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Posts tagged unicorn

(woman holding unicorn) Now the bad news. You're going to have to find housing in the Bay Area.

Unicorn Hunters

Unicorn Hunters published on No Comments on Unicorn HuntersPurchase print

Pitch: “Unicorn Hunters” — This reality show will follow the exciting, thrill-a-minute world of venture capitalists as they pore over income statements, commission reports and conduct hours-long, gruelling interviews with founders and key staff. (Note: we’ll need a LOT of clever camera work to maintain visual interest.)

I wonder just how concerned VCs are about housing affordability in the Bay Area (and in my home city of Vancouver), where both home ownership and rental costs are spiralling to prohibitive levels. The real estate bubble makes it a lot harder to attract those talented creatives that Silicon Valley supposedly values so highly, as they face punishing commutes from the far-flung communities they can still afford to live in. And it risks turning big swaths of urban landscape into deserts of affluence, feasible only for a thin, homogenous slice of the population.

(In lieu of the next two paragraphs, I’ll just say “Richard Florida.”)

Endangered species and @unmarketing

Endangered species and @unmarketing published on 1 Comment on Endangered species and @unmarketing

This is the part of my toonblog from Scott Stratten’s BlogWorld keynote that keeps getting mentioned by people, so I thought I’d offer it on its own after seeing Scott’s tweet yesterday.

Updated: A few thoughts about poor, maligned and misused ROI. Or, Seven Things (Off the Top Of My Head) That I Believe:

  1. I believe in measuring, benchmarking, testing, comparing and assessing. I believe in doing your best to surface the tangible financial results from an organization’s investments in any field, including social media. But…
  2. I believe it’s easy to confuse that which can be measured with that which matters… and that, when you’re dealing with human relationships, there’s a lot that both matters tremendously and resists simple measurement. (See also “Schools, Standardized testing”.) But…
  3. I believe that Belief #2 isn’t a reason not to try. Social media isn’t free, and any responsible communicator wants to use their organization’s resources to maximum effect. But…
  4. It is a reason to keep your attempts to measure outcomes in some perspective. And…
  5. It’s a reason not to get so hung up on quantitative data that you miss out on the qualitative benefits of having decent, respectful relationships with people – online and offline. Or that you wind up sounding less like a human being than a not-terribly-clever marketing algorithm.
  6. I believe there are very smart people who’ve thought about this more than I have.
  7. I believe it’s time for tea.

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