A Few Things Worth Reading

Many say forget ICANN--it's hopelessly conflicted and inept--and new gTLD domain names? Only tech oxymorons need more 1980s technology in the Mobile Apps Age of 2015! So, what do you really need to know about modern life and culture today? Bob Lefsetz starts us off--

Lefsetz Letter » Never Say Never: "Coke is in a tailspin, McDonald’s is dying, a star football player retires after one year of play, Apple offers twenty five TV channels for $30-$40 and SXSW is now a tech, not a music, festival. Dude, what happened to my country?".... The world will be saved by people. Who think. And lead thereupon....." (read more at the link above)

GoDaddy And The Eternal Optimism Of Retail IPO Punters - GoDaddy Inc. (NYSE:GDDY) | Seeking Alpha: "... Despite reams of historical evidence that most IPOs are overpriced and represent poor medium-term investments, there is an almost-unending stream of retail punters who jump into the next 'hot' IPO at almost any price, often on the basis of name recognition alone, only to be sorely disappointed in the months that follow... If GDDY was an early-stage growth company with an undefined 'blue sky' growth opportunity, these kinds of multiples and day-one enthusiasm would at least be explainable. But in response to the listing of a two-decades old business with a history of operating losses, a mostly mature (or at least maturing) market, a large majority of the share count yet to enter the float, the specter of numerous secondary offerings from motivated PE sellers; and, of course, listed comps trading at a fraction of the valuation, GDDY at $26 is beyond expensive..."

Facebook hosting doesn't change things, the world already changed — Remains of the Day: "... The value of being a generalist as a reporter, someone who just shows up and asks questions and transcribes them into a summary article, is not that valuable. If you cover an industry, do you understand that industry? Take tech reporters as an example, many of them don't understand the underlying technology they write about. That may have sufficed in a bygone age, but it no longer does... Taking the time to become an expert in a domain still has value because it takes hard work, and that is also not a resource that is equally distributed in the world...."

11 Points A Somewhat Bearish Long Has Wrong About Google | Seeking Alpha: "Advertising is how it has chosen to monetize the information flow it facilitates. In my eyes, the worst thing Google could do is get away from its position where it is comfortably collecting a royalty on the creation and flow of information."

How Super Angel Chris Sacca Made Billions, Burned Bridges And Crafted The Best Seed Portfolio Ever: ".... Camp, who sold StumbleUpon to eBay for $75 million in 2007, had the idea to make an app so his friends could book a black car to take them around town. He first called it UberCab. Camp’s friend and early advisor, the author Tim Ferriss, remembers that the idea seemed “ridiculous” to many outside the Jam Pad circle. “People who had the opportunity to invest laughed it off as this one-percenter vanity service,” Ferriss says. “Chris was not one of them. He had faith very early on.” Kalanick became a mega-advisor of sorts to the fledgling startup, and Sacca wanted a piece. The pair cemented the startup’s angel $1.3 million financing at the Truckee house, with Sacca ponying up $300,000, a large check for an $8 million fund. “I went all-in,” he says. More than just money, he helped negotiate Kalanick’s compensation and secure the Uber name from Universal Music Group. Lowercase would add another $400,000 worth of Uber at the Series A round in early 2011, led by Benchmark Capital’s Bill Gurley ..." (read more at the link above)
(emphasis added)

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