Jason Calacanis

I think Calacanis said it best: https://calacanis.com/2019/02/11/what-is-a-startup-vs-a-lifestyle-busi… VCs are optimizing for the unicorn, and there is nothing wrong going for the non unicorn either. It's just you shouldn't go for VC financing. If you make a business that hires 50 people and throws off $10 million a year to you, you'll probably make more than most founders ever will anyway after 3 years of that business.

> True early stage investors focus on technology, team, demos, prototypes, and so on. Probably team more than anything else. I don't think that's true anymore, if you want to get the best valuation/terms for your company you can't go into a meeting with a potential seed/early stage investor without showing some kind of traction. The bar has been set higher for startups, that is why there is this downward movement in the VC food chain to focus on early stage deals, they are seeing companies with traction and revenue, so they want in earlier before it's too late. Sure you might be able to raise money just based off of technology, team, demos, prototypes, and so on, but as Jason Calacanis puts it, it's just table stakes: http://calacanis.com/2015/11/02/dont-bring-a-knife-to-a-gun-fight/

I clicked one of the links http://calacanis.com/2015/07/04/the-most-important-piece-of-advice-for… The 6th piece of wisdom this particular thought leader has for us is "NEVER GET INVOLVED IN POLITICS & NEVER BE NEGATIVE." Which is followed immediately by this: "The people who are killed, the deer, tend to huddle around the kitchen or go on cigarette breaks and bitch and complain about everyone and everything at the company. The tigers are too busy killing it to be bothered with such things... Deer: “Bitch bitch, moan moan, blame blame, cry cry. Tiger: “Hmmm…that’s an interesting take on things. I gotta get shit done, good luck with that.” Apparently turning himself into a killer tiger who just fucking kills all the time has left him without a sense of irony.

http://calacanis.com/2015/01/27/why-hackathons-are-important-how-to-wi… is great for inspiration.

Go into the bathroom, turn off all the lights, light a candle, repeat the phrase "bloody mary" thirteen times, and he'll appear for you. Or, you can just email him at the address listed on his website, http://calacanis.com/, which is [email protected] ;-)

Mike told me over dinner that he didn't like to sign contracts, and didn't do so with his Crunchpad partners or me, because it gave him an advantage since a) nothing was documented and b) he's a lawyer. I should have known better -- but I guess that's why it's a "lesson." Ouch. When a lawyer doesn't want to sign a contract, you should know something is up. To Jason: best of luck at this. While I'm all for the underdog, I don't think you are making much of a case for your marketing ability in LAUNCH with this forward-to-friend.com "email". A more concise blog post with spelling, etc. corrected would have been a lot better. But, it's still interesting. Update: Ugh, the same crappily formatted crap in the blog post: http://calacanis.com/2010/11/15/why-im-suing-mike-arrington/

By now they might as well change their name, they've had so much bad press that if you google keiretsu forum you get this on page 1 now: http://calacanis.com/2009/10/05/jason-jihad-keiretsu-forum-must-be-sto… And that link is rising rapidly. If Jason Calacanis keeps this up he'll be running them out of town yet. Pretty amazing really, considering the relative sizes of the parties.

The web these days is full of applications that do cool things but don't provide a hint of value to end-users that makes it worthwhile to pay. One suggested option for Twitter to monetize on was charging for premium membership (http://calacanis.com/2008/01/02/the-three-business-models-that-make-tw… the one option so far that seems to be in line with traditional business models: provide a service that people are willing to pay for. The blog post suggests 1-5% of users might subscribe to some kind of premium membership...I think more along the lines of 1-5% of active users, which drastically cuts the number of potential subscribers down. Bottom line: advertising might be Twitter's only hope, but I predict limited success (in the long-run) unless Twitter finds a way to produce a service they can put a price tag on.

I am surprised that the comments haven't mentioned the role of SEO in Wikipedia's growth and defensibility. Wikipedia's habit of deep interlinking helped it rank back in the early aughts when the SEO rules were rather simple. Add to that the subdomain-driven localization strategy and many other moves that were considered SEO best practices back in those years when the on-page factors used to matter. But that was just the start. Wikipedia killed it in SEO when it was easy to do so, but it also did one other thing that most SEO-driven sites (eg: About) didn't do correctly - it cared deeply about the content quality and also resisted to run ads (anyone remember Jason Calacanis' articles on how they are leaving $100m on the table? See [1]). So when Panda came around, Google correctly rewarded Wikipedia with #1 rankings for over 50% of its terms (!!), and Jason Calacanis had to shut down Mahalo which got destroyed by Panda. Wikipedia's dominance continues because it's basically impossible to overcome its lead in inbound links and domain authority. Add to that a surprisingly under-the-radar company culture which has avoided any major blow ups despite its community wielding so much leverage over the world's education and having to make a lot of difficult calls on a daily basis. Well done. [1] https://calacanis.com/2006/10/28/wikipedia-leaves-100m-on-the-table-or…

There have, or are going to be, a few actually: 1. Startup U (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Startup_U) Was a show about Draper University and their incubator program. 2. Jason Calacanis is working on a reality series now, just not sure when it is to be released. (http://calacanis.com/2016/02/29/why-im-doing-a-reality-show/) 3. BravoTV had Start-ups Silicon Valley (http://www.bravotv.com/start-ups-silicon-valley) As the other comment pointed out though there are problems with doing a startup reality show. In order for it to "sell" and be worth the production time, there needs to be a level of drama that is added to the show or "instigated" by the director/producers. The other big problem is that 80% of the show would be just watching people code or sit in meetings. Finally, as a viewer you would want an underdog that prevails or at least one startup that becomes a unicorn. There is no way to predict this from the start for sure. Jason has stated his desire to keep it authenticate, so we will see.

Correct. We will let folks buy trade show tables and exhibitor booths through the front door. I have no problem with a funded company that is selling to our audience to buy a table. I mean, if you're selling a SaaS product that has an average LTV of $5,000 it's probably good idea to spend 2-5x that on a sponsorship for our events (or someone else's) because, well, you'll make it back! The issue we are talking about here is people "applying" to be in a competition to "get exposure to angels," and then being "accepted" for a fee. That's just lame. I'm a lucky bastard in that I have the chip stack to take on the risk of a $1m+ budget event, get the support of the top sponsors in the industry and be able to give everyone free tickets and tables. Remember, Mike and I fought to kill the DEMO conference ($20k to present!) and then he sold to AOL and they decided to maximize profit. I decided to minimize profit -- in fact, my goal is to net out to ZERO each year and give back MORE AND MORE. Why? I believe the angel investor who gives away the most value gets into the best deals. The SCALE conference is going to be free for 2,500 of 3,000 seats. http://calacanis.com/2015/04/29/welcome-to-scale/

Obligatory link to Jason Calcanis's "Why I Emplyed a Felon", from 2009: http://calacanis.com/2009/03/05/why-i-employed-a-felon/ ----- Excerpt: > However, Mark screwed up by not doing a simple Google search on John’s name. If Mark had, he would have easily found out about these crimes, we would never have hired John, and I would not be writing this letter. Why would we even take the risk of hiring a felon hacker? No one would, right? Months after John’s hiring, our VP of Operations found out about the crimes John had committed. We sat down with John and learned about what he did when he was younger, how he was abused as a child, his anger issues, and how he found some level of peace in being part of the team at Mahalo. Now I was left with the decision to fire John on the spot and cut my losses and responsibility. This was the easy choice, obviously. If I really wanted to cover my butt, I could turn on one of my best friends, Mark Jeffrey, and fire him for making the only mistake he’s ever made working for me. The other option was to keep John on and deal with the potential firestorm of criticism that we’re now facing. I chose to put my job and reputation on the line and keep John employed. At this moment, I’m honestly glad we didn’t know about what John did when we hired him and I’m happy we’ve kept him on board. It’s taught me a lot about society, computer crime and rehabilitation. In John, I see almost every computer programmer from my time “hacking” on BBSes as a…

Are throw away comments stated on keynote speeches multiple times? Are throw away comments used as the core marketing and public relations strategies for a new company? Just because you are hoping that people have short memories does not mean you can change reality. Lets see what Jason called Youtube http://calacanis.com/2006/05/11/how-youtube-won-great-seo-stolen-conte… "How YouTube Won: Great SEO + Stolen Content (or the biggest hit and run in the history of the Internet)" And yet when Jason takes your content and wraps it in Mahalo that is somehow legitimate. hmm. double standard, eh? That is not an area where I taught you anything...it was one you discovered on your own, while analyzing Youtube. The other thing you mentioned about YouTube was "If YouTube makes $250M from a sale their founders and VCs should give $225M of it back to the content owners like NBC and Loren Michaels who they stole it from!" And I do hope you hold yourself to your own standards. Though if history is any guide :(

it seems natural and appropriate to let poorly run businesses fail. unfortunately, our central bank doesn't prioritize based on inflation rates: http://www.house.gov/jec/press/2005/10-18-05.pdf instead they do the following: instead of managing inflation, they generally do everything possible to prevent periods of deflation (which requires propping up the money supply) which is what happens when you let industry leaders fail. if we let all of the businesses fail instead of bailing them out the fallout would likely be unprecedented. see jason calcanis's explanation of the belt tightening effect and the resulting death spiral. imagine if every industry was experiencing this. http://calacanis.com/2008/11/06/the-future-of-startups/ people need to realize that this is not an adam smith capitalistic system, this is a system heavily influenced by the government. this leaves room for regulation loopholes and mistakes which create bubbles which ultimately pop. this bubble has been patched for years, its getting too big to pop. popping it would remove our status as world police and likely be a large security threat. george bush wanted to let these companies fail, but he was told, albeit mostly by market and industry leaders that letting them fail would create a chain reaction of failures and deflation. the answer is probably to let some companies fail so as to punish poor businesses, but we have to be wary of purging the entire system.

In the US ChromeOS seems to have about 4-6% market share [0] with about 60% share in K-12. As you say, those are US numbers and the K-12 figures are much lower (single digits) elsewhere. Of course, not sure what availability and promotion to school systems even looks like outside the US. [0] https://calacanis.com/2019/01/02/chrome-os-is-the-ultimate-productivit…

Jason Calcanis has never been one to shy away from conflict, but it's hard to disagree with him here. Apparently, the employees and cofounders thought they were getting equity but likely never will. More from his blog: https://calacanis.com/2019/09/09/the-pegasus-startup-flying-over-vcs-o… > The founder, Taso Du Val, also allegedly screwed his employees and co-founder out of their equity by never converting his LLC into a C corp and creating stock. > This is a huge violation of the explicit covenant of startups: “we all lose a decade of our lives trying, or we get fabulously rich together.”

Links: https://mobile.twitter.com/Jason/status/686949878094630916 video link: https://amp.twimg.com/v/53817e94-a35c-402e-b347-4fc7f3ae502b article: http://calacanis.com/2016/01/13/the-controlled-deflation-of-the-bubble…

Leeches. http://calacanis.com/2009/10/09/why-startups-shouldnt-have-to-pay-to-p…

IMHO http://betashop.com/ by jason goldberg http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/ founder of duckduckgo http://blogmaverick.com/ by Mark Cuban http://blog.pmarca.com/ Marc Andreesen's blog ( again start from the older posts) http://avc.com "MBA mondays" by Fred Wilson( i get emailed as chapters via dailylit ) http://www.joelonsoftware.com/ http://onstartups.com/ by dharmesh shah of hubspot http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/ by mark suster "startup site:http://calacanis.com/ " ( on google to find good older posts while Jason Calacanis used to blog ) http://lsvp.wordpress.com http://www.chubbybrain.com/ http://tom.preston-werner.com/ apart from 37 signals, venturehacks, & lean startup blogs. ~B

I feel for the cut staff and Mahalo has plenty of dough in the bank but reminds me of Jason's article "What to do if your startup is about fail (or "Don't Stop Believing")" http://calacanis.com/2009/02/27/what-to-do-if-your-startup-is-about-fa… Applicable lesson I learned the hard way - better to make cuts early in the face of a serious shift vs. burn cash, see morale dip, etc.

All of what you've said is true. However, there is still a trend in rising valuation (near bubble level), of which many other investors have noted as well. Mark Suster: What Angel Investing & Florida Condos Have in Common http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2010/11/14/what-angel-investing-flo… Fred Wilson: The Dot Com Bubble Is Back http://www.secondshares.com/2010/11/18/the-dot-com-bubble-is-back-fred… The Trouble with Bubbles (talent, angel & incubators… oh my!) http://calacanis.com/2010/11/18/the-trouble-with-bubbles-talent-angel-…

Truly ironic. http://calacanis.com/2004/12/28/rss-abuse-whats-fair-use-and-whats-abu… Disclosure: I used to work for Skweezer. What a difference six years makes. TLDR: Jason didn't like our mobile optimizing proxy because we were "stealing" his content. He banned us from all his Weblogs Inc. properties.

Someone needs to whip up a quick mad-libs style "I'm quitting blogging" script that can write these posts for us all. Also a list of public blog-quitters so we can ridicule them when they change their minds: http://calacanis.com/2008/07/11/official-announcement-regarding-my-ret… http://www.inc.com/magazine/20100301/lets-take-this-offline.html http://al3x.net/2010/03/02/hiatus.html

Wonder what Mr. Calacanis thinks of these logical reasons... http://calacanis.com/2009/10/09/why-startups-shouldnt-have-to-pay-to-p…

The Keiretsu Forum are famous for this after Jason Calacanis found out about them: http://calacanis.com/2009/10/05/jason-jihad-keiretsu-forum-must-be-sto…

R.I.P. http://calacanis.com/2009/07/29/yahoo-committed-seppuku-today/

I wonder if he feels differently about point #16 in his famous "How to save money running a startup" ( http://calacanis.com/2008/03/07/how-to-save-money-running-a-startup-17… ) from last year: 16) Don’t waste money on recruiters. Get inside of linkedin and Facebook and start looking for people -- it works better anyway.

I've always considered "hacking" relating to making a system do something it wasn't intended to do. You have to know the system well enough and be creative enough to go beyond its perceived limitations. I get a kick out of being creative; others get a kick out of having power over something. In either case, the real thrill is feeling alive and not feeling like a mindless robot. It is funny we're having this conversation, considering Jason Calacanis's open letter, "Why I hired a felon" relating to one of his employees at Mahalo: http://calacanis.com/2009/03/05/why-i-employed-a-felon/

Lol, you're so transparent and open online it's probably hard to keep track. http://calacanis.com/2008/11/06/the-future-of-startups/ #7 stole my heart, I come from advertising. ;)

Can you really Rent a Coder? I don't think this blog post even attempts to answer that question. Here is a post on the subject that links to some decent content: http://calacanis.com/2005/09/07/rentacoder-com-and-elance-com-reviews/