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.