I’m going to Venturescape, the NVCA Annual Meeting May 14 and 15 in San Francisco and you should too. I haven’t been to one in many years, but this year is different. The NVCA is the National Venture Capital Association. It’s much more than just a trade organization, and this year’s annual meeting demonstrates that. [...]
Will Disruption Choke Television Business Models?
Mar
08
Here is the video of a panel I hosted at NATPE in Miami on January 28th. It features Rich Greefield from BTIG, Betsy Morgan CEO of The Blaze, Chet Kanojia CEO of Aereo, Alex Carloss from YouTube and Kevin Beggs CEO of Lionsgate. Great conversation about the disruptions facing the TV industry.
Facebook is No Longer Real-Time
Mar
07
It’s a good thing Facebook is thinking of redesigning the News Feed. Because I think a funny thing is happening to Facebook. For me, the news feed no longer surfaces anything of interest. The opaque algorithm behind it is just not able to produce anything relevant and, more important, timely, at least to me. Facebook [...]
TV Is Changing Before Our Eyes
Mar
06
It’s finally happening. The Internet is taking over TV. It’s just happening differently than many of us imagined. There are two major transformations underway. The Rise of The Internet Distributors. Led by Netflix, the group of new distributors includes Amazon and Microsoft now, but maybe Apple and Google later. They are largely distributing traditional TV [...]
Penn Engineering 2007 Commencement Address
Mar
05
It was an honor to be asked to address the 2007 Penn Engineering class as their commencement speaker. The video has been posted on YouTube for years, but I was recently asked to post the text. While it is several years old, I don’t believe the message is out of date. Good afternoon. I know [...]
Some Thoughts Coming Out of TED
(We need more entrepreneurs!)
Mar
01
With my mind fully stretched in various different directions, a bunch of thoughts are coalescing, coming out of another fantastic TED. Three main points are loosely stitched together in my mind and they point to a bunch of future opportunity. First, we heard convincingly from economists like Robert Gordon, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee that America’s [...]
My Congressional Testimony on Internet Music Licensing
Nov
28
I was invited to testify in front of the IP/Competition/Internet Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee on the state of internet music licensing. I presented the following testimony today: Testimony of David B. Pakman Partner Venrock U.S. House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, Competition and the Internet Hearing on “Music [...]
Dollar Shave Club − The Power of Asymmetric Marketing
Nov
01
Today we announced our investment in Dollar Shave Club, a consumer subscription service focused on men’s grooming. I am honored to be joining the board of the company Michael Dubin has so successfully introduced to the world. eCommerce companies can be challenging for venture investors. They tend to require lots of capital and usually have [...]
Who Holds the Power in Media − Content or Distribution?
Oct
06
On Friday night, Chris Dixon (@cdixon), Jonathan Glick (@jonathanglick), Peter Kafka (@pkafka), Todd Sawicki (@sawickipedia) and I had a conversation on Twitter about media concentration and where the power lies these days. It was inspired by an Erin Griffith (@eringriffith) post called “Spotify’s Best Chance at Beating the Digital Streaming “Suicide Pact” Is With Ads.” Chris [...]