- Venture Capital - Jonathan Strauss of Awe.sm on TWiVC #67

Mark celebrates his return to the TWiVC table with the co-founder of Awe.sm, Jonathan Struass. The two discussed Jonathan's inspiration for a link tracking service and his experience with integrations.

0:30 Welcome everyone, I'm here today with Jonathan Strauss, the co-founder of Awe.sm.
3:00 So you were a social media marketing consultant? Are you willing to admit that publicly?
4:30 Was Bit.ly an inspiration for your idea?
9:00 Mark discusses how he has used Awe.sm at GRP Partners.
14:30 Thank you so much to Detroit Venture Partners to their support of the show. Everyone follow them and say thanks @DVPtweets.
17:45 Was Yahoo your first job out of college?
18:45 When was the realization that Yahoo was no longer cool?
21:45 When you were at Yahoo, all the big names were there, weren't they?
23:15 I think Terry Semel's strategy for Yahoo was absolutely correct, just a few years too early.
25:00 What hope does Yahoo have if Google is struggling to innovate on products?
27:00 I agree with Adam Wynne's comment in the chat: engineers do love a geek in charge.
32:00 Explain for the audience what cost fallacy is.
33:15 Thank you to Scott Walker Corporate Law for supporting the program. You can follow him @ScottEdWalker.
37:00 Mark and Jonathan discuss a post by Darius "Bubs" Monsef on the art of raising seed.
43:00 Jonathan: When you're actively fundraising, the more time you're in the market, the worse it looks for you.
45:15 Let's talk about app.net.
47:00 Dalton Caldwell wrote a blog post against Facebook, saying that they had invited him to come in and present under false pretenses.
52:15 I believe there's a certain naivete in Silicon Valley.
56:15 Mark to the Valley: Get over yourself. If you have consumers demanding to use your service, you'll be fine.
58:30 Let's use Instagram as an example: they were only on iOS when they came out and, as a result, got tons of support from Apple.
1:00:45 I think open always wins over closed.
1:05:30 The only thing people hate more than advertising is paying for something.
1:08:00 Will the Twitter API announcement impact Awe.sm in any way?
1:16:00 Do you agree that Apple is far more hostile to its communities than Twitter?
1:17:00 Anil Dash wrote a blog post that was all about what Twitter's API announcement could have said.
1:20:30 What does "a platform that makes links smart" actually mean?
1:25:00 Short links can show you who came to your page, is that the differentiator?
1:27:25 Jonathan, thank you for joining us today.

FOLLOW ON TWITTER
Mark: @msuster
TWiVC: @twivc
Jonathan: @jstrauss
Awe.sm: @awesm