I'm Only Investing Pre-Idea These Days

On my recent trip to the Bay Area I heard something right out of Annie Hall - if it had taken place in Silicon Valley. Remember the scene where Jeff Goldblum is overheard on the phone saying, “I forgot my mantra”? If Woody Allen had set part of that movie in the contemporary startup scene Goldblum might’ve said, “I’m only investing pre-idea.”

Only this is real. Are we back to vapor or is there something to this? If the old logic is true that an A+ team can succeed with a B+ product but an A+ product is worthless in the hands of a B+ team then perhaps funding people without worrying about what they make has legs.

I’m skeptical but intrigued.

A Brief History of Timelinks, Part 2

What’s so great about time?

Time is an interesting thing. Today, seconds, minutes and so on are defined by the vibrations of a cesium atom. But back in the day there was lunar time and solar time and everyone had their own version of time. When railroads started criss-crossing the nation just over a hundred years ago, even New York and Boston had different times of day. When it was noon in Boston it could be 12:17 in New York. This made scheduling train travel very difficult.

Eventually we realized that if we standardized time we could standardize the coming and going of people and commodities and thus unlock immense value and efficiency in the marketplace.

The move for everyone to have an online timeline - a standardized graph of their experiences - is no less revolutionary. Think about what we can learn about ourselves and each other when we have an accurate representation of who did what when and where! The WWW of the World Wide Web should be changed to Who What When. Misappropriation of acronyms happens to be a pet peeve of mine, however (Dear NYPD, CPR cannot mean Courtesy, Professionalism, Respect), so we won’t push that point.

Our approach with Timelinks is to create an open system of chronological standardization so we can better share our memories and experiences. Whether you’re doing legal research, journalism, criminal justice, or just want to understand how you connect to your loved ones and community, analysis of how lives intersect requires a standard platform and time is obvious, simple, and elegant.

That said, a timeline - in the old, I’m in 5th grade and trying to do my homework sense - is really a two-dimensional solution to a three-dimensional challenge. In creating Timelinks, we understood time to be textured and rich. We sought to break out of the old model and offer a space to explore these intersections and shared histories. So that’s what we built.

I’ll get back on track in telling the story of the business but wanted to express our philosophy a bit. 


A Brief History of Timelinks, Part 1

Friendster to Timelinks

Friendster blew me away. I remember the first time I heard about it, I was playing poker with a friend who had just signed up. I didn’t need to see it to instantly understand how dramatically the world was about to change. The force of  the idea was immense - connect everybody, six degrees of separation, genius. I signed up immediately and with each new iteration on the theme, LinkedIn, Myspace, Facebook, I expected the whole concept to move forward. It never really did, it just became a little more user friendly. And then one day in 2006 the solution hit me, every single human being could be seen as a trajectory leaving a trail of information. That trail knows everything about who you are, what you do, and with whom you interact. That trail could be used to reveal an astonishing depth of information, tell your life story, chronicle your experience, connect you to everyone with whom your life has intersected… I came to the conclusion that the answer was a timeline. I spent the next five years concocting a plan to launch a timeline business. I met with scores of angel investors, VCs, CEOs, and people from Facebook and now my company, International Time Machines is launching our website, Timelinks. The journey of creating this company was, like all journeys through time, multidimensional and multifaceted. In the coming weeks I’m going to tell that story here, discuss the power of chronologies, and keep you updated about the development of Timelinks.me.

When Is The Last Time You Did Something For the First Time?

A good friend of mine just asked me this question; apparently someone asked him at a conference. It’s possible it was Harry Beckwith, I’ll get that info down soon…

What an incredible layer on the chronicle of your life… firsts. The most recent one I could remember is eating whelks for the first time a few weeks ago at Misao Kovtun’s birthday at Balthazar in Soho. In fact, the photo is just below in a separate post. I’m still hoping that the first time I eat snails isn’t coming up too soon.

I wonder if there’s an optimal number of firsts to be had each month to keep ourselves balanced and moving forward. Great question.

New Ideas: Book Ends

Here are four publishing-related ideas I’ve been kicking around:

1. Foursquare for books. I would like an easy way to check in after I’ve read something. Once checked in, my friends would see what I’ve just read. This acts as an advertisement and endorsement. My friends can call me on the phone and ask me if they can borrow the book. But also, maybe checking in opens up a world of commentary about the passage or volume. I think this would be fun.

2. MMBC (Massive Multi-Player Book Club). One reason I don’t read those big hairy classics anymore is because I remember reading them in college. If it weren’t for the brilliant professors at Northwestern I wouldn’t have been able to really navigate some of the cultural and historical references or grasped all the nuance and symbolism. So imagine a book club made up of leading intellectuals, scholars, and all-around entertaining individuals. Now imagine that you can join that bookclub live each week as you read through the classics or download the videos and go at your own pace.

3. Social annotations. iBooks is missing margins. Remember when you would read a used book and the margins were filled with notes and certain passages where highlighted? Imagine if every person who ever read any book was able to scribble all over it and the reader could decide whose notes they want to appear when they read a book. I could see a professor’s notes or Charlie Sheen’s notes or my friend Smitty’s notes.

Three book ideas are enough for one day. Since the day that ______ took the idea above I realized that ideas should be free so enjoy.