Musings of a VC in NYC

#iMarch

Yesterday and today we are conducting a virtual march on Washington to let our elected officials know that the time has come for comprehensive immigration reform.

If you are of the opinion that we ought to keep things as they are now, stop right now. This post and this march is not for you.

But if you are open minded about your fellow man, if you want the US to remain a nation of immigrants where we open our arms and borders to good people who want to come here, build a family, build a life, build a company, pay taxes, defend our country, etc, etc, then please join this march.

Last night I attended a #iMarch event at Appnexus and talked with Brian O'Kelly about immigration reform and why it is important. After I left I saw a number of tweets from that event that I thought I'd share with all of you this morning.

The IPA

No, I am not blogging about India Pale Ale, although I must say that I am a big fan of it.

I am writing about one of the best patent hacks I have seen in the decade that I have been working to find relief from the ridiculous patent system in our country.

Twitter came up with a concept last year called the Innovator's Patent Agreement (IPA) and put a draft IPA up on GitHub. They have gotten a ton of feedback and have iterated and improved the concept since then.

The basic idea of the IPA is that it is a contract between Twitter and the engineer(s) and designer(s) who developed the IP. The contract says that Twitter will not use the patent offensively nor will anyone who acquires the patent from Twitter. It goes on to say that Twitter or a subsquent owner could use the patent offensively with the engineers' and/or designers' approval.

Twitter announced yesterday that it had entered into an agreement with Loren Brichter, the author of the pull to refresh patent that will subject that patent to an IPA. They also announced that they will subject all of their patents to the IPA. They went on to say that Jelly, Lift, StackExchange, and Tell Apart have agreed to adopt the IPA for all of their patents.

USV has been talking to our portfolio companies about the IPA since Twitter posted it last year. They all know we are big fans of it and we hope they will choose to adopt it for all of their patents. We will not do more than that however. Our portfolio companies are independent of USV and can make up their own minds about their IP strategies.

That said, I would expect to see other USV portfolio companies join StackExchange on this IPA parade.

Twitter is an amazing company and I am very proud to be associated with it. The fact that they would take this extraordinary step and then show leadership in the industry to get others to join them is a testament to that. It's a proud day for Twitter and for me.

Native Advertising Event

This Thursday from 1pm to 6pm, our portfolio company Zemanta is co-hosting a summit on native advertising here in NYC. 

I've written and spoken a fair bit about native advertising so regular readers will likely be quite familiar with this topic. However, from what I am seeing out there, native advertising is really hitting its stride as social platforms and mobile consumption become the norm. If you are a marketer or an entrepreneur working in the advertising/marketing space, you should be paying attention to this trend.

I will be kicking off the event at 1pm with a brief talk and some Q&A.

If you want to go, here is a link to get a 50% discount on the event for readers of AVC.

This is Internet Week in NYC and I am making a number of public appearances in addition to this native advertising summit. Here's the whole shebang:

Last night - introducing the Gotham Gal at the MOUSE 15 Annivesary Event

This morning - Opening the CMSummit with John Battelle at 9:10am

Wednesday evening - March For Innovation (immigration) event at AppNexus with Brian O'Kelly

Thursday mid-day - The Native Advertising event

Thursday at 4:30pm - OpenCo Festival event with John Battelle and Dave Morgan at Simulmedia

It's a busy week but with a Vespa scooter and a mind full of things to say, it shouldn't be too hard. I hope to see you all around town this week.

Success Has A Thousand Fathers

Back in the early days of AVC, I did a thing called VC Cliche Of The Week. There was an RSS feed of all of them powered by Delicious, but it is broken and most likely can't be fixed. You can find some of them on gawk.it.

One of the cliches I posted about is "success has a thousand fathers." I thought I would re-run that post. Here it is.

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You can count on it - when a deal works out spectacularly everyone involved will take credit for it.

This behavior is particularly annoying to the entrepreneurs who put the sweat, blood, and tears into the Company.

They watch the VCs take credit for the big success and it grates on them.

I have a couple rules that I try very hard to live by in this regard:
1- the management team always gets the credit.  VCs don't do the dirty work and should not get the accolades when things work out.
2 - don't gloat.  it's not becoming.  humility in times of great success is a very becoming characteristic.

But it's really hard to follow these rules when things work out well.  Because success doesn't come that often, and when it does, it has a thousand fathers.

Congratulations Indiana

We talk a lot of NBA basketball in the comments but I don't post about it. This blog is supposed to be about startups and tech, for the most part. But the Knicks lost last night in Indiana and my season is over. I will root for the Grizzlies and the Pacers now but I doubt I will watch many games.

This photo sums up the Knicks Pacers series. Actually it sums up the entire season for me.

Carmelo Anthony is an incredible talent. He has upped his defensive game in the past year and he carried the Knicks as far as he could. But he doesn't have a second superstar at his side and he could not beat Indiana all by himself.

Roy Hibbert played a great series. In the end, Roy and the Pacers were too much for Melo.

I went to something like twenty five Knicks games this year, almost all of them with my son Josh. I had a great time. We saw some incredible games. And I remain a diehard Knicks fan. My season is over.

I wish Roy and his mates the best of luck with Miami. I will be rooting them on.

Video Of The Week: SNL's Take On Google Glass

This is pretty funny.

Fun Friday: Morning Joe

It feels like its been a while since we did a fun friday around here. So here goes.

How do you like your morning cup of coffee?

I go with the Cortado, ideally in a shot glass. Here's one from Kava, the coffee shop near my home in the far west village.

So how do you take your morning cup? Photos please.