A couple of days ago, I had a phone call with a partner of an early stage VC firm whose portfolio is filled with successful startups you've heard of. Halfway through our conversation, they told me: "We only invest in companies that believe they can be worth $1 billion dollars. If you think you'd be happy with $50-100 million, you're not the right company for us. The companies we invest in generate $100,000 per month in revenue within 6-12 months of launch, and $1 million per month in revenue by 1 year after that. How do you plan to do that?"

What?

I was shocked. I can't think of a single non-ecommerce startup that can boast $100k in monthly revenues within 6-12 months of launch AND were creating a new market. Not Google. Not Facebook. Not Twitter. Not Yahoo. Maybe Apple? Microsoft?

As Steve Blank so eloquently says, when you are creating a new market, you have no idea how long the flat part of the hockey stick really is. That's because you are creating a new product that people don't even know they want, because they've never seen anything like it before. And you are creating something based on a mountain of assumptions, because you don't know what people will want once they know they want something. 

This is all to say, choose your investors wisely. 

(NB — This partner, by the way, has never started their own company or worked at a startup.)

For the first time since November 2008, I'm getting a paycheck today. It's not much ($930.46) and 1/5th of what I used to be paid, but I'll take it. Needless to say, I have no money left and credit card bills to pay, so it's coming at a good time.

Being an entrepreneur means sacrifice. I gave up my $3000/month beautiful Brooklyn loft for splitting a 2 bedroom with 3 people in Bayonne, NJ for $300/month. I was without health insurance for 15 months. And I can't tell you just how much I appreciate J for putting up with living in Bayonne when I know she misses NYC and hates the commute.

Being an entrepreneur means being comfortable living on the edge. Last March, when I was still in Brooklyn, I had a $3000 rent check due in 2 weeks, and I didn't have the money to pay it. And yet, you find a way. I was able to secure an investor and pay my rent on time.

Being an entrepreneur means riding a rollercoaster. One day in December, we're celebrating because an angel investor told us he wanted to put in $200,000. Over the following weeks, we agree to a price and terms, and then he pulls out. From what Chris Dixon writes, this is more common than it should be. In the end, though, I think it was the best thing that could have happened to us.

Being an entrepreneur means compromise. Having no money means you can't buy what you want, go out to eat whenever you want, travel wherever you want. But in return, you get to create something meaningful, be your own boss, and love what you do.

I wouldn't have it any other way.

Click the link above to sign up for my office hours. I usually hold them Friday afternoons. My way to give back to the community.

I've already had 5 or 6 conversations with some really great people, and another one set up for this Friday. Email / IM / Phone / In person all work. Hope to hear from you.

I attended the "Real time! Search meets Social" event / panel last night hosted by SEMPO (as part of Social Media Week). It was a more enjoyable event than the super-crowded-bars-filled-with-media-girls events I attended earlier in the week (that's a personal bias: I hate crowded spaces where I have to shout to speak with the person right next to me).

One thought I had last night was, aren't brands overinvesting in Twitter? If you think about it, the most valuable tweets fall into two categories: breaking news and links to interesting content. And the former is only valuable right now — 2 week old breaking news isn't very "breaking" anymore. So the real value comes from giving people on Twitter content worth sharing: it's word-of-mouth and it's free! Furthermore, if you look at dollars spent as a result of search versus Twitter, search is larger by orders of magnitude, so shouldn't brands be focused on creating content (including blog posts) that gets indexed by search engines and passed around on Twitter / IM / email / Facebook?

I asked this question of the people on the panel, who represented StockTwits, HootSuite, Shorty Awards, Trendrr, and Collecta, a very Twitter focused bunch (other than Collecta). I didn't get a very clear answer from any of them, but generally it seemed like they agreed with me, which is ironic considering how Twitter-centric they are. 

When brands get back to questions of ROI and metrics when investing time and resources into social media, I think we will see a resurgence in blogging and multimedia, because at the end of the day, people need something to tweet about and share. Better to be talked about, than simply talk.

It's been awhile since I posted a photo and recipe. Feels good to do it again. 

This is adapted from Mark Bittman's "Everyday Buttermilk Waffles" recipe found in the essential How to Cook Everything, mainly the addition of lemon and the use of greek yogurt instead of buttermilk.

Ingredients:

2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 cups 2% greek yogurt thinned with 1/2 cup skim milk
2 eggs, separated
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) butter, melted and cooled
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 lemon
Butter for greasing the waffle iron

Preparation:

1. Combine the dry ingredients in a large bowl. In another bowl, whisk together the yogurt, milk, and egg yolks. Stir in butter and vanilla.
2. Grate lemon zest into the wet mixture, then squeeze lemon juice into bowl.
3. Brush the waffle iron with butter and heat it. Stir the wet ingredients into the dry. Beat the egg whites with a whisk or electric mixer until they hold soft peaks. Fold them gently into the batter. If the mixture seems too thick, add more milk or a dash of a neutral oil like grapeseed oil. The mixture should be loose enough to pour but still thick.
4. Spread enough batter onto the waffle iron to barely cover it; bake until the waffle is done, 3 to 5 minutes, depending on your iron (mine takes 2 minutes). Serve immediately.

Tumblr recently redesigned their dashboard and added a spot that showcases one post from the Tumblr Radar, which is Tumblr's editorial selection of the most interesting / popular posts on Tumblr right now.

I suspect they are using the spot to collect data on how engaged Tumblr users are with the spot in order to entice advertisers. Let's say that on average, posts in that spot get 1 million unique views per day and 700 million impressions. Furthermore, you could say that posts in that spot get thousands of likes and reblogs and followers.

That would be a pretty compelling reason to convince a business to become a paying Tumblr user. Sure, you get the free blog (and Tumblr will help you design it all pretty), but you also get the super sekret analytics that will tell you how many people are reading your posts via the Tumblr dashboard. And, you'll get the opportunity to PAY to have your posts be featured in that spot. (Only genuine, value-added posts will be approved of course. You don't want to obviously be an ad. The Newsweek Tumblr is a positive example.)

I love it. I think it's a great idea, and I expect Tumblr will make a nice amount of money off of it. I don't know if they'll make enough millions though... but it might be enough to get them acquired by AOL or News Corp.

What do you think?

C'mon, you know you want to.

My friend Kelly, who I worked with at Etsy and is my co-founder Chris’ girlfriend, has built the prototype of a social shopping site focusing on stylish items (unlike existing sites that focus on consumer electronics). It’s a pretty neat site and I like the idea. She’s pretty good on both the PHP hacking end and on the product end, but has realized that she is unable to do both well simultaneously.

So, she is looking for a co-founder. Either a product / UX person or a coder… whichever you are will allow her to do the other. If you are interested, email me at david.lifson@gmail.com and I’ll pass you along.

Jon Steinberg recorded the Hackers & Founders demos tonight held at our offices (also known as Dogpatch Labs). Here's a video of me presenting. The lighting is bad so you can't see my face much, but it's there if you're interested.

Inspired by Kyle Bragger (who was inspired by Nate Westheimer), I've decided to offer office hours to chat about startups, tech, or whatever else you wish that you think I would also find interesting. So let me know who you are and we'll set something up. If you're in NYC, you can drop by my office or we'll find coffee in Union Square. Or, we can chat via phone / IM. I hope more and more people can spare an hour or so of time once a week to help build the NYC community. Education can make a huge difference, and you never know how the people you help might end up helping you.