Brian Grey Blog

TechCrunch’s comparison of Blippy to Facebook’s (now defunct) Beacon targeting platform raises the obvious question:  is Blippy a good idea or not?  Apparently, as the TC post contends, some retailers don’t think letting their consumers share their purchase details online makes for good business.

May those retailers and/or product brands wither away.

Blippy is a great idea.  What right-minded retailer or product brand wouldn’t want to see not only in realtime what SKUs consumers are buying, but also what the friends and followers of those consumers are saying and asking about those purchases.  Talk about an amazing customer feedback petri dish.

And beyond the CRM and data goldmine, the social commerce opportunity appears to be a trend to watch.  Just look through the depth of comments that a typical purchase posting generates on Blippy and imagine how this digital word-of-mouth phenomenon multiplies not just the brand power for retailers and the products they sell, but also the sell through of additional units at no incremental customer acquisition marketing expense.

But let’s face it, these are the basic core user and business dynamics that VCs care about.  I’m also interested in some very specific personal level use cases that Blippy can enable.  You know, the types of information that are really important to people, such as:

Wife Purchase Tracker — when I enter the family credit card I’m now able to get a realtime update on what my wife is purchasing.  What a better way for me to then ping back to the retailers that she buys from to say:  “Oh, hi, it turns out we accidently made a purchase from you guys.  Turns out we don’t really want to buy those knee high suede boots after all.  Please cancel our order.  Thanks.”  What a helpful family budget management tool you are Blippy!

Dating Profile Tracker — what a better way for the single daters out there to really get to know their friends and acquaintances?  Imagine a young lady meets a new guy — let’s call him Rick — on Match.com.  His profile is stunning:  good education, good job, does charity work — he’s perfect.  Or is he?  With a simple Blippy integration on Match.com, she then peruses Rick’s purchases on Blippy.  Oops, bad idea.  Seems that Rick has a penchant for frequenting the local liquor store where, thanks to Blippy, we see that he’s a fan of Wild Turkey and chewing tobacco.  Time for the lady to move on from Rick.

Vegas Tracker — now this one could be a real problem for the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce who has rebuilt the image of Sin City on the “What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas”.  Thanks to Blippy, what gets purchased in Vegas can be viewed on Blippy.  Man, talk about putting a real damper on party weekends for the jet set.  Do spouses really want that level of over-the-shoulder viewing of how many times their significant other stopped by the Cesars sportsbook?  Then again, Blippy’s terms of service doesn’t require you to link EVERY one of your credit cards to your Blippy account now does it?

Before we get too far in to the new decade, I want to circle back on a couple posts I boldly put out there in early 2009.

The first one touted the fact that I had decided to just pick One Resolution for 2009 and that was to lower my weight to 199 lbs by the end of 2009.  What I didn’t provide in that original post on December 31, 2008 was my starting weight for my quest.  So here are the final stats:

January 1, 2009:  240.0 lbs. (no kidding, it’s like I was a major shareholder in Krispe Kreme)

December 31, 2009:  197.8 lbs.

Net loss for 2009:  42.2 lbs. or 17.6%

And my related goal for 2010?  To keep it all off!

As for my Fearless Predictions for 2009, let’s see how I did:

1. The Dow closed above my prediction of 10,092.  Not bad considering after my prediction the Dow fell in early March 2009 to mid-6000.  I feel that my stock picking prowess may have been used up in 2009, but since the Dow is still down like 25% from it’s October 2007 all-time high, I am going to call the Dow at 11,276 (pretty random I know) for a 2010 close.

2. I was half right on this one, kind of.  Microsoft didn’t really “buy” Yahoo! Search, but they did a massive commercial deal that all but puts Yahoo! Search in Redmond’s hands.  But my second call about Yahoo! buying AOL didn’t quite materialize, but maybe I’ll roll this one forward and make it a 2010 prediction?

3. Twitter easily blew through the 10 million uniques I predicted for November 2009 (which was by the way a prediction 5 times the 2 million unique visitors Twitter had in November 2008).  And my little add on about a whole ecosystem sprouting up to plug in to the Twittersphere seems to have also been on the money.  Though I may be a little early on that prediction about a clear revenue model emerging, though at their most recent post-money valuation not sure they are racing to showcase their money printing machine just yet.

4. My call around digital media M&A activity picking up in Q2 as a bit early.  Though it really didn’t pick up a ton after that either (my second order prediction).  That said, the M&A patient did show some life in the second half of 2009 (thanks Google, Intuit, Adobe, etc.), so I can’t say I totally whiffed on this one.

5. And, as for my all important sports picks for 2009, well let’s just say I kind of got side swiped by the Tiger Woods affair(s).  Of the 10 picks I made (not counting the 11th which was my smarty pick for the Kentucky Derby:  “a horse), I only got 3 correct:  Florida winning the BCS, UNC winning the NCAA Hoops Tourney, and the Lakers winning the NBA title.  I came close with the Red Wings in the Stanley Cup (losing to the Penguins) and my Phillies repeating in the World Series (at least they got there again).  But I picked Tiger to win 2 Majors and be SI’s Sportsman of the Year.  He won zero Majors and it turned out was far from Sportsman of the Year — or Dad/Husband of the Year for that matter.

So for 2010, I feel compelled to make a few more sports picks since I have much to prove based on my 2009 performance.  Take these with you next time you go to Vegas:

BCS Champion:  Texas (upset over Alabama)

Super Bowl Winner:  New Orleans

Daytona 500 Winner:  Jimmie Johnson

NCAA Men’s Tourney Winner:  Kansas

NCAA Women’s Tourney Winner:  Connecticut

Stanley Cup Champion:  San Jose Sharks (picking with my heart)

NBA Champion:  Lakers repeat

World Series:  Red Sox over the Dodgers in 6 games

And how about this one:

Roger Federer and Tiger Woods will combine to win 3 Major tournaments out of the combined 8 that will be played in 2010.

Peace to all in the new decade.

I read with great pain the recent Wall Street Journal article touting the growth prospects of a major U.S. corporation that are being driven through exports of its products to India.  More on that in a moment, but first I need to set the stage with a comment about the Import side of the U.S. export-import equation with India.

Now I don’t profess to be any kind of expert in the area of H1-B Visas, but I have previously managed employees who were working here in the U.S. on such visas.  And I subscribe to the general theory that labor markets should be open so that an efficient flow of resources can exist to help foster new businesses that are based on technologies that require specialized skills from such workers.

That’s a fancy way of saying that if (as is oftentimes the case) there are highly educated and proficient people in India (e.g. say software or Web engineers for example) then I would suggest it’s a good long term growth policy of the U.S. to support a robust H1-B Visa program whereby these accomplished workers help build new companies and jobs for multiple workers beyond the “imported” folks.

Clearly in a time of rising U.S. unemployment this point of view isn’t widely held.  With places like Detroit experiencing an unemployment rate north of 50% you’re not going to see the Obama administration vault the H1-B issue to the top of their “to do” list.  It’s actually a small victory that Obama’s peeps are taking meetings with officials from India as reported by the Wall Street Journal’s LiveMint reported back in the spring.

Okay, but here’s where the Indian government should be crying for some kind of quid pro quo.  Just this week the very same WSJ reported how focused the U.S. company YUM brands is these days to expand its various franchises like KFC and Taco Bell in to India to fuel its long-term growth.  Mmmmmm!…Naan bread tacos and curry-fried chicken wings.  I’m booking my next trip to Bangalore now!

I’m just saying, if the Indian people are willing to let YUM Brands drop all over their country food full of high fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated soybean oil, shouldn’t the U.S. be a bit more giving when it comes to letting highly educated Indian engineers hang out here helping tech start ups grow and prosper.

Hopefully I can find an “expert” to help me properly spice up my Taco Bell Super Gordito with a little basmati rice before their Visa expires?

This isn’t what I’d call the most significant personal horror story related to health care.  In fact, in the scheme of such stories, what I had happen this past Friday is pretty tame.  However, it does highlight in a small way how screwed up and non customer friendly dealing with health care is even in the context of very simple requests.

My story (or at least the first chapter of the story) is all about trying to get my medical records transferred from my previous primary care physician to my new physician.

The drama began a few weeks ago when I called my old doctor’s office in LA (Pacific Palisades to be exact, in case that adds any color for readers) to inquire about getting my records sent up to SF where I now live so that I could provide some history for my new PCP whom I would be meeting with soon.  Of course, I could not speak with anyone live in my former physician’s office in LA — instead I got to wade through their voicemail tree and leave a message asking that somebody call me back to explain how I get my health records.  Nobody bothered to call me back.

Fast forward to this past week when I set up my appointment to meet with a new doctor here in SF.  My new office emailed me a simple waiver form that I could sign, scan and email a PDF back to the SF office so they could forward to my old LA doctor’s office to get my records.  Great, problem solved.  So I thought.

On Friday afternoon — a couple days before I was scheduled to meet with my new doctor — a woman from the front desk crew at the LA office called to inform me that in order to get my medical records I had to pay a $35 “administrative fee” to have them copied if I wanted to come in and pick them up.  For a total of $45 they would do me the favor of sending them to me in SF.  My guess is that they would be arriving via Pony Express?

I couldn’t resist.  I just had to call the LA office back to understand how they could justify being charged $45 to get something that would take probably 3 minutes to photocopy and another 3 minutes to fax to my SF doctor’s office (for essentially no charge as part of what I imagine is a flat rate long distance phone plan, but imagine if they had the technology to scan a copy of my medical records and email them to me?).

“How do you justify charging me $35 to get a copy of MY medical records,” I asked the woman on the phone.  She informed me it was an “administrative fee” for the time it would take someone in their office to make a copy.  By my math that comes to $700 an hour to copy my records.  Wow, I think I know where to send my resume for my next job!

“What if I came in to just get my file,” I said — in all seriousness of course.  Again, the kind woman on the other end of the line had a quick reply.  “We’re not allowed to let patients take the records”.  What the hell?  I suspect I signed something along the lines of what the medical profession considers a privacy policy that includes some provision that I can’t take the files.  Do they need a paper trail for insurance purposes, auditing maybe?  Fine I thought, I’ll just go in and get them so I can “go across the street and copy them myself” I said.  “Sorry, we aren’t allowed to let the records leave our office”.

At this point I figured this was going nowhere.  I thought this might actually be considered one of the “procedures” that a doctor gets paid for by the insurance providers — just like doing an x-ray or performing a blood test.  Maybe I need my health plan to call my old LA office to negotiate a price for this service?

So at this point I’m going in to my new doctor here in LA as a clean slate.  Thankfully I have my mental faculties so I can theoretically download from my memory the essentials of my medical history for my SF doctor.  As far as I’m concerned when it comes to my medical history, my next doctor’s appointment is indeed the “first day of the rest of my life”.

Next time you want to really mess with your kids on a vacation, take them to another time zone for like a week (or 10 days is even better).  We just got back from an East Coast swing through Mass., NY and CT (and R.I. but that was basically 2 hours on 95 so not sure it really counts), and the re-entry for the kids in to the Pacific time zone was a hilarious experience.

The first couple nights back they will be asking to go to bed around 7 p.m.  It’s actually kind of funny (even if borderline child abuse) to watch them bleary eyed at the dinner table that first night back.  Then again, it’s not that funny when they are up and roaming the halls the next morning at 5 a.m.!

Now, since there’s nothing more exciting than hearing a summary of someone’s vacation, here are a few highlights from road trip:

• We began the trip on the north shore of Boston – Manchester by the Sea.  Great place to spend the 4th of July weekend.  I actually kept to my exercise program pretty well — though I had to replace my cardio routine on the elliptical machine with long walks in to town from our friends’place.  The downside of course here was the fact that I was drawn in to the Dunkin Donuts shop not once but twice during my morning walks.  Thankfully, most of the other adults and kids devoured the donuts before I could do any serious damage to myself.

• On the Sunday after July 4th, I took my youngest to see the Red Sox vs. Mariners at Fenway.  Great seats thanks to tickets from a friend.  Right behind homeplate in the EMC section.  And what does my daughter do?  She of course roots for the Mariners.  Well, can you blame her, she actually played for the Mariners in her little league team this spring so she was just keeping it real rooting for her peeps!  I’m actually surprised some Masshole didn’t dump a chowder bowl on her head.

• From Manchester it was on to New Canaan, CT to visit an old high school friend (at my age, technically all my high school friends are “old high school friends”) and stay a night with his family.  It was great catching up and the kids all had a blast.  New Canaan reminded me of our old neighborhood Pacific Palisades near LA.  Lots of people that looked better than me driving nicer cars than I own.  And like the Palisades, there was a Baskin Robins in the heart of town.  Since when have they been doing that York Peppermint Patty flavor?  So refreshing!

• Next stop, New York City.  Again, stayed with friends (have you caught on to a theme here — it’s called the Recession hotel replacement program).  This time a great apartment on Central Park West with 360 degree views of Central Park.  Upper West Side was great, warm but not humid, with none of the urine smell and homeless guys slumped on the sidewalk that we’ve come to enjoy in SF.  This time I took my older kid to an event — the matinee showing of “Westside Story”.  We made our way through two packs of peanut M&Ms.  And it turns out that the Jets vs. Sharks ended up being pretty much a draw.

• Last stop on the family victory tour was a trip out to Sag Harbor for the last couple days.  A very relaxing village and yes, again we mooched off friends by staying at the vacation home of the same folks we stayed with in NYC.  By this time we were feeling the effects of the road tripping and vagabond lifestyle.  First night we ordered in pizzas.  The next day we shunned the beach for just lounging at our complimentary pad.

All in all a great vacation.  If you haven’t been forced yet by your employer to burn off some vacation hours you should plan to do so now.  This trip was another reminder that the Europeans do have the vacation thing figured out much better than we do in the States.  But with monuments like Dunkin’Donuts and Baskin Robins I’ll take the good ‘ol USA any day.

Upton Sinclair must be turning over in his grave.

Last night I went to check out the documentary Food Inc., a movie that chronicles the far reaching industry that one would describe most aptly as the “food production and distribution” industry.  Now, what I learned from the movie foremost is the fact that there exist what are referred to as veggie libel laws (the laws that got Oprah in trouble for her comments about the beef industry back in 1996), so I will keep many of most sacred opinions about Food Inc. to myself.

That said, here are a few thoughts:

1.  Go see the movie now (if you can find an art house near you that will be showing it) or at least rent the movie when it shows up in Blockbuster or on Netflix (hopefully the latter two aren’t owned by Tyson or Monsanto).

The producers of Food Inc. do an admirable job laying out many of the component parts of the food industry that when taken as a whole make you really think about how the food you eat gets to your table — and once on your plate what’s really in it.

2. Find a cause somewhere in the food industry ecosystem

There seem to be so many pieces of this puzzle — from early onset diabetes to e-coli outbreaks to labor practices to questionable policy making — that everyone should feel compelled to do something that has a positive impact on the food industry.  As the movie points out quite effectively, there are parallels here to the tobacco industry, (hint, hint).

3. Act and vote locally

Ever wonder why a fast food cheeseburger costs less relative to a bunch of broccoli or a pack of organic carrots?  Well, next time you feel the sudden urge to swing in to a drive-thru, keep going until you run in to a local farmer’s market or supermarket that carries something organic (heck, as the movie highlights, this could even include your local Wal-Mart).

4.  Don’t think of this as a date movie fellas

Unless your girlfriend or wife is super liberal (e.g. Berkeley grad?), is looking for another cause to take on (e.g. African malaria cure isn’t enough), only eats organic food (e.g. she’ll be able to name the Stoneyfield CEO when he appears in the movie), and you’re not planning to go to dinner afterwards (e.g. this may be a conscious tactic on your part to save a few bucks?), find something else to see as a date-night flick.

A rather depressing story in today’s NY Times about cuts spreading rapidly across the college sports landscape.  Seems that the recession’s squeeze is finally making its way to the athletic departments.  As expected the sports getting the knife at schools are what you’d consider “tier 2″ sports – fencing, pistol, swimming…but also fairly popular sports like soccer and volleyball are getting nuked.

Some may look at this as an inevitable outcome given the economic pressures facing universities.  Yet given soundbites like the fact that the University of California system is apparently considering a 10 percent tuition increase and the fact that the BCS got a huge rights increase in their new deal with ESPN, this seems like the wrong time to be ending the careers of student athletes once their high school careers end.

The Times piece states that in the 2007-08 academic year there were 412,768 NCAA student athletes.  I would suggest that there should actually be many, many more than that.  As someone who played a sport in college, I feel lucky to have had access to a physically demanding outlet almost daily, and to have had the opportunity to compete in a team setting.

Given what we are learning today about the connection between physical exercise and brain development, not to mention what we’ve known for years about how competition and teamwork in sports maps to “the real world”, colleges should be doing whatever they can to not only keep their current teams in tact, but they should be coming up with ways to open up competitive sports programs to as many students as possible.

Seems like there’s an opportunity here for corporate sponsors who gladly sponsor the elite levels of college sports to invest in their future workforces today on the soccer fields, volleyball courts and swimming pools across campuses nationwide.

Ok, I am supposed to be on Spring Break vacation with my family. Acutally, I am on Spring Break with my family, but since it’s been downpouring rain all day and my wife and daughter’s have parked themselves on the couch in front of the movie “Mama Mia”, I couldn’t help but grab today’s WSJ. I mean let’s be serious, my wife suckered me in to seeing this movie when it was in the theaters — no way I’m gonna sit through Pierce Brosnan’s singing a second time!

And what strikes my interest in today’s Journal? Well for starters the Opinion piece by James Freeman, “Is Silicon Valley A Systemic Risk?“, that tells a little tale about how now that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is fully engaged in regulation mode, he is now targeting the Venture Capital sector.

You’ve got to be kidding me — is this where Obama’s Treasury wunderkid is going next?

How about having Geithner draw me a picture showing how venture capital investments over the last decade were in any way tied to the prime mortgage lending induced housing bubble or the speculative financial derivative game being played right under Timmy’s nose in NYC?

I don’t think there’s a drawing out there that would show this, but apparently we now need to regulate VC investments and protect willing investors in VC funds from having them all turn in to mini Madoffs. Wow, now this is starting to get a little scary.

From where I sit in Silicon Valley here’s what I see — and don’t see — daily:

I see startup companies being led by entrepreneurs — some as small as 2 guys working on code to some with more than 30 or 40 employees working to hatch an idea or build on a business that is operating in it’s early days of trying to fine tune it’s product and acquire a dedicated customer base.

I don’t see companies who are taking on debt (and if they do, it’s a working capital line of credit from Silicon Valley Bank as Freeman’s article points out) nor do I see companies enlisting support from politicians or politically charged entities like Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae or Moodys.

Why would Obama’s administration think regulating an investment sector that operates as efficiently as the VC model, and one that actually spurs innovation and new job growth in industries where the U.S. can lead (see “U.S. auto industry” for the opposite example here) is a smart use of the Treasury Department’s time.

How about Geithner’s gang stay focused on cleaning up the mess created by the banks, insurance companies and other real ponzi schemes, and let the VCs do what they do best: take on the risk associated with creating companies and jobs.

Ok, now back to my Spring Break!

Don’t ask me how or why, but for some reason I ended up at the broadcast network end of the TV dial this morning.  Toggling between David Gregory and George Stephanopoulos (whom my wife correctly asked “what did he do again that warrants him moderating one of these shows?”) a couple of things struck me that reminded me what  a dinosaur these shows are in today’s media environment.

First, these shows better never plan on making the switch to HD.  Anyone who has to see up close how much make up George Will is wearing or whether Arianna Huffington’s eyelashes are real, will certainly click off to another channel no matter how compelling the chit chat is about North Korea.

Second and most notable is the “fishbowl” feel that these shows have — especially in a digital media world that has rapidly moved to putting a premium on audience conversation.  The old school method of having a moderator like George and David leading a discussion with analysts and experts is way too antiquated.  Having Huffington on the Stephanopoulos panel seemed the most ironic.  Here is a pundit who has arguably embraced the new medium via her Huffingtonpost.com blog platform, yet on George’s panel she appeared as 2-dimensional and archaic as Will and the other two stooges on the set.

How about this for a programming idea for these Sunday political shows.

While they are taping the show, run it live online.  Suck in the Twitter feed — heck bring in the FriendFeed, Facebook Status feed and any other audience conversation that can be gleaned from the Web while the host and guests are actually talking on set.  Then, during the actual taping, have the host dip in to the “conversation” and use the vibe coming from the audience chatter to steer the discussion a bit.  Not entirely audience driven, but enough to make it feel like we’re not just watching the show as though we were waltzing through the Television & Radio wing of the Smithsonian Institute.

Now I might watch something like this — a show where George Will had to reply to what real people were saying about what he was saying about North Korea.  Actually, on second thought, I’d probably just watch the thing online while it was being taped so that I could contribute to the conversation live.  I’ve got better things to do than watch network television at 9 a.m. Sunday mornings!

Here we are in the midst of Little League baseball season so it must be about time for more outcry from psychologists, parents and journalists about how our star craved culture is ruining our kids’lives by driving the little ones too hard in youth sports.

Sure enough, Monday’s WSJ “Bookshelf” section takes a full column to review BusinessWeek writer Mark Hyman’s book “Until It Hurts:  America’s Obsession with Youth Sports and How it Harms Our Kids”.  Okay, first off Mark needs to slow way down with that title.  He makes it sound like we’re back in the 19th Century running our 11-year olds through 14 hour days in the neighborhood sweatshop.

According to the WSJ book reviewer (I obviously haven’t read Hyman’s book — and I don’t intend to), much of Hyman’s focus on youth sports centers around the physical injuries that apparently millions of kids suffer playing sports each year.  From the author’s research, he claims that last year 3.5 million kids suffered a sports related malady that required treatment.  Sorry, mom putting a band-aid on a skinned knee doesn’t really count here.  I’d like to know how many kids actually had Tommy John elbow surgery (one of the actual examples in the article)?

This one sided view of youth sports misses the mark on two fronts.

First, as those who know me well know, two of my favorite movie characters are Vic Morrow as the overly rabid Yankees manager in “The Bad News Bears” and Robert Duvall as the demented military dad in “The Great Santini”.  Both roles epitomize the evil wrongness that we all fear about youth sports.

Now if I could point to any real life examples where I saw a coach slap his pitcher like Morrow did in “The Bad News Bears” or if I had even one example of a parent berating and/or embarrassing his or her child on the field of play, I might be receptive to Hyman’s thesis.  But I can’t recall a single incident that even comes close.  The annual story of the Texas dad who beats up the Pop Warner football ref in the parking lot after the game is an anomaly — but a convenient one for the 11 o’clock news and USA Today’s front page.

Actually, my experiences have been far different.  The parent-coaches that I have come in contact with have by in large understood the purpose of youth sports.  What’s more, I would reckon that the percentage of kids who even in today’s society zero in on just one sport before high school (e.g. move to Texas to be a gymnast or play on the year-around traveling soccer club team) is pretty darn low.  Like probably a very low single digit percentage.  Hardly numbers that would lay claim to youth sports being the epidemic that Hyman’s book appears to claim.

The bigger point, however, apparently not addressed by Hyman as relates to youth sports — or at least not highlighted in the WSJ review — is the fact that we have a glaring epidemic afflicting our youth today that youth sports can actually help address.  Child obesity and early onset diabetes.  And one of the best things we can be doing is encouraging youth sports participation wherever possible.

Again, I would be willing to bet that not a single kid on the team of little leaguers I am coaching will ever play baseball in the majors — let alone in even college or high school.  But I do hope that little league is just one of many sports they all try and that eventually they pick a couple (team or individual) that they really like and that this pursuit keeps them off the couch and keeps their hand out of the Doritos bag.

A book like Hyman’s smacks of sensationalism — playing off of corner cases and the easy line that can be connected from any topic to our “star struck society”.  Maybe Hyman will do a sequel that tells the other much bigger side of the youth sports story.  The one about how sports can have so many positive impacts on the lives of kids not only when they are kids but when they are grown ups too.