference call with PITCH #3 — a company from a U.S. city that is east of the Rocky Mountains. That’s as much as I will tell you. I will say that my colleague Jon Lim from Polaris was a bit late joining the call, and since he was the host, I got to jam out to some of the best “conference call wait music” I’ve ever heard.

2:04 pm — Drove from Ferry Building to SOMA part of SF for my 2:30 pm meeting. Walked to Peet’s for a large hot tea and snack. Peet’s card after the transaction had $0.80 left on it, so I of course joked “well, I’ll be sure to not spend it all in one place”…to which the lady behind the counter reminded me that since it’s on my Peet’s card, well, yah, I do need to spend it in one place! Touche Ms. Peet’s cash register lady!

2:37 pm: — Was late in meeting with COMPANY #1 (again, apologies for the stealthy nature of this entry, but the company in question is still in stealth mode — kind of, at least as pertains to this blog post) because I couldn’t figure out how their door worked. Once I got in the building I was able to figure out how to make the elevator work (thankfully) and then spent some time catching up with the co-founders of said company over tea. Have you noticed the fact that as an EIR it’s critically vital to be discreet?

4:05 pm — Met with one of the newest hires of a PVP company over coffee at South Beach Cafe. Had a good chat talking about “go to market strategy” and “pricing models” for this company. Isn’t it cool when you’re able to write about how you spent part of your day talking about “go to market strategy” and “pricing models” with someone?

4:31 pm — Met at the exact same cafe as my 4:05 pm meeting with Paul DePodesta — former Dodgers GM and currently with the SD Padres. Got introduced to Paul by Billy Bean — and since I met with Sandy Alderson last spring, as Paul rightly pointed out I have now met with the triumvirate of Oakland A’s baseball brains that have helped the A’s become the template for how to run a team. Still think Paul got a real raw deal with the Dodgers. Check out Paul’s blog here — I am impressed by the fact that he blogs…as you know, I feel strongly that bloggers are cool! What’s not cool, however, is that Paul isn’t publishing his blog on WordPress (a PVP company). I made it clear to Paul that would have to change in the future.

6:09 pm — Back in the Prius heading down Townsend Street for home. Called the wife via the Bluetooth car phone — reminded that I had indicated that I would be home a bit earlier to help with older daughter’s math homework. There goes my nomination for father of the year. Again.

Well, there you have it. The glamorous life of an EIR. Notice that there were no breakfast meetings at Ella’s or lunches at Chaya today. No, only a full day of meetings spanning a mix of networking, hearing pitches and even some advising for already funded companies.

Actually, it was a really intellectually stimulating day — and tomorrow I get to do another one just like it!

I took a detour off the typical Silicon Valley meeting circuit today and hopped over to the East Bay to have lunch with Billy Beane, GM of the Oakland A’s. 

First, let me say that the Oakland Airport Hilton does a pretty darn good New England clam chowder (if you like the creamy variety), and the halibut special was pretty good too.

But I digress.

Any sports fan knows Billy Beane — thanks partly to the success the A’s have enjoyed over the past decade, and in large part to the book “Money Ball” by Michael Lewis.  Having played, coached and even done a bit of scouting, Billy’s efforts with the A’s are particularly of interest to me.

What I found most interesting in meeting with Billy today was how curious and smart he is.  He had a lot of interesting questions about what life is like these days with venture backed start ups and investing, and we talked about several topics out of the realm of baseball and sports.

I think this is a characteristic that you find in people who are at the top of their given profession — the fact that they have keen interest in other topics and can engage in conversation outside their domain expertise.  It seems to compute that being able to stretch your brain around other areas helps develop creativity and new perspectives that you can bring to your “day job”.

Perhaps this is a lesson for all.  Being a leader in your field and having a diverse set of interests and knowledge may not be mutually exclusive.  In fact, they may very well be complementary?

Thanks for the time — and the lunch — Billy.

Yesterday I caught up with my old pal Dave Mandelbrot, and this morning I got the news that another former Yahoo! pal, Doug Hirsch, sold his company DailyStrength to HSW International. Check out TC’s post on the sale here.

The concept of DailyStrength has always been a favorite of mine, however despite Doug and teams efforts they weren’t able to break through on the audience front. One of the challenges I suspect might be the fact that while DS created a platform for people to gather around challenging physical and mentai health issues, that reality may be more than most folks want to share with others in an online forum? Who knows?

Hopefully HSW was smart enough to figure out how to keep Doug involved — he’s a great product guy, particularly when it comes to social media and community applications.

Good luck in what’s next DH.

Had lunch with my good buddy Dave Mandelbrot today.  Glorious day in SF, tasty burritos at the Mexican place just to the left of the Ferry Building.  Unbelievable carnitas!

But the real highlight was catching up with Dave.  Of course, I meant to snap an iPhone photo so I could embarrass him on the blog (looked like he hadn’t shaved in days).  Best I could come up with is the photo below I found searching on Google.  Nothing says “classy” like a good old fashioned corporate photo!

Dave and his partner Brian (no relation to me) have been working on a labor of love for the past few months.  Basically they are honing in on creating the ultimate hub for guitar fans – people looking to learn about guitars (think Fender), guitarists (think Eric Clapton) and guitar riffs (think “Stairway to Heaven”).  You can check out the live beta of Dave’s site FretBase here.

I’ve been a proponent of this type of ‘grassroots’publishing for awhile now.  Pick a topic, drill down on the various database components that make up the universe of products, services and information that people care about.  Make it easy for people to comment, review and edit the experience so that they make it feel like they own part of it.  This feels like the way to truly unleash the combo of affiliate ecommerce, lead generation and performance media, and ultimately the next generation of branded display advertising.

Makes me kind of feel like I need to spend time ramping up the Peter Frampton section of Dave’s site!

Holiday weekends are good times to test yourself. My first test was whether I could avoid any family squabbles related to the election results, economic problems and everyone’s favorite, religion.

Mission accomplished – thanks to a few cold Sierra Nevadas, a comfy chaise lounge and some lackluster football on TV.

The bigger test was could I go 48 or even 72 hours without logging on, Twittering, checking my Facebook or LinkedIn feeds, or even checking my email. I am proud to say mission “almost” accomplished. I snuck a few peeks at Facebook. Looked at email briefly Friday and
Saturday – but refrained from replying until Sunday. It kind of felt like the early 90′s – days when you were forced to spend time with people versus devices over a holiday break!

The third test was getting refocused on my fitness. I made it to the gym twice and even signed up for a membership at the local club so I can get back in to my routine. Here’s to a renewed focus on the 2-3-2 plan.

And finally, got to catch up with my old B-school roomie Jon. He just started up in BD in Amazon’s payments group. He’s a pretty sharp guy and knows a lot about the mobile world. More importantly he’s a Marine vet and served in Desert Storm version one. That’s how he got the nickname that has stuck with him since B-school: “Sarge”.

Few notes of interest from what I was able to scan heading in to the Thanksgiving holiday extended weekend:

AlleyInsider kicks around the idea of Microsoft following Apple and Google’s lead by getting in to the mobile phone business. Doesn’t sound that far fetched when you see how little they stand to make licensing Windows for the mobile world, particularly if people continue buying non-Windows devices like the iPhone in droves. Plus, if you have the size and cash that MSFT has, why would you let pesky OEMs stand between you and the end user. What’s next, buying some spectrum and steamrolling the Carriers?

Speaking of MSFT (ok MSN), good to see my ‘ol pal Rob Bennett getting a bump up in the MSN world. Rob’s taking on role of Network-wide programming czar for MSN. Sounds like a good gig for Rob and will let him do what he’s been doing in an Entertainment context and apply it to all MSN channels.

I am curious to check out Zemanta in more detail. At first glance looks like a cool tool for adding features and engagement for bloggers. Will see if I can pull off the plug-in integration within WP?

What are other guys talking about? Fred Wilson highlights StockTwits, a “bloomberg for the little guy” as they call themselves. Basically culls all tweets (or twits…what’s the difference again?) that reference a specific stock ticker with $ in front (e.g. $YHOO picks up thread about Yahoo investor commentary).

By far, my favorite commentary I accessed after installing the FireFox extension was the following:

I promise this will be my last Yahoo! related post (at least for 2008). The news last week that Jerry (as a former Yahoo! GM I feel I can get away with just referring to Jerry Yang as “Jerry”) is stepping down as CEO has every pundit jumping on board with their $.02 on who should be the next CEO.

Silicon Alley Insider ran a poll last week letting readers pick who should be the next Yahoo! CEO. This morning’s NYTimes has a piece from Saul Hansel about how Yahoo! really needs an editor-in-chief. You know, somebody who has the uber vision of how to magically combine the concept of “user experience” with “advertiser/marketer experience” across the myriad of products and services on the Yahoo! Network.

Hmmm. Sounds like a pretty tall order. And it is. Here’s how Yahoo! should position itself (go ahead and throw this log on the fire of “what Yahoo! should do”):

The debate about Yahoo! as a search company competing with Google is over. The debate about Yahoo! as a content company competing with creative driven media outlets like News Corp. and Disney is also moot. What does Yahoo! have more than anything? Users. Audience. Intelligence about that Audience. That sounds like a pretty valuable distribution network (some would say “platform” but I am getting sick of everyone saying they are a “platform”).

So what about the following. In fact, there’s probably an old PPT deck on the computer I turned in when I left Yahoo! in 2005 that sketches out the idea of Yahoo! as a distribution network for everything. At their scale, there is huge value in being a “middleman”. Be the “Comcast” of the Internet. Do as many deals as possible to get content, products, services, whatever plugged in to the Yahoo! Audience.

Outsource search to Microsoft already, save that painful expense to be redirected to making more things available for your audience to do on Yahoo! — even if it’s stuff that points your users to 3rd parties. There’s money in being the broker between your Audience and those 3rd party products and services. Invest in inserting Yahoo! as a middleman between the Audience and Advertisers — directly and through agency relationships. Be the king of the self serve platform for torso and long-tail publishers, build deep relationships with the “head” marketers.

You better figure out how to do this while you have the audience — before the Audience gets served by other middlemen on the horizon (e.g. Apple iPhone, Facebook, Myspace). Embrace the app developer community — this is now happening, but make it a bigger, more visible priority. This will help recraft the Yahoo! culture and brand.

Ok, I am rambling a bit now. Just feels like Yahoo! needs to embrace their role as middleman. With an Audience that big — that at least today is still coming multiple times a day — give them as much value as you can for their sake, for the marketing community’s sake and for Yahoo!’s sake.

That’s it. No more Yahoo! chatter for rest of this year. I’m going to leave 2009 open in the hopes that there’s something positive to write about then.