December 2011
1 post
Ad Auctions made simple →
A bit rusty on the old advertising stuff - and got this curve ball question today, re: maximizing revenue on some content inventory.
PubMatic explain it well ….
July 2011
1 post
June 2011
2 posts
Google 1, Facebook Likes & the Battle for Web... →
February 2011
1 post
Lean Startup Overview Video →
January 2011
2 posts
Commonwealth Bank iPhone Property App Now... →
December 2010
7 posts
@johnbattelle - Is RSS Really Dead? →
fergusb:
RSS technology not dead. RSS consumption via readers possibly dead (apart from ‘curators’. RSS based distribution alive & well.
“Enterprise Ireland Start Fund - The closing date for applications is December...”
– Enterprise Ireland Launch New Internet and Games Competitive Start Fund - Enterprise Ireland
Open Idea - SeedFund & StartupLab
Question: Can SeedFund and Startuplab models work in Countries like Ireland ?
In 2008 and early 2009, behind the scenes we spoke to folks who could make a SeedFund happen but it fell a bit on deaf ears, and despite some great input from others - the feedback was “SeedFunds” are not a runner in Ireland.
We previously announced a €10m Irish Seedfund in 2009 - but...
Make Users Happy With Your Product As Quickly As... →
stoweboyd:
Matt, at 37 Signals, quotes Marc Hedlund’s reasoning about why Mint crushed Wesabe, leading to Wesabe closing its doors:
The creators of no-longer-with-us products explain what went wrong
“Mint focused on making the user do almost no work at all, by automatically editing and categorizing…
Flipboard: Future is HTML5, RSS & New New... →
fergusb note: interesting to still see RSS is regarded as key plumbing in content/app space
November 2010
6 posts
“The internet, television and magazines are merging; and the optimal strategy...”
– Why Gawker is moving beyond the blog
Open Idea: Irish SXSW
As part of my limited work with Gateway Ireland, I suggested we look at an annual International event to bring folks from Culture, Arts, Music, Technology, etc together, modeled on SXSW With the success of f.ounders and Dublin Web Summit perhaps we have the beginning of an Irish SXSW
“But if you’re not embarrassed when you ship your first version you waited too...”
– 1.0 Is the Loneliest Number — Matt Mullenweg
“Cloudtop apps seem to use completely proprietary APIs, and nobody seems overly...”
– Cloudtop Applications - Anil Dash
F.ounders recap
Last week i spent some time at F.ounders event in Dublin. It was a who’s who of the Global tech scene - the digerati as some would say.
Thanks to the the founder of F.ounders, Paddy Cosgrave for the invite. I was undecided up to the last minute, due to other commitments, but I’m glad i made the event for Thursday evening/Friday (had to leave Sat morning for Family commitments).
...
October 2010
5 posts
3 Rules to Actionable Metrics →
edbyrne:
Metrics that add value and insight vs. vanity metrics.
The Tax Haven That's Saving Google Billions →
more data to digest - Visual context for your... →
note:
not as good as crazyegg but pretty impressive feature from Google.
A VC: Takers and Makers →
September 2010
4 posts
training a generation of fundraisers not company...
rafer:
bryc3:
I fear we’re training a generation of fundraisers not company builders.
Rafer sez: @bryc3 I think you’re a decade-plus late. My generation has that curse. That’s why so many of us are so vehement. We don’t want others to follow us down that ugly, multi-year surrendering path. I think the current folks are doing a decent job reversing that industry genetic flaw.
For context,...
Next SEO race - Open Graph →
Open Graph protocol is pretty smart. Seeing the power of the traffic from its implementation on a new service recently …. 3X on google traffic.
Only surprise - no support for reviews (wonder is competitive to “Like” or just something that will be added in future. Given hreview work to date it should be a snap)
August 2010
2 posts
“Facebook is another angle we have seen be effective – encouraging people to buy...”
– Preempting Search
Revenue Development →
July 2010
4 posts
The Pros & Cons of A/B Testing for Startups →
€500m Innovation Fund for Ireland
Chris Horn has all the background, and key details on the Innovation Fund: Go, Ireland, Go « Chrisjhorn’s Blog
Its welcome news for all of Ireland, but I’m not sure it will fix the Irish VC problem, regardless of who the LPs are.
Personally I would like to see “SoftTechVC, FirstRound, etc” type funds - they have set a benchmark in terms of activity. Jeff Clavier has...
Google App Inventor is the right idea →
I was mostly offline this weekend. This morning I read with great interest the lead story on Techmeme about Google’s upcoming App Inventor for Android.
It provides a simple looking front end and toolset to allow just about anyone to create an Android app.
To me this very much reminds…
June 2010
9 posts
Ireland and real-time company information
In the age of “real time” data, I have a small suggestion for the incoming CIO of Ireland
With the CRO (companies registration office) open up all their data. Also get the Revenue to publish BES/SCS investment information in a structured format, as well as Enterprise Ireland (see this piece by TheStory.ie on grant breakdown)
Integrate this data into Crunchbase (where you can track...
Microsoft’s Xbox Live Is Making Boatloads Of Money... →
fergusb sez
Good to see MSFT making monies from virtual goods. For long time they passed up on monetization on MSN IM - and if they can bring an “old game exchange” to the Xbox community, i expect them to grow the revenue pie even more (high street retailers are making bucketloads on old game exchanges)
Facebook and Twitter Visitors Shop — and Spend —... →
Facebook's Local Ad Opportunity →
Facebook has a massive ad opportunity in front of them - the local ad market.
The case for the local ad market
Facebook has unique assets to take advantage of the local market:
Mobile presence: FB is present on 100M mobile phones, or 25% of their user base, of which 50% are daily…
Growth of online Q+A services
Recently got invited onto Quora - its a very slick service. Signup integration with Twitter + Facebook Social graphs is super slick execution.
Facebook also moving into this space.
Others in this space include Hunch, Vark.com (recently acquired by Google), Yahoo Answers, Formspring, etc. (and LinkedIn Groups..)
I’ve spotted a few open source/commercial solutions that can be used as a...
May 2010
11 posts
Making crowdsourcing work. →
Best practices from Shiv Singh at Razorfish
Guardian Open Platform
Really impressed by The Guardian Open Platform
They have a really smart technical team led by Yahoo Alumni Matt McAlister. I like the way they are using Mashery for API management, supporting Json as an output for Content API and allowing apps onto the Guardian via MicroApp framework. The whole structure of the API is very similar to stuff we’ve done before with AtomPub server for nooked.
Gateway Ireland seminar →
fergusb note:
Attended the Gateway Ireland seminar today in Dublin Castle (lovely venue)
I did a tongue in cheek post on Gateway Ireland a while back on Web2Ireland - and John Mc Colgan invited me in for a subsequent chat.
John has a great vision for the project, and ambition. He has also aligned some significant partners for the project - Dermot Desmond, Denis O’Brien, etc.
I’m...
Quick Lean Startup guide
I recently had a coffee with a “new” entrepreneur who was starting out with a new online biz (he’s a techie… and a very smart one at that). Here is some of the email i shared…
Check out the Micro-seed approach, as described by Dave McClure. Invest 25-100k to get to “Minimum Viable Product” - iterate a few times, validate, product/market fit.
Funding...
