Digital Media And The Nose On My Face

Digital Media and The Nose On My Face

My friends and colleagues suggested I take some of the emails I've bombared them with over the last few months, synthesize them somewhere, and going forward, find a more productive outlet, so here I am.

I’ve been in the technology community for a while now – and wearing a lot of different hats along the way – advisor (e.g. lawyer, consultant), venture investor, entrepreneur, big company executive. I’ve sold two companies I’ve run to public companies (AOL Select back to AOL, Backwire to Leap Wireless), made investments in companies that went public when I was a VC (Varsity Books, XMSR), but I’ve never liked an opportunity as much as the one I see now with video on the Internet. And I like it for two reasons – it’s a great investment of my time and sweat from a market timing and opportunity standpoint (I currently run a company called Lightningcast that provides audio and video ad insertion to companies such as AOL, Microsoft, ABC, MTV, A&E Networks, Scripps Networks, Infinity broadcasting and others) and, more importantly, its going to be a hell of a lot of fun. I have never been very good at predicting the future, judging the next big or new, new thing, or seeing a path for technology that others don’t see (actually I’m quite unburdened by my lack of any meaningful understanding of technology) – what I’m good at is seeing things the way they are, recognizing what’s happening now, evaluating it in light of what’s happened before and making some safe assumptions. Thus, my theme, talking about Digital Media And The Video Internet and the things about and around that topic which seem to me as plain as the (not small) nose on my face.