Myne blog

NFL: Preseason. Eagles' Power Ranking: 1: "The Eagles are absolutely loaded. Anything less than a Super Bowl win will be disappointing."

- Bleacher Report, NFL Power Rankings, August 1, 2011

NFL: Week 6. Eagles' Power Ranking: 20: "Is there anything better than watching a hyped-up team fall flat on its face? Between the Miami Heat and the Eagles, 2011 has been a good year for schadenfreude."

- Bleacher Report, NFL Power Rankings, October 10, 2011

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NFL: Preseason: 49ers' Power Ranking: 25: "The 49ers may field a team in 2011 very similar to 2010 edition of this team, which means another 6 - 10 record is not out of the question. Trusting Alex Smith for one more year seems like a worthless transaction."

- Bleacher Report, NFL Power Rankings, August 1, 2011

NFL: Week 6: 49ers Power Ranking, 3: "NFL Coach of the Year: Jim Harbaugh. NFL Comeback Player of the Year: Alex Smith. Give credit to Jed York and Trent Baalke for trusting Harbaugh to re-sign Alex Smith at quarterback."

- Bleacher Report, NFL Power Rankings, October 10, 2011

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NFL analysts have a hard time analyzing the NFL. Like Bleacher Report (above), ESPN publishes 'NFL Power Rankings' every week. Of the teams that made ESPN's Preseason Top 10, only five remain ranked in the Top 10 at the end of Week 7. Four teams have been demoted from the Top 10 in dramatic fashion, by an average of 16 positions each (Jets, Falcons, Eagles, Colts). Three teams have been promoted to the Top 10 in dramatic fashion, by an average of 18 positions each (Lions, Bills, 49ers). As the NFL has only 32 teams, promotions and demotions of this magnitude indicate that the corresponding predictions were dead wrong (excluding the Colts, who last their franchise player to injury). ESPN's only preseason predictions that have held up through Week 7---the Packers (1) and Patriots (2)---required minimal expert analysis: The Packers won the Super Bowl last season, and the Patriots are perennially favored to win the Super Bowl.

I am not suggesting that ESPN and Bleacher Report are hiring incompetent NFL analysts. I am suggesting that American football is sufficiently complicated that it is difficult even for experts to predict how well a particualr team will perform in a particular season. Among other variables that an expert must consider: 

• the intangibles of a player (See http://bleacherreport.com/articles/338933-the-manningleaf-debate-what-could-h...; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmH27scihL0);
• the chemistry of a team (See http://aol.sportingnews.com/nfl/story/2011-07-28/haynesworth-will-be-patriots...>
• the strength of a team's schedule (See http://www.betvega.com/nfl-strength-of-schedule/); and
• the complexity of the sport itself (See below for a defensive play from Dick LeBeau's playbook):

Of course, American football is not the only sport where predictions feel like guesses. Experts struggle to make accurate predictions even in the sport that elevated statistical analysis to divine status, Major League Baseball. Take the 2011 preseason predictions of Sports Illustrated's Twelve 'Baseball Experts': One of twelve predicted that the Texas Rangers would reach the World Series. Zero of twelve predicted that the St. Louis Cardinals would.

Fortunately for professional sports teams, outcomes of professional sports are decided on fields, not in columns. Which is why, every year, dozens of professional teams go from rags in columns to riches on fields---and, subsequently, riches in columns. All it takes is a team that has talent, that knows it has talent, and that is not discouraged by predictions to the contrary by experts. The last requirement, not being discouraged by naysayers, is the hardest one of all. It requires an almost psychotic belief in yourself and an equally psychotic disbelief of others. It requires the ability to read a headline that says, "You are going to fail," and to think, "Wrong. I am going to succeed."

Not surprisingly, the leaders of teams that defy preseason predictions, like Jim Harbaugh of the 49ers, are oftentimes almost (read: clearly) psychotic: 

http://deadspin.com/5850301/watch-jim-harbaugh-and-jim-schwartz-almost-fight

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In several respects, the relationship between sports teams and sports experts is similar to the relationship between start-ups and investors:

1. It is difficult to predict how a particular start-up will fare. This is true even when that start-up (a) raises $41 million; (b) is backed by Sequoia; (c) has a team with successful entrepreneurial experience; and (d) receives the highest praise a start-up ever has received, from Doug Leone himself: "Just as the iPone changed everything about mobile phones, Color will transform the way people communicate with each other. Once or twice a decade a company emerges from Silicon Valley that can change everything. Color is one of those companies" (For Scoble's take, see http://scobleizer.com/2011/04/01/the-funding-and-failures-of-color-silicon-va....  
2. Because it is difficult to predict how a start-up will fare, even start-up experts---venture capital firms---have a hard time making such predictions. Examples abound: A reputable Boston-based VC, Battery Ventures, turned down Facebook in 2004 because it did not look different to them than Friendster, a company in which they already had invested (See http://news.yahoo.com/boston-venture-capitalists-ponder-facebook-billions-mis.... Bessemer Ventures, the oldest venture capital firm in the country, passed on, among other companies, Apple, eBay, Federal Express, Google, Intel and Paypal (See http://www.bvp.com/Portfolio/AntiPortfolio.aspx). Many of the most highly-respected venture capital firms have simply removed themselves from the business of making predictions. Instead, they wait for other firms' predictions to prove right or wrong, and then they invest. As a partner at a world-class VC told me about the simplicity of his decision-making process, "A monkey could do my job." For later-stage VC's, the process of predicting winners is equivalent to an NFL analyst waiting until the fourth quarters of the AFC and NFC championship games before making his or her Super Bowl prediction.
3. Given the above, a start-up must not be discouraged by the predictions of investors, which predictions oftentimes take the form of decisions not to invest. Myne has been fortunate enough that over a dozen investors have predicted that we will succeed, but a dozen other investors have predicted otherwise. We have become accomplished at ignoring those predictions. We understand that the world we are entering is sufficiently complex that every prediction of our success, in our favor or not, is meaningless compared to our own belief that we can, and will, succeed. That belief is critical. If success is 99% execution, execution is 99% belief. It is belief in our success, not just caffeine, that gives us the energy to work eighty-hour weeks, month after month. It is belief in your success that impassions us to build and maintain a team that believes as strongly as we do in our success. It is belief in our success that allows us to turn potholes, roadblocks and detours into ever-increasing determination to reach our destination. It belief in our success that turns sky-searching uncertainty into "the sky is the $%@! limit."

We leave it to Myne's secure recesses whether the leaders of our team are as psychotic as Jim Harbaugh. But we are comfortable revealing that we believe in our success as much as Jim Harbaugh believes in the San Francisco 49ers. And we put as little stock in the predictions of others that he does.

So, if you want to make a prediction on Myne, go to Myne.com; "Predict" is our most popular game.

SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK

COUNTY OF NEW YORK

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

KOSOVO PROPERTIES, LLC and

BAJRAKTARI MANAGEMENT CORP., Plaintiffs,

-against-

REDACTED and JEREMY FISCHBACK (sic)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

AFFIDAVIT OF MARK ROSENBERG

Sir/Madam:

In the State of California, County of Alameda, Mark Rosenberg, under penalty of perjury, deposes and says:

1. I declare under penalty of perjury and upon personal knowledge that the foregoing is true and correct: 
2. On January 27, 2006, at approximately 5:30 P.M., I arrived at Apartment 3-R, 216 West 22nd Street, New York, New York, to visit REDACTED and Jeremy Fischbach.
3. Fischbach was there when I arrived, but left at around 6:00 P.M. for a recording session in New Jersey.
4. Approximately one hour after Fischbach left, REDACTED noticed a small fire inside an oil-filled skillet on the kitchen stove. I assumed at the time that REDACTED's girlfriend had left the skillet on the stove. To my knowledge, neither REDACTED nor ever used the kitchen in the apartment. REDACTED later confirmed that it was REDACTED who left the oil-filled skillet on the stove.
5. REDACTED attempted to extinguish the fire by dousing the skillet with water from a tap over the kitchen sink. The fire exploded outward from the skillet and---after spreading to numerous plastic dry-cleaning bags nearby---quickly consumed the entire kitchen. I assumed at the time that REDACTED had left the dry-cleaning bags nearby, because they contained women's clothes. I was told afterward by some combination of REDACTED, REDACTED and Fischbach that the dry-cleaning bags in fact belonged to REDACTED. 
6. Before the fire spread to the living room, I tried to contain the fire with a fire extinguisher, but I was not successful.
7. While the fire was still contained to the kitchen, REDACTED left the apartment to seek medical attention for his burned hand. Soon afterward, I realized that the fire could not be contained. I ran upstairs to help an elderly neighbor evacuate down the stairs, and then I left the apartment building myself. 
8. Once outside the apartment building, I contacted Fischbach on his cell phone to inform him that his apartment was burning down, and that REDACTED had been injured. Fischbach was at a recording session when I contacted him, and said that he would return immediately.
9. At the time Fischbach arrived at the apartment, N.Y.F.D. had been there for approximateiy one hour and a half.  
10. About an hour after Fischbach arrived, the N.Y.F.D. allowed Fischbach and myself back into the destroyed apartment. Nearly all of Fischbach's possessions---including thousands of dollars of electronic equipment---had been destroyed.
11. To the best of my recollection, neither a sprinkler system nor a smoke alarm activated at any time during the events described above.

Dated this 14 day of September, 2008.

Mark Rosenberg

321 63rd Street, Unit C

Oakland, CA 94618

"New York cares too much about money. Palo Alto is home to nerdy idealists who want their product to be perfect."

- Paul Graham, Founder of Y Combinator

"It's a fickle town, a tough town. They getcha, boy. They don't let you escape with minor scratches and bruises. They put scars on you here."

 - Reggie Jackson

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Silicon Valley is a far cry and three thousand miles from New York City: They smile. We sneer. They exercise. We smoke. They improve. We survive. 

Such differences have convinced certain members of the community that the startup scene in New York will never hold a (soy) candle to Silicon Valley. One such member of the community is Paul Graham, Founder of Y Combinator, a firm that funds young startups. Paul "kicked off the tech startup incubator's first official New York event (on September 26, 2011) with a half hour-long speech peppered with remarks about New York's inferiority to Silicon Valley. 'It's a cultural problem that goes way back,' explained the venture capitalist . . .

Hubs for particular activity tend to stay hubs unless they help out their rivals by starting to suck. Silicon Valley is not starting to suck. It's more of a startup hub than ever. NYC has definitely improved relative to the Valley but that's because it started from practically nothing and has grown over the past 10 years.

• http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2011/09/silicon-valley-meets-new-yo... scene-stirs-coast-tech-feud/42991/

Not all New Yorkers received Paul's comments well. Case in point, Courtney Myers, East Coast Editor of the The Next Web, which is based in Brooklyn:

I think what was most disappointing about Graham's speech is the sense of competition he brought to the table. When I first moved to New York City a childhood friend of mine described it as combustible. No one moves to New York to relax and kick their feet up. Citizens pay a high price to live amongst the best and brightest because they seek inspiration through opportunities that thrive on intellectual collaboration. Perhaps, this kind of collaboration between the two coasts should have been the focus of the evening.

• http://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2011/09/27/paul-graham-on-why-new-york-cit... beat-silicon-valley/

With all due respect to collaboration, I take no issue with the "sense of competition (Paul) brought to the table." If Paul wants to battle, let's battle. Battles have good outcomes:

• http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071104065406AAf8GLx

Plus, certain journalists (Robert Scoble) pay no attention to your company unless it is engaged in a battle. Well, Robert, if you get bored with Google versus Facebook, here is another battle in which to sink your ink:

Silicon Valley versus New York City. 

Paul Graham \fired the opening shots. And, whatever Vegas says about New York's odds, Myne stands behind what New York is fighting for, and in spite of, and the people---New Yorkers---on our side:

• In Silicon Valley, what matters is the ideal. In New York, what matters is the truth.

• Silicon Valley residents enjoy one season. New Yorkers endures all four.

• Silicon Valley is monochromatic: Green. East River alone is more heterochromatic than that. (For our younger readers, "heterochromatic" does not mean "fun to drink.")

• The Prius gets you from A to B in Silicon Valley. New Yorkers get from A to B at West Fourth on the subway---more environmentally conscious, more rats, more cats.

• New Yorkers exercise, too.

• We just have different footwear.

• In one corner, then, is the Valley: Ideal, Summer, Green, Prius, Cycling and Sandals. In the other corner, the Alley: Truth, Every Season, Every Color in the Rainbow, the Subway, Dancing and Boots.

• Not surprisingly, we do not "like" things in New York. We hate and we love.

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In sum, Silicon Valley is about developing greener ways to clean your dirty laundy. Myne, and New York City, are about diving head-first into your dirty laundry.

Hate us or love us---just don't like us.

Last Friday, I attended a seminar at General Assembly on 'how to publicize your website.' It was a question-and-answer session with Robert Scoble, one of the foremost tech bloggers and a very nice guy.

For those not familiar with Robert, ample evidence that he is one of the foremost tech bloggers:

• http://scobleizer.com/
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Scoble
• http://techcrunch.com/2008/04/20/who-are-the-top-tech-bloggers/

And here's a photograph of Robert, confirming that he's a very nice guy: 

Robert discussed several strategies for publicizing your company, including delivering pizza to famous bloggers while they wait in line at the Apple Store (the one on 5th Avenue near 59th St.) for the iPhone 5. Scoble was serious about the pizza strategy. I would be serious about it, too, if

1. I knew that mentioning it to a room full of hungry entrepreneurs (hungry for success and, in many cases, food) guaranteed that, by the time I reached the register, I would be in the latter stages - Absorption and Assimilation - of digesting a pizza one-and-a-half-feet-in-diameter; and
2. I liked pizza, which I do not, because I hate cheese.

A strategy Robert failed to mention was this: Do whatever it takes to get a famous blogger's attention if that  blogger is standing 10 feet in front of you leading a seminar on how to get a famous blogger's attention. I decided I should teach myself that lesson before the seminar concluded. Translation: I spent 35 minutes delivering an inner monologue that went something like this: "Stand up. Mention Myne to Robert. Do it. Now. Forget it, the moment passed. You are an idiot. You will regret it if you say nothing. You hate having regrets. Wait. Another moment is here. O.K, Stand up. Seriously, stand up. Say something. Say literally anything. Tell him how Myne is spelled---you know, with a "y." What questions is he going to ask? 'What is Myne?' C'mon, you've answered that 50,000 times. How does Myne connect to the "Google versus Facebook" battle Scoble keeps talking about? Who cares? I care. How about this: Myne users post results on Google and Facebook, so Myne is like the United States in the Iran-Iraq War: 'Sorry you guys are fighting. Please keep fighting.'"

I finally got tired of having an inner monologue so I stood up and said this:

At Myne, we're focused not on conflicts between companies, but on conflicts within people. We make it fun to admit your secrets. One of our questions is, "Where do I belong on the 0 - 100 Gay-Straight continuum?." One of users responded: "I have a wife and two kids, but I would slide the bar to 50%."

Scoble's response: "Intriguing. So you guys are focused on everything people don't want Zuckerberg to know about them. I like it. Facebook is going to take over the world, but it isn't going to take over our bedrooms."

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Scoble and I exchanged emails over the weekend. I look forward to standing near enough to him in the iPhone 5 line to make a credible play for leftover breadsticks or any other cheeseless item delivered with his pizza.

Fellow hungry entrepreneurs: Remember tomato sauce.

*
Jeremy 

Some choice insights from a week on Myne . . .

1. My mother predicted that I was over a quarter (27%) gay ("you dress pretty well," she said) . . .

. . . while a group of close friends think I "get the most ass" among the crew:

Go figure. (And no, these friends are not actually dogs, tropical fruit, or the president of South Africa - I just figured this question deserved a dose of privacy. That being said, I do like dogs and tropical fruit).

2. On average, my New Yorker friends revealed that the 10th anniversary of 9/11 only "kind of" (52%) mattered to them.  Interestingly, my Israeli friends gave an average answer of 76% - to them, it mattered "quite a bit."  

3. My uber-atheist step-father - the invisible man down below - is very close to my step-sister, but: a) they have opposite ideas about the existence of God; and b) hadn't really discussed the issue before Myne. My step-father totally under-predicted his daughter on this (rather significant) question.

Fund-raising for your start-up is a complete and utter bitch.

It consumes an enormous amount of your time (time you are not spending on your product, the quality of which determines your abilty to raise money); it is extremely stressful (the most stressful experience I ever had, other than being stranded in Mexico, hanging to a cliff a thousand feet above the riverbed with a dislocated shoulder); and failure is never an option and always a highly likely possibility.

Not surprisingly, the process of fund-raising exacts costs that are numerous and painful:

1. Existential: I bear a good deal of responsibility for bringing Myne into the world. If I fail to raise money, Myne fails. If Myne fails, I fail. If I fail, I am a failure.
2. Psychological: The definition of a 24/7 mind f#!k: My ability to rent next month depends on my ability this month to convince someone I don't know that my idea is so enticing to users and busineses that they, the potential investor, should grab their check book to pay my salary so I can execute it. I feel like a door-to-door saleman, except I am selling myself.   
3. Physical: I used to exercise daily. Now, the exercise I get is pacing around the room during phone calls with investors. I lost 10 pounds in 12 months and no longer care at all about my appearance. I walked my girlfriend to the subway yesterday, and as she faced me to say 'goodbye'---and observed that I was wearing a peanut-butter-stained t-shirt and used tuxedo pants with medical scrubs hanging out the bottom---she said, "You scare me." I was hoping for "I love you." 
4. Financial: I could be earning $160,000/year as a lawyer. Instead, after I pay off law school loans, rent and bills each month, I am left with $100. I can't afford a birthday present for my girlfriend. I have no health insurance. I fry potatoes, onions and cold cuts for lunch and dinner every day:
   
5. Interpersonal: Fund-raising for Myne has taken a huge toll on my most important relationships. It is a miracle that my girlfriend has not ended our relationship. I just about ruined my family vacation last week because I did nothing but attend meetings with VC's. My older brother accused me of removing "vacation" from "vacation." 

Last but not least, there is always someone there to remind you that your sacrifices are statistically likely to have been made in vain. Only yesterday, one of our investors emailed me a link to the following article. It's called, "Why Startups Fail":

http://www.buzzfeed.com/visual.ly/why-startups-fail-infographic-3uer 

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How have I coped with the misery of fund-raising? By finding encouragement wherever I can:

Why have I coped with the misery of fund-raising? Because if your idea is good enough, and your mind is sound enough, faint lights at the end of the tunnel begin to materialize. 

*

Jeremy

P.S. While I use the word "I" in this blog, the misery I have experienced has afflicted other members of our team, too, particularly Mark, who singlehandedly raised our first found and without whom there would be no Myne.

Except for the super-extroverts among us . . .

I imagine we've all experienced moments of having something to say and not having the words or the opportunity to say it. Or of only mustering those words after someone else speaks up first and gets the ball rolling. 

In the classroom, for instance, I bet you remember at least one time when you really wanted to raise your hand and say something profound, but never did. Or an instance where you felt far more comfortable saying your piece in the middle than in the beginning of a discussion.  I saw this countless times as an instructor at Berkeley, where some of my brightest, most thoughful students (on paper) would rarely speak up in class and - when they did - would almost never raise their hand first. 

This recent article in The New York Times relates how educators are tackling these issues by using social media to facilitate classroom discussions. Students who feel more comfortable writing their thoughts in an online discussion forum than voicing them out loud are being allowed to do so. The downside of this approach is pretty clear - after all, we don't want a society of digital mutes. Still, it is interesting to note that teachers who use this technology not only see an increase in classroom participation, but they also report a big increase in off-line, verbal, human-to-human discussion if a student is allowed to make her initial comment online. 

Myne brings many of these dyanmics to your inner circle (although Myne is way more fun than school). Our content - which ranges from deep to dirty - helps you say things you've always wanted to say but never found the words. It helps you think about things you've never thought of before, and makes it easy, fun and rewarding to express those thoughts to the people closest to you. It helps get the ball rolling, and keeps it rolling by spurring online interactions and offline discussions. 

Myne helps you raise your hand. 

Mark

My father was born and raised in Brooklyn.

He has spent his adult life in Tippecanoe County, Indiana. Tippecanoe County is 89% White, has a median income of $38,652, and among its biggest employers are Caterpillar, Suburu and Alcoa. 

From space, the area around my father's house - A - looks like this:

More often than not, he is clothed in denim (top, middle and bottom): 

PHOTOGRAPH REDACTED

On weeknights and weekends, he can be found:

(1) Riding his John Deere lawn mower

(2) Fixing one of his clunkers---his last purchase, for $500, was a Buick Park Avenue with 330,000 miles on its odometer

(The moon is only 240,000 miles away)

(3) Repairing our well 

(4) Firing a gun at rodents

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When I asked my father if he was "blue-collar" or "white-collar," he was, at that moment, wiring the house so it could run on auxillary power from an external generator. Here is where he slid the bar: 

(0) Blue Collar-------------------------------------------------------------98%--White Collar (100)

His explanation: "I'm a professor. It doesn't get more white-collar than that."d

*

Jeremy

P.S. A recent photograph of my father:

Imagine, I marveled (and/or yelled) to Jeremy: a place to communicate meaningfully with people who actually matter to you.

A place to share the kind of personal, quirky, under-the-surface things that you just don't find on Facebook. A place to be real, both with yourself and with the people who actually matter to you.

I had fallen in love with the idea of Myne.

Of course, both love and ideas are complicated, and the journey from theory to practice is hard.

About 3 months ago, I realized we were actually making it happen. We had just given our alpha users the ability to share questions-and-answers, and I formed a 'Circle' with five of my oldest, closest friends. With love (still) on the brain, I asked everyone in the group to answer the following question (we now call this a "Poll" game):

How many times have I fallen in love?

Even asking the question kind of blew my mind, not only because it forced me to think - perhaps for the first time - about my own answer, but also because I realized I no idea what everyone else's answers would be. And when those answers came in, a lot of really good things happened. Most immediately, we learned about the whos and whens underlying our five numbers. But more importantly, we also had a number of conversations (both online and off) about life, happiness, family, marriage, religion, and growing up. Indeed, we even spoke about cars: one friend's only love was his old Volvo.

With one question and a few mouse clicks, I discovered some deeply significant things about people I've known for over 20 years. That's amazing.

That's Myne.

-Mark

"Data visualization" is an important element of Myne.

Every game you play generates data (about you and your inner circle), and we have to enable you to see, and understand, that data: your data. And while seeing is easy, understanding is not. It is hard to make data easy to understand.

Take this "sunburst" diagram, which summarizes The Beatles' working schedule from 1963 to 1966 (www.mikemake.com/#72772/Charting-the-Beatles): 

It's easy to see that it's hard to depict or digest, in a single diagram, 3 activities, 4 years, 4 variables, 12 months and 12 albums. The Beatles confronted the same challenge, simplifying the complex, in their music: "A Day in the Life" incorporates 2 songs, 4 stories, 23 instruments and 47 musicians:

Data visualization succeeds when it makes complex information 1) approachable, so users understand the information at-a-glance, and 2) insightful, so users discover something valuable they did not know before. Matt McKeon's visualization of Facebook's evolving privacy settings accomplishes both (www.mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy):>

On Myne, of course, data visualizations are not about The Beatles or Facebook. They are about you. And your inner circle. And while our visualizations eventually will be pretty, for now, our sole objective is to make them easy to understand. If we succeed, you will understand everything from how many words per minute you contribute to conversations with your parents . . .

 . . . to the fact that, when your friend's friends vent to him, and he re-vents those vents to you . . . 

. . . it is equivalent to your friends' friends, most of whom you do not know, venting directly to you.

I created those visualizations, and, as you can see and understand, I am not a designer. Our official visualizations are created by Gregory Mueller, who is a designer. Greg's visualizations look like this:

It must meet the definition of 'irony' that I was unafraid of clowns until I saw Greg's clown, which was designed to represent, not cause, a fear of clowns. I now suffer from a mild case of Coulrophobia (24%) and have prohibited Greg from designing visualizations for any phobias I do not currently have.

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Jeremy