David Semeria › Comments

"Why not?" - David Semeria

"Partly to stress test your Disqus nesting, but mainly because this topic absorbs me, I'll just add that (similar to many real world situations) the price of a service/content should not really be a function of its distribution cost, but more a function of the distributor's acceptable return on capital." - David Semeria

"Black swan, Mr Swan." - David Semeria

"You write very well, David - have you considered a career in the motivational video market? :) Joking aside, I'm reminded of a conversation I had yesterday evening. I was describing my screening interview with Arthur Andersen. The screening interview was supposed to be a formality, necessary merely to unburden full partners of the need to spend their valuable time talking to total wankers. My interviewer (fully 12 months ahead of me in the Great Game of Life) wanted to know why, even if my university had 8 football teams, my services were required mainly by the second team, rather than by the majestic first. I launched into an intricate monologue explaining how, being none-too-confident in the abilities of my left foot, I would frequently "cut inside" so as to cross with my right. Shortly after, I found myself on the wrong side of the door. This being England, the subject came up again in another interview. But the Boy had learned. I explained that I came from a rugby school, prior to..." - David Semeria

"As the Italians like to say, "the truth lies in the middle". Even discounting European discomfort with the "F" word, rejoicing in failure is almost as disconcerting as not mentioning it. Striking a balance is admittedly tough; share and analyze your failures, but don't wear them as medals." - David Semeria

"Bravo. The very crux of the argument. Since it's so painless to distribute your wares for free on the web, the temptation is very much to do so. FWIW, I think the market price for digital content will fall progressively until it's just above the opportunity cost (read: hassle) of copying it manually (bit torrent, copy/paste, etc)." - David Semeria

"Bubble smubble. The same dynamics that allowed Milken and Boesky to flourish were at play centuries earlier in the tulip madness, and a few years later for the S crisis, the dot com bust and our most recent mortgage fun. Fear and Greed. That's all you need to know." - David Semeria

"You got to watch Wall St in school? Remarkable. I am continually amazed (and in awe) at the progressiveness of US education. The only films we got to see were those covering the electronic tags of our library books. I would have got the class to debate this quote: "I'm gonna make your rich, Buddy boy"." - David Semeria

"Alas, this is how most web standards emerge. Spurred on by adoption in unanticipated contexts, they are coerced into an unnatural and inelegant transition from the specific to the general. Plus ca change." - David Semeria

"Yes, Alain - right on the money. At the end of the day, it's your life. If you want to use it up chasing an unrealistic dream, that's your business. Similarly, you can waste it on changing your mind every 5 minutes as the feedback comes in. Like the best poker players, you check your hand and decide to be in or out. If you don't like your hand, wait for another. But if you really think you can win the hand, then you *must* go for it." - David Semeria

"There's a key difference between letting people *try* products for free (which is clearly a great idea) and letting them use them *regularly* for free (not so smart)." - David Semeria

"Well, out of challenges springs opportunity! I don't mean to be negative, but if you follow the trends to their logical conclusions, that's where you end up. Freemium isn't a business model - it's a marketing model. The cost of supporting non-paying users is generally a lot less than that of a marketing campaign which delivers a similar number of paying users. But the end result of freemium is still a subscription. For the numbers to work, the subscription price must be set artificially high, because the paying users must subsidize the freeloaders. But if everyone paid, subscriptions would cost pennies rather than pounds. In other words, web subscriptions are expensive. Take one of the cheapest subscriptions, flicker, which costs $25/year. If you compare that to the full MS Office suite, which can now be had for around $100, you can see there's a gulf between the two offers. On the one hand, a *recurring* subscription to a very simple service, whilst on the other, a one-off payment..." - David Semeria

"Thanks. Yes, business models on web/desktop will converge. The issue is around advertising. As users get more control of their screen layouts, there's less scope for banner ads. This is exasperated on small mobile screens. Hence the rise of inter-text advertising, which has yet to be proved. Subscriptions are definitely not the answer." - David Semeria

""Man looks in the abyss, there's nothing staring back at him. At that moment, man finds his character. And that is what keeps him out of the abyss. " - avuncular broker in film Wall St." - David Semeria

"Yes, just as walled email in the early days lost out to openness and interoperability, the various app stores will morph into an open solution around HTML5. Most people think this means the monetization aspect will evaporate, but that's not true. In fact, I know of a great little Italian startup that is working on just that ..." - David Semeria

"Ah, I think perhaps for once you may have missed the point! I'm talking about a long dev cycle in which the product/service changes radically prior to launch and without much customer feedback." - David Semeria

"Mark, I'm reminded of the famous physicist Richard Feynman, who as a boy would fix "wireless sets" for pocket change. Most other people would swap out parts until success came, but he would see what the radio was doing, and then just ponder what the right cause of action could be. It was said that Feynman could fix radios just by "thinking". Can people iterate great entrepreneurial ideas just by thinking?" - David Semeria

"DFJ Esprit - fueling global ambition I like that, dovetails nicely with VC = rocket fuel" - David Semeria

"I know a lot of bored rich people. Just saying..." - David Semeria

"Getting you there." - David Semeria

"Yes, but history is full of examples of people who intuitively knew they were right and just refused to give up until the world changed its mind. See George Bernard Shaw's definition of the "unreasonable man" http://www.quotationspage.com/quote..." - David Semeria

"It's interesting how people's perception of wealthy backers can interfere with the rational part of their brains. I used to work for a startup which was owned and run by someone from a very wealthy family. The company was a mess, and missed payroll more often than not. When the CEO did get around to paying us, he would call you into his office and give you a personal cheque [check] as if it was your birthday. Then the fun would begin. Having the cheque in your pocket was not enough, you had to get to the bank pronto to cash it. So there would be this crazy race, with people sprinting down the street to the local bank to cash their cheques. I used to keep a pair of trainers [sneakers] in the office for this very purpose. True story. The key point is that nobody said "This is madness, I'm outta here". The team stuck together for years. And you don't need to ask what happened to the company..." - David Semeria

"What about the journey?" - David Semeria

"And the spondoolicks..." - David Semeria

"double post" - David Semeria

"That's a great answer Mark, and reminds of one my favourite VC posts of all time from Stuart Ellman of RRE http://bit.ly/6UnBPo" - David Semeria

"I would add that creativity is frequently the enemy of tenacity. This boils down to the idea vs execution thing." - David Semeria

"That's a superb idea Andy. If everyone just did a blog page and submitted the url to a single crowdsourced voting page, the book would compile itself. Not more a than a few hours work for a decent web dev." - David Semeria

"Hey the Prokofy show! Now where's that remote..." - David Semeria

"Hey the Prokofy show! Now where's that remote..." - David Semeria

"Hey Kid, at least if your theories are proved right you can point to quite a substantial number of comments as evidence that you told us so ! :)" - David Semeria

"Hey Kid, at least if your theories are proved right you can point to quite a substantial number of comments as evidence that you told us so ! :)" - David Semeria