And what are the most popular terms (drum roll please) – well a five year-old could have guessed – Obama then McCain then stuff like Olympics and so forth. But the proof is there – or at least in the videos we collected Obama was mentioned in basically a 3:2 margin over McCain. Funny stuff.

Well yesterday I heard it again – Josk Kopelman -  gave a really great presentation and in there was the the market should be good again some where in the middle of 2010. He had a really nice slide on stats of this venture overhang phenomena. (I will link to it when the slides are available online – for now just google it).
The reality is that the Venture or Capital tipping point didn’t come into fruition until late 2004/ early 2005 (I am no expert a deal flow so that’s just my take). Again the majority of the funds raised had been in 2000, but it two 3-4 years for that pressure to build in the system again. 

So to this 2010, I have to give a big hmmmm….. Again I think josh’s speech was very inspirational and I am definitely going to stay in this startup game. I think the recovery is a ways off as even this tech cruch is yet to really hit (we just turned down a job for NYC dev corp because they are building a Employment Portal for the tech sector because they expect so many layoffs).

if you are an analytics addict like me and can’t seem to stop checking little tweeks in your marketing, etc — i have made this little bookmarklet that is set to pull up your trends defaulting to today (rather than yesterday - the google default). Get it here.

NOTE: this is the id of particular site — not your analytics account ID or one the begins with UA — you get it from your url when you viewing a particular site’s analystics - i.e. id=xxxxxx

So we did barcamp philly this weekend – was a very interesting experience as am a barcamp nub. Overall really great time (and a big round of applause to the organizers – its good to see this stuff in philly). Met some really interesting people and listened to a quite a few that just like to hear them selves talk (but I like to hear myself talk so we are probably even on the front). A couple of takeaways:

• Comcast is very interesting company for being a big evil monstrosity. Cimians is nice and one word for you out there that think internet tv might hurt cable companies - micropayments (maybe that is two words)
• Free beer and rockband are made for each other
• Open source cupcakes are tasty - http://www.opensourcecupcakes.com/

All of this is part of the bigger picture for us to create the ultimate timely feed of videos (that you can customize to your preferences of course). This along with our other social and trend indexes ( Twitter and FriendFeed ) plus and the crazy stuff going on under the hood (such pulling in you and your friends rating data from such places as youtube and Hulu) is really starting to come together nicely.

Of course we are still a long way off for where we ultimately want to be, but things are “trending” well.

So some key takeaways:

Don’t Panic (i.e. Be Certain of the Uncertainty) – Paulson (or mr chicken little as I like to call him) is sending panic waves through the public. He says one thing then does another. On top of that the market is a wild ride and is just getting started. Know that you (or really anyone) doesn’t have the answers. Know the dynamics of your business and position may change. Don’t fire 40% of your staff and especially not sales people just because your are looking at your runway. You eat with your mouth. The companies I saw that did massive layoffs started a death spiral because moral dropped and direction wandered.

Consult – Keep money coming in. Get you and your staff (if you still have one) paid for your and their time. This not only helps out with cash flow and your ability to potentially develop new models but it lets you know what the particular developments in your market are.

Un-focus – Get your fingers in pies. Know what is going on. A down turn means a lot of monies, consumer habits, etc are shifting from one place to another. Find that trend and find ways to leverage it. This sounds obvious, but maybe don’t put so much time into one project and test out another in a different industry.

Re-Position – Organizations and people will start looking at products and services with a familiar standby “will this save me money” – this goes for everything from clothes to business productivity software. It’s not how this software can make you money, its how this software can save money.

Productize – If you have product that has market value, get it out there. Companies are always doing build vs buy and knowing that don’t have to support a long-term development staff is very appealing right now. Also amortize your product price or sell it as a service. Everyone wants even cash-flows with no long term commitments.

Really my main point is that the internet is not going away. Yes VC/Stage firms will not be giving out money, but internet usage will continue to increase especially as people turn to it for ways to save money, affordable entertain themselves and stay in contact with less travel. All of these points relate to one two issues – cash and morale. Everything you do should be directed at keeping money coming in and motivation/spirits high. Everyone will be fine, and growth is possible, just not the way we thought.

Second before you get the brunt of my rant – watch some videos we have collected on this current crisis – some funny (most not so much).

Wall Street Woes, Bill Moyers PBS, Onion on john mccain, wall street bailout game

Now, back to meat of this rant. We are a little tiny startup – two guys in garage (well a loft actually) – and we are taking a big risk trying to develop a business from nothing. Small businesses like us represent the economy and its growth potential. I am not just talking about the home runs (i.e. google, Microsoft, etc) but the small shops (development included), stores and misc business. Small businesses (startups included) employ almost exactly half the private U.S. labor force of about 153 million. When we increase our headcount, the cumulative effect is dramatic. This crisis will hit us first. We pinch every penny, we are in the business of spinning straw into gold and if the price of straw goes up we are just fucked (not to mention all the support mechanisms like health and other insurances or the ability to get loans to cover payroll until invoices are processed).

What we all saw last night in the debates were a bunch of easy words directed a culture of greed of wall street and bad lending practices. This is not a time for simplified characterizations of our financial industry. The business of making money from money is a necessary one. The capital / commodities markets (fx I have my issues with, but that is another story) are necessary, but these markets are gateways to complicated overdeveloped schemes to push the boundaries of how money can be made. I have been involved in a few software projects over the years that has given me a small insight. Regulation is completely necessary especially when these large industries know they exist in the universe of socialized capitalism. In the past 20 years (or since I have been paying attention) anytime a major driving industry of the US economy missteps (usually from its own idiocy or greed) the government is there with open arms with no oversight.

Now the government is stepping in (or trying to) with 700 billion (and likely much more) to buy up all the mortgage-backed securities to stabilize the markets. Is this the best place or mechanism to put 700 billion in our economy? The truth is no one knows and no one (and I am talking about you candidates) is standing up and saying this is a shit-storm and we need to evaluate the fundamentals of our economy and look for where the real stability and growth potential is.

We need a massive re-think. Basically over the past 10 years (well twenty) the deregulation has allowed financial organizations to take bigger and bigger risks to make money. The goal with not to encourage fundamentals like make a widget (lets let the Chinese do that) / buy a widget, but lets game the system. The game has been called ladies and gentlemen and now us small players are wondering where to go from here. We need leadership, real leadership because as any small business startup leader know, you wake up everyday and make the hard decisions to make it to the next day.

b) i repeat myself — i cant understate the value of simple. I like ffwd, the people behind it are strong industry vets and their beta has been very interesting from the beginning. They are definitely addressing an interesting problem (well we might be a little bias here) and had a nice social approach. The issue here seems to be that their extended development and beta cycle left a site clearly decided by committee. There is so much going on that all you get it noise (now its entertaining noise, and maybe thats the point) but its almost impossible to navigate to anything of premium quality.

you click on the 30 rock channel and i get some cgc (consumer generated content/crap) of some girl singing muffin-top song. maybe thats what some people find entertaining but i am most definitely out of that bell curve. granted the channel has a disclaimer noting that quality of the channel is improving, but come on — you people have a deal with hulu.

features (features, features everywhere, but not a drop to drink). I know where these features are coming from as i have been tracking the development of the site and all are most useful but i am totally overwhelmed. I have 30 (a little exaggeration) variations on my channel concept and a million ways to fine tune it.

overall the UX is really interesting the UI is very professional and with time i think they are going to have a really great site, but there is that great saying (well actually my saying) — “start with simple, follow with function(allity)”

disclaimer — we are working on this same problem and its a biatch of a big one — i give ffwd serious props for their execution here i just wish they had gone a little minimalist (i.e. Philip Glass for you music nuts following them over from iLike)

i have been mulling on this quote for the past few days since we got it as feedback from @aweissman on our idea and just do a quick stock of the the internet major players we see how much of their core business is really just a obvious evolution of their business.

just a few that come first to mind:

• google — take the value proposition of search and make it simple (and better in relevant — the backscratch)
• gmail - web mail without all the noise of visual ads
• facebook - again just a cleaner version of friendster meets myspace…
• basecamp - project management with a reduced feature set for better ux

on the contrary let look at a trend that people are calling radical - twitter.

is twitter is a revolution (or that what the fanatics are telling me)? i was chatting with a friend where i was saying “i just don’t get it” — his response — i get it — i completely get it — twitter is just the next natural evolution in status messages for IM and other services where people want to give little updates (or microblog in web20-speak). so in most all plays we can track its value to a predecessor (prior art anyone?)

for those of you familiar with the innovators dilemma and such such notions — the value is when you able to improve a market concept rather than create it when there is a enough market maturity and momentum to truly capitalize.

so with this new quote in the armory — snackfeed is the next evolution (not the next revolution) in web video…