reecepacheco

HomeField on bostinnovation.com

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 08:38:31 -0500

BostInnovation.com did a nice writeup on HomeField. Check it out…

Falmouth boys in state basketball final | CapeCodOnline.com GO...

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 08:35:50 -0500

Falmouth boys in state basketball final | CapeCodOnline.com

GO CLIPPERS! Unfortunately, I missed my chance to play (hockey) at Boston Garden because I transferred out of Falmouth High the year my team went to the States, but I’m so excited for these kids right now.

High school sports are awesome. Congrats to Coach Lundberg - he’s a great guy.

Be sure to watch the awesome layup at the 2 minute mark and click through to read the whole story.

Features Don't Win

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 14:26:00 -0500

@robgo:

This is a continuation from my previous post about fast followers.

Several times a week, I hear a pitch from for a company that is fairly similar to existing players in the market. When I ask the entrepreneur how they expect to win vs. the various competitors, I’ll often hear something like:

“Well, they don’t have feature x, y, and z which has been built into our product from the beginning.”

These same folks usually include some sort of Harvey Ball chart to show how differentiated they are from their competitors.

My advice: if you need a Harvey Ball chart to show how you are different, you aren’t different enough.

In my view, winning as a startup doesn’t have that much to do with individual features. Features do drive success, but great teams and great product development processes drive features.

I saw a talk a while ago by Mike Maples. In it, he encourages entrepreneurs to “be different, not better”. I completely agree.

Being different means being WORSE than competitors in some dimensions. It’s a very intentional decision to forgo some areas of potential strength and choose the 1 or 2 dimensions that no one else is thinking about and absolutely destroy the competition in those areas.

Some examples? Tumblr, Zappos, Milo, Polyvore, etc.

Be different.

I completely agree here. This is the way we think about HomeField in terms of some of the competition.

We actually think of most of our competition as market validation and differentiate ourselves by our lack of features. We see it as a strength that enables HomeField to become the ubiquitous video platform for sports (and achieve some other stealth goals as well).

Joe's Development: Start of A New Market

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 10:08:23 -0500

Joe's Development: Start of A New Market:

Today the Business Development team of HomeField starts it’s next market, Men’s Division I soccer. We closed out our Spring Market of Div. I Men’s Lacrosse with 42% of the teams paying, and I expect to be above 50% by the end of the May.

Some of the things I’ve learned from this Market:

1….

proud of my BD team thus far. i’m psyched we’re starting to chase a new market segment.

stylman: Erik B & Rakim - Don’t Sweat the Technique

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 09:02:00 -0500

stylman:

Erik B & Rakim - Don’t Sweat the Technique

of course i love this. lacrosse: New Nike Commiercial: “The...

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 11:59:30 -0500

of course i love this.

lacrosse:

New Nike Commiercial: “The Human Chain”

My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2010-2-14)

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 14:50:38 -0500

My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2010-2-14):

Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz

The Season is Here... it's Always Here.

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 12:41:00 -0500

Lacrosse, per NCAA definition, is a “spring” sport. I know it’s February and there’s snow on the ground outside my window, but games have started so to me, it’s spring.

Five years ago, I’d be cranking through classes all day before a team lift (always legs on Monday), then I’d put in 2.5 hours battling through drills on a turf field on the roof of the Brown gymnasium, (Yes, on the roof. No, it wasn’t cool. It was cold, windy, and half the field was covered in building exhaust… ok, yeah, we sort of relished it), then we’d head inside to watch game film for 30 minutes and finally sit in the ice bath to soak up the soreness.

The coolest part was I did all of this surrounded by 40 other guys who all had the same mission as I - win game #1. Then #2, #3, #4 and so on…

These days, my competitive career is entirely different.

I probably stay more active in lacrosse than my teammates on the NYAC. Already this year I took a trip to Miami to play in a tournament. I had a blast playing with some other amazing players, the competition was solid and I even took an 80mph shot in the ribs that has been painfully reminding me of the trip for a month now. (Seriously, this bruised rib is one of the most nagging injuries I’ve ever had).

And last weekend, I headed back to Brown with some other alums for a preseason scrimmage against the current Bears team (Unsurprisingly, Providence hadn’t warmed up since I graduated. Wind chill had the temp around 7 degrees). Still, it was a great day and us veterans were able to pull out a close win over the young pups.

The win was fun for a moment, but there was still a fundamental lacking for me and I’m realizing how much I miss the bonding of a team working towards a common goal and the inherently high level of competition on a daily basis.

Sure, when my NYAC team starts up soon we will all be focused on winning our 4th straight A.L.L. Championship, but we don’t even practice. We just show up on Sundays and play. It’s easier on the calendar, but I know deep down every teammate of mine, and every true competitor out there, needs that battle and that feeling of true team.

But since my lacrosse career won’t last forever, I’ve assembled a new team (different “sport”), uber-competitive, we all have the same mission… and this game is played 24/7.

Heartbeats by Jose Gonzalez ok… i’ll bite and post a...

Sun, 14 Feb 2010 11:50:08 -0500

Heartbeats by Jose Gonzalez

ok… i’ll bite and post a Valentine’s tune. amazingly beautiful song.

ditto. headunderwater: Bob Marley - Turn Your Lights Down Low I...

Sun, 14 Feb 2010 11:05:03 -0500

ditto.

headunderwater:

Bob Marley - Turn Your Lights Down Low

I like my love songs old school.

"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt." - Bertrand Russell

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 16:12:02 -0500

via @AustinBryan

The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which “people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices but their incompetence robs them of themetacognitive ability to realize it”.^[1] The unskilled therefore suffer from illusory superiority, rating their own ability as above average, much higher than in actuality; by contrast the highly skilled underrate their abilities, suffering from illusory inferiority. This leads to a perverse result where less competent people will rate their own ability higher than more competent people. It also explains why actual competence may weaken self-confidence because competent individuals falsely assume that others have an equivalent understanding. “Thus, the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others.”^[1]

^{…but once the intelligent get confident, it is a powerful mix.}

I am very fortunate to have grown up in the restaurant business,...

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 15:46:34 -0500

I am very fortunate to have grown up in the restaurant business, with a father who cares about eating well and a mother who grew fresh vegetables in our garden. Not everyone is that lucky, and it’s a shame that America is consequently in such bad shape (literally).

Oliver’s TED talk is brilliant and I hope his wish comes true.

brycedotvc:

One of the most powerful TED talks I’ve seen. This is part of the problem we’re hoping to attack via our investment in Local Dirt.

Brilliant. Competition FTW. @bryce: Dear Google, Bright and...

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 13:06:46 -0500

Brilliant. Competition FTW.

@bryce:

Dear Google,

Bright and early I logged into one of my favorite services and saw this news.

You’ve been catching a lot of heat lately. The echo chamber seems to think you want to be everything to everybody. As though dominating our search box wasn’t enough, now you want to control our friendships, our health records, what we carry in our pockets and the pipes into our homes.

I for one welcome out new overlord. Not because you will dominate in all of these categories or even do any of them all that well. Frankly, I think many of the powerful subtleties of these servies and devices will be lost on you.

No, I welcome you because each time you plant a stake in the ground it makes everyone uncomfortable. It makes them nervous. Because as much as we love to hate you, your engineers and your reach scare us.

You see, we need competition. It brings the best out of us. We can fall into the rut of seeing nice month over month growth and increasing market share that leads to high fives ‘round the board room tables for meeting our modest metrics. As true as this scenario is in start ups, its even more true in large companies who’ve been holding back innovation in the fields of mobile, media, telecom, energy, health and education.

Yes, you’ll make missteps and may never gain the kind of presence in any of these categories that you have in search, but I don’t think that’s your point. I think you see the same complacency we see in very large markets and want to rattle the cages to remind us we’re all still alive and we all need to compete every day to deliver the best possible experience for our customers.

Look, I’ll probably never own a Nexus One, but I think my iPhone will be better for having you put Apple’s feet to the fire. I may never switch from Comcast, but I bet they’ll up their service level and bandwidth speeds with you in the market. And I may never store my health records with you, but I bet we’ll get closer to a transparent health system with you in the mix.

So, thank you Google for a reminder that the aim of competition is to bring the best out of us all. Oh, and, Game On!

XOXO,

bryce.vc

Something Good Can Work - Two Door Cinema Club heavy rotation...

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 09:56:07 -0500

Something Good Can Work - Two Door Cinema Club

heavy rotation for me since I heard it on @WOXY recently. very catchy. enjoy.

bijan: Heaven’s On Fire - The Radio Dept this band is trending...

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 09:50:23 -0500

bijan:

Heaven’s On Fire - The Radio Dept

this band is trending on the Hype Machine right now. I can see why.

i love the muppets (and these are 3 of my favs). perfect...

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 16:09:49 -0500

i love the muppets (and these are 3 of my favs). perfect afternoon pick-me-up for a long day.

The Muppets: Beaker’s Ballad (via MuppetsStudio) via @ptmaddiganesq

Ambling Alp by Yeasayer awesome tune. download here.

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 07:57:38 -0500

Ambling Alp by Yeasayer

awesome tune. download here.

"Smaller up-front investments create a greater range of exit strategies where everyone wins. For..."

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 10:14:37 -0500

““Smaller up-front investments create a greater range of exit strategies where everyone wins. For example, if a business raises a small amount of initial capital, then exceeds its early milestones and decides to swing for the fences, it can then raise a larger sum at a higher price, while preserving ownership. If the business is not ready for rapid growth, it preserves the option for an exit at around $50 million, while still delivering a high return for investors. This dual-track model is less available to companies that raise large amounts of money early.””

- The Hottest VC No One Has Ever Heard Of - robgo.org

Good read for early stage entrepreneurs, you’ve got to walk before you can run and micro VC’s are an exciting trend to help. I’m happy to be talking with a few about HomeField.

"Gillespie appreciates the way sports culture has influenced American students. It discourages..."

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 22:12:20 -0500

“Gillespie appreciates the way sports culture has influenced American students. It discourages whining, and rewards self-discipline. It teaches self-control and its own form of justice, which has a more powerful effect than anything taught in the classroom.”

- Op-Ed Columnist - The Sporting Mind - NYTimes.com via @jpbrunelle

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I’ve learned so many valuable lessons in my athletic career that help me in my career and personal life. I think everyone can benefit from the rigors of sport.

I love sports. Awesome video by Nike:Take It To The Next Level...

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 15:03:42 -0500

I love sports. Awesome video by Nike:Take It To The Next Level - Directors Cut (via @bryanbeshore)