Mark Pincus Blog

Mahalo - Jason Calcanis's new venture - new approach to search

jason announced his audacious new venture at the D conference this week. i'm proud to say i have been an investor and supporter, but have to admit i am only now getting to play with the final product (below).

Wondering if anyone has actually read obama's book?

Todays wsj reports that obama is proposing a healthcare plan funded by increased taxes on the rich. This is consistent with his book where he argues that the rich need to start paying their fair share of taxes.

While I'm in agreement that the wealthy can afford to pay more, I worry about this line of thinking from an economics point of view. Taken to an extreme we reach a state of socialism or communism. Even marginal shifts in that direction have proven over time to hurt the economy.

Reagan proved in the 90's that 'supply side' economics works. the us govt, now the world's single largest employer, is the least efficient organization on the planet. I would guess that for every additional dollar we give in taxes 30 cents makes it to an intended purpose.

Its great that obama wants the country to unite and address real problems like healthcare. I just wish he had a better understanding for economics. He could attack the same problem by leveraging free markets. He could offer tac breaks and incentives for businesses that provide better healthcare. If he can figure out how to incent walmart to cover its 1m workers that would be a great start and possibly a repeatable model.

Why do we always have to choose between social lunacy and economic stupidity?
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Bewared of web deals that are too good to be true - case of 800-cheapseats

one trend that is fast becoming part of a growing number of web 2.0 success stories is to build initial audiences via questionable to illegal business practices and then clean it up later.  myspace is the best example of a company that has long been rumored to have built its initial audience from a massive list of illegally obtained email addresses. this may have been related to the elliot spitzer investigation into the former parent intermix.

i recently made two attempts to buy plane tix through sidestep. in both cases a site called 800-cheapseats had far better deals listed than any other site. the first time it made me fill in all my credit card, address and email before informing me that that deal was no longer available. amazing that its database was showing it available to sidestep a minute earlier. ok, so i tried both sidestep and then cheapseats again a few hrs later for a different trip. this time it told me that my reservation was 'successfully submitted'. concerned that that sounded a lot less confident than 'your seat is booked', i called their customer service rep, who told me that 'it was clearly stated in the terms and conditions i agreed to that they would attempt to buy me the published deal within 48 hrs.' she was very surprised i hadnt clicked on this link and thoroughly read the small print. when's the last time you did that when buying a plane ticket?

it's disappointing that a reputable, vc backed startup like sidestep would choose to show deals from such a misleading site. in the fast and furious world of performance marketing, anything seems to be fair game these days...SO MAKE SURE YOU READ THE FINE PRINT AND REMEMBER IF IT SOUNDS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE, IT'S PROBABLY BACKED BY A VC NEAR YOU AND ALREADY PLANNING TO GO PUBLIC:)

tasty delight

tasty delight
Originally uploaded by Esthr.

esther dyson coyly titled this pic 'tasty delight' after catching me sharing some pg-13 photo moments with fellow mobile phone pic connoisseurs stewart and martin.

zinga's in the hospital

this post goes out to all of zinga's friends...

zinga is in the hospital today having serious surgery. she has cancerous masses in her bladder and spleen and now they have also found a mass in her head. zinga has already had more lives than a cat having survived 3 cancer operations over the past 6 years.  her strength of spirit has always been an inspiration to me.

i hope you all will send her positive energy and prayers.

Played the US Open today (sort of)

the picture shows my tennis coach jorge loving court 7 at flushing meadows. 

what's great about new york is that these courts sit empty year round and can be had for $15 per hour!

Only in new york...

this is a guy mowing the 'lawn' of the neighboring roof to me. unlike china, which is building whole cities with roof farms, new york seems to have some lawns sprouting up for mere enjoyment. anyway, it's weird but cool!

pix from xcountry flight

just thought i'd post a few pix...

Bought Planetout Today

bought a slug of shares of planetout today on the bad news. got in at $1.64. this was more of a flyer. dont know the story so be warned. just seemed really cheap at $28m market value with $75m in revenue. did read their mgt earnings call transcript which sounded like things have gone very badly there.

Steve Case talking

Listening to steve tell his story. His big message is that it takes a long time for consumer behavior to change. Its about staying in the game until it happense. He always believed in interactive services.

Today with revolution he is targeting fixing the fucked up healthcare system and building the leading power brand to fill a huge vacuum. People applauding him saying we will one day have a competitive marketplace for these services.

I'm impressed that he is clearly trying to get to the next level and not just focus on spending wealth. He's thinking about his next 20 year contribution.

Re internet, he wonders if its *too* competitive today. Trends, ubiquity is good news. Bad news is too many startups.

Revolution's idea to launch convenient health service retailers with walmart sounds really smart.

"VC is build to flip. Pvt equity is tweak to flip. We are taking 10-20 yrs." Revolution because once you get traction, your business can explode.

AOL almost sold to compuserve in 1991 for 60m. Vcs wanted to sell. Case won by 1 vote. 10 yrs later worth 100 billion.

Bought miraval - top health spa. Building condos in ny and other communities that offer a complete health lifestyle. Adding costa rica and florida and ny. Betting on macro trend for boomers to focus on balanced health lifestyle.

Lots of good overlap with tony robbins, especially on health and wellnes focus.

Q: why did aol win? 1. Structural advantages. Comuserve owned by h and r block. Didn't want huge growth, just predictable. 2. Genie - GE too conservative. About selling network capacity. 3. Prodigy - IBM and Sears, maybe 1 B was too much money. Wrong people. Central casting wouldn't have sent them! 4. Msft - capacity to win but software co didn't get consumer and community. *we just got lucky*

Yeah, right steve!

I always say I'd rather be called lucky than smart. Lucky means nobody understands how you did it.
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