Calacanis is irrelevant

This post is about Jason Calacanis's appearance on TWIT 105: The Day the Music Died.

Listen about 31.5 minutes into TWIT where he talks about paying $75,000 for a domain name. And then says that he wouldn't sell it unless he was getting $7.5 million.

First off, it comes out as conceited. He prefaces it by saying "you can have her on your show every week" about a new employee of his. I would have no interest in working with someone who thought like that, but even less so someone who talks like that.

Second, is this 1999? Did you not notice little sites like Digg, Flickr, del.icio.us? What would possess you to invest in a company where the leadership is eager to spend that kind of money? It reminds me very much of the parties and penthouse office spaces that were a great way to fritter away money in the last tech boom.

You're only interested in 100X return on investment? It's going to be hard to build a fundamentally sound company when you're only interested in that kind of return. Unless you're only putting in $1,000, and clearly that's not you.

I like that music

This morning as I drove my daughter to school we were listening to Net at Nite. One of the hosts is from Canada (and this was an oldish show recorded on Canada Day) so they played (the sound from) a public service commercial from Canadian TV in the 80s. It's much better without the video, by the way. Maddie and I were singing and dancing along. After it was over my daughter looked at me and said, "Daddy, I like that music."

I was a little teary because it made me think of my wife--how she chose me when that was a big risk. My daughter asked me, "Daddy, what's wrong?"

"Nothing, honey. That song just remindedme of how much I love Momma," I said.

"No! You love me!"


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPDi9DzihrE

How do you need to treat yourself?

Here's an NPR piece on "Cringe Readings." Basic concept: go read through your adolescent journal, find the passage that makes you physically uncomfortable, and read it to a roomful of strangers. Pretty cool, harmless, and sounds like fun. But from early on in the piece (and eventually they even mention it in passing) I get this uncomfortable feeling, and I can't help feeling almost as if these people are violating the adolescent self's privacy. Of course, it's their own privacy and they have every right to read what they've written, but I can't shake the feeling of betrayal.

http://podcastdownload.npr.org/anon.npr-podcasts/podcast/1090/11997500/npr_11997500.mp3