VentureCast

A special extra-length program featuring the victims we cornered one morning at this year's Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco. We start with a freeway discussion about Charles River Ventures new QuickStart program. In the lobby of the conference, we have conversations with the likes of Steve Gillmor, Jason Calacanis, Mark Stevens, Ariel Poler, Munjal Shah, Stan Chudnovsky, Mark Pincus, June Cohen and Chris Fralic. Thanks to everyone for playing along and giving us quality mic time.

In this week's program we talk a lot about podcasting, believe it or not, as well as the distinctions between angel funding and venture capital, the Odeo buyback, and Chris Anderson's ideas on the Economics of Abundance.

VentureCast is resurrected in a new format and a new co-host, Craig Syverson of gruntmedia. While I love podcasting, I found I was lacking the time to get the show out regularly. Craig called me and suggested that we start it up again and he would take care of the technical stuff - works for me. In this program, we have a conversation about Sevin Rosen's recent announcement, the future of venture capital, YouTube and other topics of the day. In future shows we'll interview guests, go to conferences, or simply have a conversation about what's happening in Silicon Valley that week. We plan to get a show out every couple weeks or so, whenever our schedules coincide. And, boy am I looking forward to a good BBQ.

In my last VentureCast, I started out by claiming that I was going to talk about two things:  conferences and my Deal or No Deal blog post on VentureBlog.  Well, it turned out that I rambled on for over a half hour talking about conferences, so I decided that my discussion of Deal or No Deal could wait.  But that long wait has ended.  In this episode of VentureCast, I go into a bit more detail on how I think about acquisition offers and startups in the context of what has become an acquisition economy (by virtue of the very limited number of IPOs that have been launched in the last handful of years).  If you're interested in hearing more about Deal or No Deal, this VentureCast is for you!

As Q1 of 2006 draws to a close, I am getting reacquainted with my office.  I spent the better part of January, February and March running around from conference to conference.  As Stowe Boyde from Conferenza reported earlier in the year, my conference calendar for Q1 was jam packed.  When the dust settled, I ended up attending a conference about every other week:  CES, The Entertainment Gathering, DEMO, TED, O'Reilly's Etech Conference, and PCForum .  What did I learn?  Who did I meet?  Where did I go?  These questions and more are answered on the latest edition of VentureCast.

After the MySpace acquisition and exciting numbers coming out of the likes of the FaceBook, there has been a lot of renewed interest in social networks.  I have spoken with a number of reporters recently about social networks and how the venture community views them.  Here's a podcast I recorded with my thoughts on the resurgence of excitement around social networks -- an excitement I share.

As a long time supporter of Creative Commons, I was thrilled to get an invitation to the Creative Commons reception last week celebrating Jimmy Wales' joining the board of Creative Commons International. It was only after a couple years of teaching copyright law to business school students that I fully appreciated the power of what they are doing over at Creative Commons.  Since the media lobbyists appear to have a solid hold on Capital Hill, thus making copyright reform pretty unlikely, Creative Commons empowers content creators to very simply make their own content freely available for use by others (in such ways as the content owners see fit).  Thus, for example, I am able to make all of the content on VentureBlog available to be copied so long as I am appropriately credited as the source by easily adopting a Creative Commons License.  On the way up to the Creative Commons party I recorded the preamble to this, my most recent VentureCast.  I then caught up with a number of interesting folks -- people like Joi Ito, JD Lasica, Mitch Kapor -- and asked them why they supported Creative Commons.  I got a number of interesting answers, some of which I have included in this installment of VentureCast.  Give it a listen and see if you find the zealots at the Creative Commons party convincing.  I certainly did. 

This Thursday I took part in the first installment of VentureWeek, a new podcast about technology and venture capital.  The show is hosted by Eric Olson who writes about the venture world at The Wanna Be Venture Capitalist. The cast of characters on hand for Venture Week were myself, Dick Costolo, Brad Feld, JB Holston, Dave Sifry and David Cowan.  The discussion of the maiden VentureWeek show was around Web 2.0, so needless to say, there was some discussion of my recent Bubble 2.0 VentureBlog post.  In that discussion I joked that there has been so much back and forth about Bubble 2.0 that I would have to write a response to my own post -- the ultimate in the blogging echo-chamber effect.  But rather than write a response, I decided to record a podcast in response.  So here it is.  I hope you enjoy it.

While at the Web 2.0 Conference, I asked a number of entrepreneurs what they thought "Web 2.0" was.  While I didn't get a whole lot of substantive answers, I did get a bunch of fun ones.  Listen to what Caterina Fake, Toni Schneider, Ross Mayfield, Stewart Butterfield, Joshua Schachter, Anil Dash, James Joaquin, Evan Williams, and many more had to say. 

After participating in numerous podcasts and talking with lots of entrepreneurs about podcasting, it became clear that I should try podcasting myself.  In this inaugural episode of VentureCast, I basically talk about podcasting ("There's a whole lot of blogging about blogging, and so there's probably going to be a whole lot of podcasting about podcasting too.").  Hopefully my next podcast will be somewhat more substantive but you've got to start somewhere.  Here it is.  Hope you enjoy it.