Nice Explanation of Pre and Post Money Valuation and the Effect of Option Pools

I often find myself explaining the relationship between pre- and post money valuations and how options pools play into the calculation. Today I came across a very good blog post that explains it better than I’ve ever done. From now on, I’ll just point them to it.

What the author didn’t cover however is that entrepreneurs spend far too much time thinking about pre-money and far too little finding the right investment partner. In my opinion, it makes far more sense to take a lesser deal from a better partner. Having a great pre-money means nothing if the VC’s first move is to throw your ass out for one of their cronies (search “foundercide” to see what I mean) or if their advice is so bad as to insure your ultimate failure.

iPhoto Faces: Hits and Misses

Just starting to play with the new iPhoto 09 and in particular the facial recognition feature. I tested the feature on a few hundred sample images and iPhoto was right more than it was wrong. But the ones that it was wrong made me wonder do I really look like my mother or my friend Sanjay? “Separated at Birth” we are not.

 

iPhoto's Facial Recognition Has Some Kinks

That said I am very happy with this feature. When I first started adding photos to iPhoto many years ago I dutifully tagged each one. I’ve done that less and less. I had always hoped tools would come along that automated at least some of the process. Two or three years ago there was a far-too-hyped start-up called Riya that promised to do this. But they had no business model and their technology appears to not have been strong enough to make it into tools like this. I hope this isn’t one of those things I play with for a bit, think is incredibly cool, and then never use again. Google Earth, anyone?

Baseball Cards!

I have been spending the last few months updating the Sportsbuy.com website. One of the features we’ve really been focusing on are product pages. Check out the baseball card page that we put up.

This was a test to see what the SEO and user response would be to a dedicated page on this one aspect of our site. We then focused on internal linking, a dedicated URL with the right keyword and then populating it with everything relevant to visitors of that page to insure a low bounce rate. These included things like links to rookie cards, wax boxes, and so forth. The baseball card page is particularly important to us since it is probably our most important keyword but one of the worst preforming. On other keywords like Basketball Card, Hockey Card, Tennis Card, etc. we are top 3 and often the #1 result. I’ll let you know what happens.

Shocking: AOL Kills Off Buggy AOL Video

Dear AOL Video Uploads User,

As we’ve written to you previously, the AOL Video Uploads site has now been shut down and videos stored on the site are no longer available for watching, editing, deleting or transfer. 

Our records show that you had uploaded videos to the site. While the AOL Video Uploads site is no longer available, we have made your videos available to be transferred to Motionbox.com for a limited time. Learn more at Motionbox. 

Motionbox is a free service that makes it easy to upload, store and share personal videos.Motionbox supports all of the features you’ve come to expect from AOL Video, and offers some additional benefits we think you’ll enjoy. 

We appreciate you being an AOL Video Uploads user, and we hope this transition hasn’t caused you an inconvenience.

Flip Video users: If you own a Flip Video camcorder, you will be able to continue to share videos using AOL Video for a limited time. To ensure the continuation of your video sharing experience, we recommend you download new software for your Flip Video camcorder.Download latest software (free update).

Sincerely,

AOL Video Uploads Team 

 

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I can’t say I’m surprised.

Having Fun with the new Mac Video Tools

I was always a fan of Adobe Premiere and then stopped editing video before iMovie even came out. With the purchase of a new Mac Laptop I’ve started playing with the latest iMovie (08). Unfortunately iMovie 08 involved a major UI departure from the timeline/film strip metaphor that every other editor I’ve ever seen uses. That said, after a short time of playing around with it I was able to create a few promos for my company. 

I made USA Today!

Okay, not the greatest quote of all time but at least it was picked up:

“All Steve has to do is show up, prove he is in fact the real Steve Bartman — not some earphone-wearing imposter — and he’ll move to the top of the autograph value list,” said Wesley Hein, CEO of SportsBuy.com.

Remember there is no such thing as bad press.

Here’s the back story.

Self Portrait in La Jolla

 

Self Portrait in La Jolla, originally uploaded by wesley.hein.

Okay. I’ve been very late to the Flickr party. I did use Flickr two years ago and it was a useful place to host photos that I dropped into blogs. But I didn’t see it for much more than that. I’ve recently come back because I want to see their integration tools and so far I’m pretty impressed. This is a test of one click to blog post.

Six Month Update; Knee Pain Leads to CEO Job and Swimming Focus

Blogs are supposed to be updated far more frequently than every six months but this has been everything but a normal period for me. First off, I had more or less cleared off enough work responsibilities to be able to train as much as I wanted/needed for Ironman China. And that is exactly what I was starting to do. The runs were getting longer as were the rides. What I didn’t count on was a knee problem derailing the entire trip. Some time in November I got a twinge in my left knee, that twinge worsened and after several visits to several doctors (plus MRI and 2 months of Physical Therapy) I was officially out of the race.

Funny how things turn out however, especially when it comes to filling a void. First, in terms of athletics I had a huge void to fill because I can no longer run or bike (at least for the present). The good news is however is that 2008 seems to be the year that open water swimming is hitting stride. It has been easy for me to find open water races to do and people to train with them. I’ve even joined an open water swimming club on Facebook. Mind you that I still miss running but having a series of swimming races to train for has really helped soften what would otherwise be driving me crazy.

The other thing that happened is that I became CEO of SportsBuy.com (formerly Naxcom Exchange). I had been consulting for them for a few months and my friends know that one of the reasons I like to consult is so that I was able to swim/bike/run more or less as much as I liked. But once I crossed over to the dark side of having real responsibilities, it was no longer just a matter of getting a job done but of being in an office more or less full time. (Link to press release).

While LifeTwo.com is certainly a full-time job in itself, I have always been able to do that on nights and weekends and that will continue. I have benefited greatly from the hands-on work that I do with LifeTwo and that is especially relevant to my new gig which involves bringing social networking/web 2.0 to the sports collectibles industry. For example, check out the SportsBuy events blog that I just pulled together to help publicize the company’s autograph signings and trade show events.

Ironman China 2008 Here I Come; Thank you TriathleteMag.com

Dual announcements here. First I have signed up for Ironman China in April 2008. I now have 6 months to prepare for the 140 mile swim/bike/running race.

The other thing is that Triathlete Magazine has invited me to blog for them. I will be posting twice a week on all things relating to my Ironman preparation. Here is a link to my section.

I want to thank my friend Doug Binns who moved to Asia a few years ago for helping me do research for my Triathlete articles. Doug blogs here.

It’s Happiness Week at LifeTwo.com

Greg and I have tried an experiment this week which has been to put a disproportionate amount of effort into one set of related posts and then to promote them. We certainly couldn’t do this on a regular basis but so far it looks like the effort is going to pay off.

This is common in television and they call them “stunts.” Not the kind where someone drives off a cliff, television stunts are when a network packages a group of shows into some kind of unified theme that can be promoted. For example, TNT having “Chuck Norris Week”. The theory is that one Chuck Norris movie won’t make much of an impact but one every night will. This is the same thinking that goes into “Leave it to Beaver” marathons and so forth.

Tal Ben-Shahar 

We contacted his publisher who loved the idea, interviewed him and wrote out a week’s worth of posts that contain excerpts from his book and additional related resources. We kept up with the lessons/exercises theme. To avoid having it reflect our own biases, we approached a number of leading authors/columnists/bloggers in this and related fields and almost all of them said yes.

Please check out our “How To Be Happy” week both from the perspective of blog marketing but also because it might just help you be happier.

happiness