Your Phone Will Control Your Home

May 11, 2011 Leave a comment

We knew it was coming, but Google finally today announced Android@Home, Google’s new open framework to allow your Android mobile device to (eventually) control everything in your home – music, lighting, security, cameras, doors, appliances, you name it.  I think the “home” is a next big frontier of unexplored opportunity and is going to create an entire new ecosystem of startups and companies focusing on the intersection of mobile and home.  While Microsoft (Kinect), IBM and HP have been in this home sensor space for years, Google has a history of changing the game and bringing new technologies to the masses through their open development platforms.  Google Chrome OS, with 160M users and Android, with exponential growth and now the leading mobile operating system in the world, are two examples of Google’s ability to create explosive products and platforms.

Over just the past decade, we’ve seen a migration in opportunity from initially web only, then to mobile smartphones, then to mobile connectedness to others through applications and social media, which by the way is not nearly fully exploited yet.  It seems with Google’s announcement today, at least one next evolution of connected technology is our mobile device as a true connector to everything in our lives – people, home, car and every activity that fills our day.

Consistent with other Google applications, Android@Home is an open platform that encourages any developer to create applications that operate on the platform.  Google with their worldwide influence, has a unique ability to define and lead game changing technologies by first defining the platform standard, then opening it up for developers everywhere to create applications, increasing consumer adoption and ultimately leading to exponential scale.  Google’s vision in this case is to create a “smart home” by having millions of developers building applications that over time will completely automate your home through your mobile device.  Pretty cool George Jetson stuff that he might have developed at Spacely’s Sprockets!

I’m excited to see what will happen over the next 12 months in the home automation space now that Google has officially entered the market.

Now, if only Google could create a platform for increasing home values to 2005 levels, I’d really be impressed 🙂

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Tragic Day in Cycling

May 9, 2011 2 Comments

Today was a tragic day for cyclists worldwide.  A professional cyclist lost his life during Stage 3 of the Giro d’Italia, a 3-week stage race that is Italy’s equivalent of the Tour de France.  Wouter Weylandt, a 26-year old Belgium pro racer who ironically won Stage 3 of this race just one year ago, crashed on a downhill descent and died on the scene from head and facial injuries.  It’s the first death in a major pro tour stage since 1995 and even longer for the Giro since 1986.  As much cycling as I do, this story makes me sick to my stomach.  But what makes it unbearable for me is that Wouter’s girlfriend is 5-months pregnant with their first child.  The similarities between us are eerie and unavoidable to consider.

This is a sport I love.  My passion.  And it’s dangerous.  While I’m not (always) hurtling myself down mountains going 60 mph like these pros do in a race situation, cycling even for us amateurs involves mountainous descents at high speeds and even worse, traffic on busy roads.  I read this story about Wouter this morning after having spent about 7 hours on my bike this weekend and having climbed and descended nearly 10,000 ft.  And I’ve got a child on the way too.  Scary stuff that forces reflection, particularly with a baby on the way and the gravity of that responsibility for the rest of my life.

Compounding my personal struggle with personal risk taking, my father died in a kayaking accident when I was 9-years old.  Another dangerous sport, but one that my father loved.  He was and avid kayaker, known for his responsible and thoughtful risk appetite, he simply did not take undue risks even though his sport is inherently dangerous.  His death was the result of a freak accident.  And I respect his choice to pursue his passion despite the lack of his presence in my life.

So here’s the deal.  I’m not going to stop living my life and doing the things I love the most.  And I want to teach my son that same philosophy – to unwaveringly, but responsibly and thoughtfully pursue his passions.  I don’t live a particularly dangerous or adrenaline-junkie lifestyle.  Cycling is probably the most dangerous thing I do and its not clear to me that driving your car on LA freeways is any safer.  My point being there are risks all around us, however remote the probabilities may be.

Is that a selfish view?  I don’t think so.  There are endless reasons not do do something, especially if that something involves a perceived or even a real danger.  It’s the responsible and thoughtful pursuit of happiness that I try to use as my own personal barometer.

But here’s the rub – what constitutes “responsible and thoughtful” behavior in the pursuit of our passions, dreams and interests may be completely different for you than for me.

What do you think?  How much risk is too much risk in the pursuit of personal happiness?

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Thank You Mom

May 8, 2011 Leave a comment

I’m almost never with my Mom on Mother’s Day, we live so far apart.  But particularly on this day I want her to know how much she is loved and appreciated for all that she has done and continues to do and the role she has played in my life.   She has always been the most supportive person throughout my life, always selfless in her guidance.  Never wavering in her support for my decisions, regardless of how strange or misguided they must have seemed at the time.  And always there in a non-intrusive way to help through the difficult times, and there’s been a few.

And its not just about me.  Mom has been a giver to others her entire life.  She never comes first.  Kindness, generosity and selflessness would be the words to describe my Mom, among others.  Well Mom, I hope for at least today YOU can come first and let this day be about you.

I love you.

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Lifelong Learning With MIT – For Free!

May 6, 2011 Leave a comment

Ten years ago the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) began OpenCourseWare, a program to publish educational materials from all of its courses freely and openly on the Internet.  At this ten-year milestone, the program has 90% participation among faculty, sharing 2,000 courses with over 100 million individuals worldwide.  The program’s objective over the next ten years is to serve 1 billion people.  Wow.

While these courses do not bestow degrees or certificates, there are some incredible stories about how these world-class instructional materials are changing lives, particularly for the under-privileged and those in remote locations throughout the world.

It’s been 14 years since I completed graduate school at Kellogg and while I actively read to keep stimulated, there are areas, particularly in technology, that I could really stand to dig a little deeper to make me a more effective leader.  So I have just started an undergraduate, self-paced course through MIT’s program called Introduction to Computer Science and Programming that educates on the role computation and programming can play in solving problems, including application using Python programming language.  Lots has changed since my undergraduate FORTRAN programming class in 1987.  It should be fun!

43% of OpenCourseWare users are self-learners and 40% of them use the service to “explore areas outside my professional field”.  There are lots of areas of curiosity and interest for me in these 2,000 courses.  Particularly areas I know nothing about but have a curiosity to learn.  Anthropology and Urban Design are two areas I know squat about, but with a small amount of time and access to such great educational resources, I can get a cursory introduction.  Heck, why not Genomics and Computational Biology while I’m at it?

The world truly is at our fingertips.

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The Founder Conference

May 5, 2011 Leave a comment

I attended The Founder Conference this week in Mountain View, CA.  I don’t really attend many conferences, but every once in a while I’ll go to an event if there are a few speakers I’d like to see.  This one had two and it was a decent event, with about 500 entrepreneurs in attendance to hear some startup luminaries like Guy Kawasaki and Naval Ravikant speak about startup funding and delighting your initial customers.  Additionally, Phil Libin, CEO of Evernote, gave a killer talk about the success and growth of his company and how he did it.

I intended on summarizing some of the key points, but there’s someone else who did a stellar job, even shooting video of the event.  See Dan Odio’s Founder Conference Blog Page for a re-cap and great video.

For the highlights, I suggest the following:

  • If you are interested in raising money for your startup or understanding what is happening in the VC/Angel marketplace right now, definitely watch Guy & Naval’s talks.  Guy Kawasaki is a serial entrepreneur, former Chief Evangelist for Apple and author of Enchantment.  And he’s a great, engaging speaker.  Naval Ravikant is also a serial entrepreneur and recent founder of AngelList that brings together founders with Angel investors – about 1900 of them!  He knows a thing or two about what’s happening in the marketplace for startup funding.
  • If you want to hear a great startup success story and be awed by how to really track performance and understand your customer’s needs and behavior, then watch Phil’s talk on Evernote.

These 3 presentations I thought were the best, most useful of the day.  Enjoy!

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Engineer = Rock Star

May 4, 2011 2 Comments

It’s good to be a developer in this job market.  Really good.  And not just in Silicon Valley, although SV really is the center of the universe for mobile and web technology.

At TrueCar, we’ve been really aggressive with hiring for both our LA and SF offices, including offering relocation packages from anywhere in the U.S., even for junior engineers.  We’re selling our story hard.  Here’s what we’ve been up against over the past year:

  • Google recently gave every employee across-the-board 10% raises – up from already strong compensation.
  • Large Silicon Valley companies like Google and Facebook are actually acquiring small startups, in some cases only a few months old, to gain access to the development team.
  • Poaching talent from competitors has become a fine art, escalating signing bonuses to extreme amounts for top talent.  As incredulous as a $500K retention bonus sounds, the economics of that decision for a company like Google makes perfect sense based on the shareholder value that lead engineer will create.  Oh, and 15% of Facebook’s employees have previously worked for Google.
  • In Boulder, a consortium of companies are pooling money to fly in engineers from around the country to attend Boulder Startup Week beginning in a few weeks on May 18.

Compounding the challenge is the fact that its probably the best time in tech history to be an entrepreneur and start your own company.  There’s efficient access to capital and mentoring through firms like AngelList, YCombinator and TechStars and valuations are soaring, encouraging top technical talent to do their own thing, which is exactly what is happening, effectively removing top engineering talent from the labor pool.  How crazy is it that top engineers leave Google, start their own company, get acquired within a year and end up back at Google as an employee?

It’s a downright war for talent right now.

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Bin Laden Dead. Now What?

May 2, 2011 Leave a comment

Wow, what a historic day yesterday.  It will be one of those moments for me, like the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster or Princess Diana’s death, where I will remember forever where I was and what I was doing the moment I heard the news.  I was gathered with friends, including Sudhir “Suds” Kandula, to watch the finale of “America’s Next Great Restaurant” in which Suds was a top 3 finalist when the NBC News Special Report interrupted the broadcast.  Unfortunately, Suds came in 2nd place, but the Bin Laden news was an epic prize for all of us.  A particular sweet justice for all of service men and women who have sacrificed so much over the past decade.

I’ve been amazed at the pace of information flow, particularly on Twitter, regarding the Bin Laden situation.  Twitter stated that at the beginning and end of President Obama’s speech, there were over 5,100 tweets per second on their network.

I’m certainly not qualified to talk intelligently on the subject of what Bin Laden’s death means to global terrorism, so I’ll instead share a few of the most interesting articles I’ve come across in the last 24 hours.

However, I will say this – I for one don’t believe that Bin Laden’s death spells the end of Al Qaeda or that Al Qaeda becomes so fractured and disorganized that it becomes completely ineffective.   If there is any organization in the world that should have a detailed succession plan in place for leadership, it would be Al Qaeda.   Setting emotion aside for a second, Bin Laden created an evil but effective worldwide organization that operated efficiently in a decentralized way – and did so at the same time that all superpower countries built their own organizations with the sole purpose of destroying Al Qaeda and killing its leadership.  Can you imagine operating an organization under those terms?  He was a ruthless mass-murderer, but he was not stupid.  I fear that in some respects Bin Laden may be more powerful dead than alive, at least in the near term.

Here are links to several interesting, and differing points of views on what Bin Laden’s death means for the world and the U.S.:

  • The Special Ops Team that executed the mission against Bin Laden.
  • Maps of the Bin Laden compound, in unbelievable detail.
  • An alternative and somewhat brutal point of view on Bin Laden’s impact on U.S. Government and U.S. citizen behavior entitled “He Won“.
  • Debate among New York Times columnists on the impact of this historic event.

What do you think Bin Laden’s death means for Al Qaeda, global terrorism and the U.S.?

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Baby Names

April 29, 2011 3 Comments

Now that Renee and I are within 10 weeks of meeting Baby G, it’s time to get serious about names.  Other than my genetics, this will be one of the few things I give my son that will follow him throughout his entire life.  Man, that’s pressure to not screw this up!  What kind of name should I give my son?  A “strong” name like Thor, Magnus, Adonis, Maximillian, Bruno or Nikolai?  Or maybe a “sensitive” name like Jayden, Tristan, Emanuel or Gaston?  Not that I don’t like these names, just a bit on the fringe for my taste.

Maybe I should focus on the most common names for CEO’s as published by LinkedIn – Howard, Peter, Bob, Jack, Bruce or Fred?  Or, it would be kinda cool for him to be a super-star athlete so he can make millions and take care of dear old dad in my old age.  In that case, according to LinkedIn, we should name him Ryan, Matt or Jason.

The most common 2-letter name is Ed.  The most common 10-letter name is Alessandro.

Then there are family names.  Of course, I’m partial to Robert as three generations on my side carry this name.  Renee’s dad is a Robert as well.  Mmmm, maybe a good middle name?

Christopher, Keith, Sonny, Jerry, Daniel are close family names.

Maybe we’ll choose 3 names and meet our son before we decide what name fits best?

Hey parents out there, how did you do it?

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On My “To Read” Shelf

April 28, 2011 Leave a comment

Unfortunately, my “to read” shelf is growing faster than I can clear my “currently reading” shelf.  Busy with work and lot’s of travel have encroached on my reading time.  But here are the books on my list, as usual a mix of business, personal interest and self-improvement.

The Presence Process:  A Healing Journey into Present Moment Awareness by Michael Brown.  Recommended by family, always healthy I believe to have a self-awareness read in the queue.

The Big Short:  Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis, the author of Liar’s Poker and The Blind Side.  A close friend recommended this read which delves into the macrocosmic tale of greed and fear during the 2007/8 Wall Street crisis.

Born to Run:  A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen by Christopher McDougall.  A personal journey into understanding ultra-distance running as a way of life, health and contentment among the Mexican Tarahumara tribe.  My running life has become un-fun and too functional, so am looking for a little inspiration.

Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill.  This book was written nearly 75 years ago now as a philosophical approach to living life and interacting with our fellowman, conceived through research and personal interviews of leaders of that time – Ford, Edison, Rockefeller, Graham Bell and 500 others.

Little Bets:  How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries by Peter Sims (@petersims).  Sims is an entrepreneur, VC and author of True North.  His research contends that many of the most successful companies and individuals did not result from some genius idea, but rather through a masterful approach to experimentation and learning.  Excited to read this one, it has just recently been released.

Do More Faster:  TechStars Lessons to Accelerate your Startup by Brad Feld (@bfeld) and David Cohen (@davidcohen).  TechStars is a successful startup accelerator operating in several U.S. cities co-founded by Feld and Cohen.  I follow both actively through Twitter and their individual blogs and have met Brad recently.

I need to find a way to carve out more reading time before this list gets out of hand!

What’s on your list?

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My Favorite Twitter Follows

April 27, 2011 Leave a comment

I wanted to follow up a prior post on my favorite startup blogs with a post on a handful of my favorite Twitter follows.  These are a group of folks, most of whom I only know by reputation, that have something to say or news to share about technology, startups or entertainment.  As I mentioned previously, Twitter has become a go-to source of news and insights for me, an incredibly efficient way to absorb a lot of information quickly.  Enjoy!

News, Technology & Startups

  • @TrueCar – of course.
  • @TechCrunch – the leading startup blog, news feed.  Good iPhone app too.
  • @TEDNews – news source for incredible human innovations
  • @venturehacks – Startup advice
  • @nytimes – Also on my iPhone
  • @cnnbrk – CNN Breaking News
  • @GOOD – An association of “pragmatic idealists” focusing on issues of Good in the world
  • @Oxfam – An international group of 15 organizations across the world developing solutions for poverty & injustice.
  • @bfeld – Brad Feld, VC and prolific blogger, highlighted in a prior post.  Highly active on Twitter.
  • @msuster – Mark Suster, Entrepreneur turned VC, very active blogger and on Twitter.
  • @sacca – Chris Sacca, Entrepreneur and early investor in Twitter.  Highly active.
  • @Bill_Gross – Founder of Idealab and 100 other companies over 30 years
  • @tferriss – Tim Ferriss, author of “4-Hour Work Week” and “4-Hour Body”.  Interesting and unique.
  • @fredwilson – Highly regarded VC and daily blogger.
  • @cdixon – Chris Dixon, entrepreneur founder of Hunch.
  • @davemcclure – Founder of 500startups, a seed fund and startup accelerator.
  • @hnshah – Hiten Shah, Co-Founder of KissMetrics, great insights for entrepreneurs.
  • @bhorowitz – Ben Horowitz, Founder of LoudCloud turned VC.  Phenomenal blog that I inadvertently left off my previous post.

Entertainment & Other

  • @SudsNYC – Sudhir Kandula, a friend and top 3 finalist in “America’s Next Great Restaurant”.
  • @playgrounddad – Connecting modern dads with products/events that help them spend better time with their kids.
  • @StartupJesus – Fake Jesus, runs a startup that is “going to change the world”.  Of course it will.
  • @ConanOBrien – love his humor and his show.
  • @BorowitzReport – Andy Borowitz, hilarious quips on current events.  King of the one-liners.
  • @donttrythis – Adam Savage, host of Mythbusters
  • @TheOnion – America’s finest fake news source
  • @bobsaget – ever since he appeared on Entourage, I can’t get enough of him.
  • @shitmydadsays – Justin who lives with his 74-year old dad.  4-letter word alert, but freakin’ funny.

What are some great Twitter follows that I missed?

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