My Words are my Sword
So since Kara Swisher did an open conversation with me - last year - and Marc Andreessen has chosen not to respond to my requests for public discourse on Ning’s #’s (and I’ve left Brooke alone) and now that Marc is joining my favorite CEO’s board - this is gonna get fun.
Now whenever I run into these dudes at public events I can ask Zuckerberg when he’ll release the enslaved personal data of his users - and I can ask Andreessen when he’ll publicly disclose what’s really going on inside of Ning. And they’ll probably be hanging out with each other allot now.
Cause afterall - anyone who can scam private equity firms for $100M in cash and never make a profit is the kind of guy Facebook wants on their board - right?
I know that Kara sees my blog and writing this post may get noticed by others as well. What better way to get your message out and questions answered than to call people on their bullshit and take it to their face?
Apparently when I unjustly attack somebody I get noticed - so I just thought I’d explain myself here to those who care. I’m not attacking unjustly because I think my attack is unjust. Quite the opposite. I attack and critique and call people on what I consider to be the bullshit that keeps this industry back.
I call people on what I consider to be the unjust decrepit disease of greed and insider gamesmanship that keeps the rich rich and the entrepreneurs who work their asses off - poor.
When VCs purposefully lead their young founders on and then kick them out - this is what’s wrong with our world. I don’t use theFunded to complain - I use my blog to attack.
My company doesn’t have a $15B valuation or even a $500M valuation. We don’t need valuation at all. We have a platform we license and offer as SaaS and I have ideas and questions. I use my blog to create change.
So when I read about Fred Wilson’s arbitraging - I write about it. And when I get responses that support Fred - I appreciate the love he gets.
When I see trends like OpenSocial and I figure out what Google is really doing - I blog about it. And I let it be known that we’re “bringing social to software”. And that we can all work together.
When my gut tells me there’s something wrong with Twitter - I complain about it early and often.
And when I earlier created an Open Letter to Marc and Gina - I don’t complain - but I remember.
And when Wikipedia then says that I often criticize people - I take them at their word - afterall Wikipedia is authoritative - right?
And when I go on panels at conferences I say what I think, not what will play well to the press or get me VC investment.
And when I’m NOT invited to speak at conferences - I get up in the audience and ask hard questions. Sometimes my questions are completely ignored, sometimes they’re dodged - like some vicous bullet trying to extract the truth.
Or when I blog about what I see is Lock-in - and others support it - I criticize then too - cause they’re adding to the problem.
So in general I try to ask the right questions at the right time.
But at the end of the day - my words are my swords. We don’t have big bags of capital - so that we never have to make a profit. I believe companies should make money and VC deficit funding is a big problem in this industry.
The insider games that happen (and why Loic Lemeur moved here) is also a problem. I’m not saying Loic isn’t a great guy and that Seesmic doesn’t rock - but the truth is that Loic moved here so that he could be close to the games.
Facebook has said it won’t make any money and will budget to break even next year. COOLIO - cause at least they innovate. But Ning doesn’t really innovate and I’m afraid that with Andreessen joining the Facebook board - that only means that Facebook will NEVER make a profit.
But if they get bought by Microsoft - with some of that leftover Yahoo money - who cares. Right?
May 6th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
Marc Quixote de la Valley! viva Marc.
May 6th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
Wow, you used the word *I* FORTY TIMES in this post. Perhaps there is some biblical significance. In Kara’s post on Marc A. joining forces with Mark Z., she only used the word I five times (and three were from her long-ish book excerpt). You’re out I-ing Kara by eight times! Plus you used “my” or a variant fourteen times. You only used “me” four times though.
Someday there will be automatic semantic filtering to group posts into categories. You’ll be a leader in the “me, me, me” category.
May 6th, 2008 at 1:52 pm
marc
i don’t mind getting skewered by your words and there’s always a little truth to everything.
keep saying what’s on your mind.
fred
May 6th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
Kara Swisher may use ‘I’ less, but she has less to say. Her writing of late has become Cnet Lite - hokey, jokey, lightweight, insubstantial, and probably sourced exclusively from her domestic insider source. One could never tell she was, at one time, a serious journalist.
May 6th, 2008 at 7:39 pm
I agree about this VC tendency to make their social media revolution eat its children-founders. I don’t see that as much in non-tech industries. I find it creepy. I mean, Wendy’s doesn’t kill off the Wendy’s guy, they keep him around forever, even when he dies.
Re: “when he’ll release the enslaved personal data of his users”. I don’t feel that my personal data is enslaved. I feel it’s protected from over Googlization I have to face in many applications that just lead to more spam and harassment of me as a controversial speaker. I don’t think there’s some God-given automatic right for you to take my data and my proximity graph and port it. I just don’t hear enough concern about this.
What I feel is that the obsession about data porting is really an obsession with opening up the geek widget-making factory access, and I’m sick of widgets.
Given that all you need to move from service to service is…to use the same log-in name and password even — I fail to see the urgent public need that you do.
May 8th, 2008 at 12:53 am
Marc,
the industry would be even more boring and complacent if it wouldn’t be for people like you who dare to speak out things that need to be said. There is way too much marketing bs out there and the user/buyer is only seen in his function as potential cash-cow. That is true in both, the consumer and the enterprise sector.
May 14th, 2008 at 9:59 am
My words are my world
my prison ,my walls
the stairs that i climb
to get me gently in the skies
My words are my swords
the weapons i hide
my army that craves
in battles to fight
My words are the dwarfs
that linger in tales
humbly awaiting
for a part to be played
My words are my prayers
that hope to reach God
but stumbling on clouds
they fall on the ground
My words are my fleet
in oceans and storms
with sails that have torn
the winds from the North
My words are the wings
of a bird that can’t fly
and it stays perched
by the sea its whole life