Charles Hudson › Comments

"Sachin, Thanks for the ideas on topics - I like them. I'll be in touch once we have more details." - Charles Hudson

"Thanks, Rob - this is some great feedback. Stay tuned!" - Charles Hudson

"Chris, Thanks for the great comment, tips, and pointer to your talk. I'll be in touch as we get closer to the event." - Charles Hudson

"Very good analysis, Paul - I too have struggled with Wave and I think your prescriptions for how to make it easier to use (particularly paring it down) would help. And I'm all for the Gmail integration!" - Charles Hudson

"Thanks for the thoughtful comment, Alex. I guess I'm hung up on how to use Wave because I can broadly classify most communication tools into one bucket (or possibly two) by looking at two dimensions: Asynchronous or Synchronous One-to-one or one-to-many For example, I'd put the telegraph in the asynchronous one-to-many or one-to-one bucket(s). Email? That's asynchronous 1-to-1 or 1-to-many. Voicemail? That's asynchronous voice, generally 1-to-1. IM? Synchronous 1-to-1. I won't go on at length. I agree with your core point that most new communication tools do not always have obvious use cases up front. My issue, though, is that I can't think of many successful communication / collaboration tools that didn't set out to solve some easy to describe problem. Two examples: Voicemail - I wanted to talk to you but you didn't pick up. Here's what I wanted to tell you IM - Rather than phone or email you, I'd like to chat in real-time So, I have a hard time bucketing Google Wave in my simple 2x2..." - Charles Hudson

"Thanks for the great comment - glad to hear I'm not the only one who sees things this way." - Charles Hudson

"Matt, I think you're asking a lot of the right questions. As for question #1, I think the folks at places like IMVU, Gaia, and others have been trying to solve these problems for awhile. It's clearly hard to do, but there are some learnings that can be borrowed. The harder challenge, though, is what you raise in #3 - how can you re-engage users on a regular basis when you need to drive them back to a standalone destination and not a top independent destination like Facebook." - Charles Hudson

"This place is awesome. I was very skeptical of learning how to do stand-up paddle surfing, but my girlfriend talked me into it. They promise you that you will be able to stand up during your lesson.…" - Charles Hudson

"I dined at both I'o and Pacific'o. If you only have the chance to choose one, definitely choose I'o. The service was way better, as was the food. Our waiter, Nathan, was very good. He was both…" - Charles Hudson

"I was so close to giving this place 5 stars. Last time I stayed in Maui, I stayed at the Ritz Carlton. I felt like Kapalua was a bit too remote, so I stayed at the Westin Ocean Villas instead.…" - Charles Hudson

"Overall, I was disappointed by Pacific'O. Prior to trying Pacific'O, I had already been to Mama's, Mala, I'o (literally next door), and a few other good places. I didn't think Pacific'O was even as…" - Charles Hudson

"I was very pleasantly surprised by Mala's. During my last trip to Maui, I ate at most of the more well-known / recommended places for visitors; Mama's, Pacific'o, I'o, Sansei, etc. Overall, I thought…" - Charles Hudson

"Ivan, Thanks so much for the detailed reply. I really enjoyed reading it. My real concern is that Wave might be overkill. Why create an entirely new product when adding more collaboration tools (particularly some asynchronous ones) to the existing suite of tools in GDocs might have delivered more immediate value to users?" - Charles Hudson

"I spent a weekend at Solage and had an opportunity to eat at Solbar twice during my stay. I also found out they just received their first Michelin star. Overall, I thought this place was a very solid…" - Charles Hudson

"This is the first good use case I've heard. Perhaps they should have a use case gallery instead of an app store. I think the former would help more people than the latter." - Charles Hudson

"Chris, If you're interested in virtual goods (or have friends) who are, I'd encourage you to check out the Virtual Goods Summit (http://vgsummit2009.eventbrite.com) - we've been covering this space for 3 years and have a lot of the leading companies in the US and Asia presenting in late October." - Charles Hudson

"Just visited this place today on the advice of the folks at Burrell School. This place does have fantastic views - on a clear day you can see all of the way to the ocean. Even on a cloudy day you get…" - Charles Hudson

"I have to admit that I am something of a spa junkie. Before reading my review, I have to make two disclaimers: 1. I visited Spa Solage on a Sunday during the Great Recession - I was literally the…" - Charles Hudson

"Ken, I actually use the Yelp iPhone app for the use case you mention above, especially when I'm traveling. It does a good job of telling me what's nearby and what's highly rated. I think of Yelp on the iPhone as being low on entertainment value but high on utility. Right now, foursquare is high on entertainment but low on utility for me - it doesn't help me find places to go or stuff to do. And my hunch is that the smart thing for foursquare to do is to focus on doing entertainment than utility. For example, they've recently started telling you how many other foursquare users are at a given place. I can see some fun challenges / badges / quests around getting 10 foursquare people in some bar at the same time, finding the coffee shop in SF where the most foursquare users check in, etc. That could surface some of the same information but in a less explicit way." - Charles Hudson

"Nathan, I think you're right - games are limiting. But no more limiting than any other media genre like books, movies, or music. I think these guys are managing to achieve something that most other LBS applications have not - a use case that makes sense to me. Also, I'd argue that casual games can have a really long shelf life - look at things like Bejeweled, Tetris, Desktop Tower Defense, or any of the big hidden object games. Good games with simple mechanics can remain fun for a very long time, so long as there is something fun and evergreen about the experience. I have a lot of friends, including some of the folks who've commented here, who don't play foursquare competitively (they're not trying to get to the top of any leaderboard) and really would like to use it more as a tracker / recorder of their own movements and places they go. The current version of foursquare doesn't really speak to that use case. Right now, the audience is limited to the devices they support and the..." - Charles Hudson

"Hi Joshua, Thanks for the thoughtful comment. I do think that PayPal is generally low-friction at the time of purchase. All you need to do is to type in your email address, password, and off you go. I use PayPal for my conference business and can agree that the post-purchase experience is not the greatest and that fraud can be an issue. PayPal has lots of people working on keeping that service safe and usable. Facebook has lots of people working on payments, too, but I'm not sure that they'll have the resources or focus to make a great user experience and manage the back and fraud / chargebacks that will inevitably arise. A simple 1-click experience for users is a proven value proposition - I'd like to see what Facebook ends up implementing." - Charles Hudson

"Austin has always depended on the state government and The University of Texas to help it through recessions. To augment that, the city has tried to cultivate several tech areas, but so far has failed to replicate the success it had with enterprise software and semiconductors. And lately even our access to the rest of the world has felt tenuous, with our broadband providers thinking about usage-based access and direct flights to California being cut. The service provider community has shrunk and the city, which has historically been a one-VC city — doesn’t have access to a ton of smart capital." - Charles Hudson from Bookmarklet

Wow - only 26 college degrees in all of major league baseball? - Charles Hudson from Bookmarklet

and considering that the minor league system is a much better place to learn your craft then college it's not surprising that most players don't go to college - Bastard Operator From FF

That sudden drop looks unlikely. I suspect measurement error is a major factor as well. - Paul Buchheit

What happened in May 08 is that most of their users graduated high school. Or maybe that's when they kicked off all those sex offenders. - Gabe

Who knows how accurate this is, anyway - it comes from Compete. Good chart for discussion fodder - Charles Hudson

"John, I agree - there was an opportunity for Facebook to have capitalized on the opportunity to provide a monetization solution for app developers. I kind of feel like that ship might have sailed - offer partners, PayPal, Zong, Boku, etc have that space pretty well covered at the moment. Many of the top apps are doing more revenue through virtual goods than ads - that's a great use case for direct payment systems." - Charles Hudson

The difference between founders and professional managers is that founders are stubborn about the vision of the business, and keep working the details. Professional managers, when things don’t work, want to change the vision. The trick to being an entrepreneur is to know when to be stubborn and when to be flexible: Be stubborn about the vision, but flexible about tactics - Charles Hudson from Bookmarklet

The board of Calpers, the $183 billion California Public Employees’ Retirement System, voted to raise the fund’s Alternative Investment target allocation for private equity and venture capital investments by 4 percent to 14 percent of its recommended portfolio allocation. - Charles Hudson from Bookmarklet

wow - Charles Hudson

Start micro-businesses. Start affiliate businesses. Sell stuff on eBay. Do web design. Write and sell e-books. Heck, write a blog and try to gain huge readership. A micro-business, which requires less than full-time work and could be operated out of a dorm room, probably would teach more than taking a class on entrepreneurship and writing a business plan. - Charles Hudson

Great idea. - nabeel Hyatt

"Before Google settled on cost-per-click ads, it actually sold advertising against its search results on a cost-per-impression basis. Before that even, Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin thought the company's big money would be in selling enterprise search. They didn't hire the CEO of an enterprise software firm for no reason." - Charles Hudson from Bookmarklet

This is misleading. Google _did_ turn down revenue that would have hurt user experience (such as banner ads), and Eric was _not_ hired because of his "enterprise" experience (or if he was, I would be shocked). - Paul Buchheit

@Paul - Will they ever get the true story right? - Charles Hudson