Roger Angell laments the loss of letter-writing in The New Yorker:
We’ve done this to ourselves, of course, and done it eagerly, with our tweets and texts, our Facebook chat, our flooding e-mails, and our pleasure in the pejorative “snail mail.”
The same story told in images: here’s a wonderful collection of Time Magazine photographs of famous authors, poets, performers (including Ernest Hemingway, Agatha Christie, Bob Dylan…) and their typewriters.
From today’s New York Times:
Real leaders, wrote the novist David Foster Wallace, are people who “help us overcome the limitations of our own individual laziness and selfishness and weakness and fear and get us to do better, harder, things things than we can get ourselves to do on our own.”
The article is about a failed expedition to the South Pole.
10 of my favorites from Street Art Utopia’s most loved street art photos of 2011:
Check out all 106 on Street Art Utopia
Viimeaikoina on käyty keskustelua startupeista Suomessa ja samassa yhteydessä on yrittäjäpiireissä kritisoitu TEKESiä. Eräs toimittaja kyseli kommenttia, vastauksestani tuli sen verran pitkä että se tuskin mahtuu juttuun. Bloggaan ettei unohdu.
TEKES on suomalaiselle startup-ekosysteemille lähes elintärkeä. Ilmankin selvittäisiin mutta se on erittäin merkittävä etu niin kauan kun Suomessa on nykyisen kaltainen paha pääomavaje startupien varhaisen vaiheen rahoitukselle.
Ulkomaiset sijoittajat pelkäävät että TEKES vaatii tukirahojaan takaisin jos tulee exit ulkomaille tai startupin toiminta siirretään ulkomaille. TEKESin pitäisi mielestäni selkeästi ottaa kantaa, että se ei estä tällaisia siirtymiä vaan pitää niitä normaalina osana tervettä ekosysteemiä. Ne ovat vero- ja epäsuorien tulojen kautta hyvä asia Suomelle, sillä niin syntyvä varallisuus palaa kyllä Suomeen esim enkelisijoituksina.
Sen sijaan Suomen kannattaisi tarjota porkkanana verohelpotuksia suomen sisällä tapahtuville yritysostoille (joissa suomalainen firma ostaa toisen suomalaisen firman). Tässä olen samoilla linjoilla Taneli Tikan kanssa (viit. Kauppalehti, Tanelin blogi).
Järkevä tapa edetä olisi määrittää kansallinen tavoite varhaisen- ja kasvuvaiheen sijoituksille vuositasolla ja sitten tukea niitä julkisella rahalla TEKESin tai varta vasten startupeita varten perustettavan muun elimen kautta kunnes yksityinen pääoma ylittää tavoitetason ilman julkista tukeakin. Suuryritysten ja tutkimuksen tukeminen ei mielestäni kuulu ollenkaan samaan kategoriaan ja vaatii ihan erilaisen rahoitusalan osaamisen ja päätöksentekoprosessin kuin startupit. Se pitäisi erottaa täysin startup-rahoituksesta.
Julkisen pääoman pitäisi siis toimia sytytysnesteenä kiihdyttämässä startup-ekosysteemin kasvua kunnes se on riittävän vahva kestämään rahoitusmaailman syklit ilman tukiakin. Ajatus siitä että julkinen tuki on jotenkin itsestäänselvyys ja pysyvä asia on mieletön ja tappaa yrittäjäkulttuurin. Tämä on nykytilanteen valitettava varjopuoli: Suomessa on kasvanut teknologia-alalle sukupolvi heikkoja yrittäjiä joiden päärahoittaja on TEKES, ja joista on tullut asiantuntijoita tukihakemusten täyttelemisessä. Tästä pitää päästä eroon ja kannustaa mieluummin yrittäjiä hakemaan bisnesenkeleiltä jopa aivan pieniä 5-10 tuhannen euron sijoituksia, joita julkisella rahalla sitten matchataan kitkattomasti.
TEKESin tai muun startup-rahoitukseen keskittyvän elimen pitäisi siis toimia kumileimasimena ja antaa standardi 1:1 matching rahoitus startupille esimerkiksi miljoonaan euroon asti. Rahoituksen pitäisi tapahtua yksityisen pääomasijoituksen closingin jälkeen alle viikon aikataululla ja webin kautta, ja rahan pitäisi tulla tilille heti eikä myöhemmin kuitteja vastaan.
Lisäksi tämän elimen pitäisi olla LP:na (limited partnerina) varhaisen vaiheen startupeihin sijoittavissa rahastoissa samalla 1:1 matching periaatteella esim. 20 miljoonaan euron fundikokoon asti. Lopuksi tämän elimen pitäisi vielä tukea ruohonjuuritason startup-yrittäjyyttä edistävää toimintaa sponsoroimalla laajaa joukkoa tapahtumia, blogeja ja muita medioita, yhdistyksiä ja opiskelijatoimintaa sekä palkintoja ja apurahoja. Esimerkiksi apuraha, jonka avulla työntekijä voi ottaa 4kk palkatonta vapaata kehitelläkseen startup-ideaa, voisi hyvin olla julkisrahoitteinen tai yksityisen säätiön ja julkisen rahan yhdistelmä. Näitä tukia pitäisi jakaa nopealla aikataululla ja haun pitäisi olla auki ympäri vuoden.
Tavoitteet ja kaikki myönnetty rahoitus pitäisi laittaa webiin reaaliaikaisina listoina ja graafeina sekä ohjeistus lyhyinä dokumentteina ja videoina. Kaikki TEKESin toimintaan liittyvät palaverit, kokoukset, tapahtumat ym. joihin kutsutaan yrittäjiä hukkaamaan aikaansa voisi lopettaa ekosysteemille haitallisina.
(Re-posted from Google+ – see the original post on Google+ for comments)
As my first post on Google+, I thought I’d posit my stance on anonymity.
In the opening scene of Show Me Love (Fucking Åmal) 15-year old Agnes writes in her diary on her Mac:
My secret wish list:
. that I won’t have to have a party
. that elin will look at me
. that elin will fall in love with me
I LOVE ELIN!!!!!!!!!!
A service that aims to become the default arena for online social exchange globally should allow pseudonymity (which is really what we’re talking about when we talk about anonymity) and, in some cases, even encourage it. No one should be booted off the system just because they are using a made up name. It’s the only way members of an oppressed community can get away with breaking the social conventions that keep their spirits nailed to the floor.
This is not an edge case. Nor is it just about the two billion people who live under oppressive regimes. If you are a person who “thinks different”, think back. Were you ever the nail that sticks out, at some point in your life? Like in Åmal, the home town of the two girls Agnes and Elin, the community preventing you from being all you can be is the neighborhood school, church, friend group… often it’s your family.
The rules of an online social platform should be based on the harm principle. The harm principle holds that each individual has the right to act as he wants, so long as these actions do not harm others. Pseudonymity in itself does not harm anyone.
But current day social platforms resemble Louis XIV’s France more than modern democracies. Account deletion, the online equivalent of the guillotine, is exercised routinely across the board. To be the default social platform, the contender needs to introduce a form of self-government that looks more like democracy than tyranny.
Why? John Stuart Mill, the 19th-century philosopher who came up with the harm principle, was not joking when he noted that “the struggle between Liberty and Authority is the most conspicuous feature in the portions of history.” He introduced a number of different tyrannies, including social tyranny, and also the tyranny of the majority.
The reason online social services are winning the day is because they have served the side of freedom in this ongoing struggle. It’s this more than anything that makes them so valuable to the human population as a whole. Now that they’re growing global in influence and reach, their own mechanisms of self-government must evolve to reflect this. Otherwise they themselves will become the new oppressive regimes.
Social liberty for Mill meant putting limits on the ruler’s power so that he would not be able to use his power on his own wishes and make decisions which could harm society (the platform) itself. In other words, people should have a say in the government’s decisions. What does this mean in the case of online social networks? For starters, listen to your users, explain yourself, and base your decisions on the harm principle, even if it means going against shouts coming from the majority – or your boss.
And do not forget Mill’s words. In “The Contest in America” he wrote, “the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear … because, in the opinion of others, to do so would be wise, or even right… Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.”
Hello Google+, hello liberty :)
A couple of recent conversations on being an entrepreneur: here’s an interview I did with Energize in Amsterdam, and here’s a video of a conversation at SIME Barcelona:
I recently spoke about “sharing intentions” at Mobile Monday in Amsterdam. (Ben Hammersley, Adam Greenfield, Kevin Slavin and others were also gave great talks). Here are the 5 takeaways from mine:
1. Define your social object
2. Design your translations
3. Enable legitimate peripheral participation
4. Become an obligatory passage point
5. Make meaning
Here are the slides:
If you’re interested in the books I mention in the talk, have a look at this list on Amazon.
I’m keying this over the Atlantic, propelled by four CF6 Turbofans at 900 kilometers per hour, along with hundreds of other men women and families on their way to or away from home.
Yesterday I listened to another man speak about a different flavor of assisted flight, namely, commercial space travel. How it would give all of us an opportunity to depart our drudge on the surface and witness the Earth from space. How this life-changing moment would inspire in us a sense of mankind’s unique position in the universe and a feeling of oneness across nations and faiths.
I have not witnessed the Earth from space, and I can imagine the event is momentous. But distractingly, I could predict this commercial astronaut candidate’s next words and even his pauses. He was speaking from a teleprompter, and I could read his rows mechanically rolling by from where I was sitting.
And suddenly it was strikingly clear that men aspire the final frontier for themselves, not anyone else. For the supremacy, the platinum, the speaking gigs.
And I remembered a friend of mine, a woman who graduated the Russian cosmonaut training program, and thought if we really must go up, I hope she goes first.
The best laid schemes of mice and men go oft awry.
Good things do come in bunches.
Techcrunch noted on Wednesday that I closed a $775K seed round for my new startup Pingpin. We’re creating a new way to communicate on mobile devices and I’m still bouncing around different name candidates for the product. The round was led by True Ventures and Betaworks. I will have more to say about it soon, so stay tuned!
Then on Friday Mobclix, the mobile ad exchange I advise, was acquired by ad technology provider Velti (LSE: VEL). Mobclix was founded in 2008 and grew into the largest mobile ad exchange, serving 8.5 billion ad requests per month on over 100 million mobile handsets. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.
And latest in the series, today Thinglink, the product tagging startup founded by my wife Ulla-Maaria, closed a $1M seed round from Inventure and Lifeline Ventures. It is developing an in-image advertising network: any blogger or website can use Thinglink to make the objects in their images clickable and drive traffic from their images to e-commerce sites and other destinations. I am an investor and advisor and really like the way the product is shaping up.
Here’s a thinglinked photo from this morning, right before the signing of the financing:
I love this Henry James quote, which Wallace Stevens cited in a letter:
“To live in the world of creation – to get into it and stay in it – to frequent it and haunt it – to think intensely and fruitfully – to woo combinations and inspirations into being by a depth and continuity of attention and meditation – this is the only thing.”
Think about it while reading this.