Mark Pincus Blog

Met an olympic gold medalist

i met julia mancuso the other night, who won a gold metal for giant slalem and was impressed to watch her down several saki shots in preparation for her world cup yesterday. doesnt looked like it helped as i heard she came in 6th. very nice lady though.

In ny times today

I heard I was quoted in today's paper, story about evan williams. I'm quoted saying he's become a 'folk hero' to entrepreneurs for buying his company back. If I said that, it was a bit of an overstatement (which I've done once or twice before:). Anyway, congrats to ev for positive coverage. Sent wirelessly via BlackBerry from T-Mobile.

Revisiting My 2006 Predictions

so just like many publications like thestreet.com and barrons, i'm revisiting my 2006 predictions before hitting the turkey.

• goog increases dominance and hits 500 per share - YES
• video internet gets real - YES
• new head of the fed is irrelevant to markets - YES
• hedge funds start blowing up - YES
• residential RE slowdown is obvious - YES
• energy continues to be big mover - NO
• US equities flat - NO
• newspapers die - YES
• MSFT below 20 - NO
• online advertising surpasses all growth expectations - YES

what i didnt predict

• murry gunty would come after me with lawyers and journalists

ok that's about it!

Hughes Directway Internet Sucks!

i'm forced to use this horrible service in colorado where we still cant get real wire based internet. the only thing worse than the actual service which crawls in both directions is their customer service. why is it that companies still ask you to input in your telephone number and then the rep asks you for it again?

this service is some forgotten step child of old decrepit companies (hughes leftover from GM).

when i have time i'm going to look up who the idiots (i mean execs) are who run this company. i'm sure they have fabulous mutil million dollar option packages to incent them for the amazing customer centric job they are doing.

1500+ public companies restated earnings last year

today's wsj reports over 1500 public corporations restated earnings last year and that we're on track to beat that number this year. the article discussed how hard it is to get executives to return the bonuses.

too bad i cant ever get the SEC to listen to my proposal which would solve all this. i'll restate it for posterity here:

create a new reg similar to the 13G short swing profit rule which would require insiders to disgorge profits earned during periods of significant earnings mis-statement. this would take the burden of proof away and simply require corporate insiders to return profits they never earned anyway.

Notes from web 2.0 conf

With some pressure to publish or perish...

biggest takeaway for me was that there is a continued bubble at the front of the pipe and that's great for entrepreneurs and everyone other than LPs in vc funds.

There seems to continue to be huge capital available to fund any decent idea even though there are obvious signs these are risky bets - ie. There is no exit other than sale to big player and still few companies reporting big revs and profits.

During the boom I ran an enterprise software company. The big difference was most of us *were* showing big rev numbers. My company did 10 million in first year sales. Because of this there was a frothy public market that was ready to buy IPOs in pre profits companies.

What's interesting is that we're not hearing about many ventures where the vc's pull the plug. Mayfield did choose to stop funding tribe which is why I took it over along with the lender.

Are there others we're not hearing about? There must be a ton of companies coming up on second and third rounds. I'd love to understand the vc rationale in funding them. Many may be taking similar approaches to those that survived the bust in stockpiling money and waiting for a business to evolve.

I'd love to hear any stories you've heard about companies reaching profits or how they're faring without. Sent wirelessly via BlackBerry from T-Mobile.

Do you still Yahoo?

to those of you (fred and howard) who dumped your yahoo when it precipitously dropped to $23, i'm wondering why you bought the stock in the first place. i've never been a market timer. i like to buy stocks that are in front of such a strong macro that the micro execution (or lack of it) wont be the major driver.  i believe that YHOO is just such a company and that's why i added at $25 (ok, wish i had the balls to keep adding at $23). at this point i'm break even after riding a big gain and enduring a much bigger loss.

i dont understand momentum investing. it scares me because it's based on a relative and not absolute approach. i've never made money buying a stock at an all time high.

i bought yahoo because it is the best pure play bet on the massive wave of ad dollars that will have to find their way onto the net. i have no idea whether their new search engine will see the light of day. what i care about is that they deliver a high quality, targeted audience to major advertisers. if they lose share to myspace and google, it still doesnt matter because the overall market is growing rapidly and will bring them with it.

i think yahoo should buy the facebook as soon as they can. but as an investor in the facebook i'm very happy to wait and watch yahoo buy it for a much higher price in another year.

Barry and Arthur don't really believe in UGC

Listening to them. They both seem to be defensive of their repsective MSM companies. Barry says we wil still rely on the small group of professionals to create the compelling mass content.

Barry misses the point that its about share of consumer attention/time and not share of *entertainment*. If UGC steals attention then it wins and MSM loses, unless of course it can find a way to incoporate and host and promote UGC.
Sent wirelessly via BlackBerry from T-Mobile.

Web 2.0...again

At web 2.0 this week. Currently, hearing eric schmidt interview. How cool that he runs a 145B mkt cap company.

Fun to see soo many familiar faces and scary to see *soo many* faces (over 4000 I'm hearing!). Prob every vc and most entrepreneurs. This must be THE year for this conf (which usually means the last:) Sent wirelessly via BlackBerry from T-Mobile.

deja vu --> www.mysupercoolsite/CBS

CBS just announced that they will have a 'channel' on youtube, similar i guess to what NBC is doing. it seems that history keeps repeating itself. remember 'AOL keyword: pathfinder'? a few people may even remember the 5 minutes when the whole world thought it would become a channel on pointcast.

so the questions are why CBS would feel the desire to be a channel on youtube and whether this is really a long term sustaining move. CBS must be working with youtube for traffic. but given that we're all a click away from any content why do companies feel the need to do these unnatural acts? i guess they're a form of deeply integrated advertising. this was really how AOL built its original content by getting major media to republish content within their 'channels'.

my take is that while there must be some real value in getting net users' attention at the outset of every new category of usage, this value quickly dissipates. in the beginning all the major media companies published press releases that they were launching web sites. now they'll announce that their video is available on youtube and soon they'll just announce it's available. i dont get why i need to go to youtube to find CBS or why i need CBS to find 'david letterman'.

in the end, youtube channels make as much sense as myspace channels or the AOL channels before them. it's always great for the cool new kid on the block but never lasts. i may be proven wrong but i doubt it.