Joe Trippi on this week's Sunday Gang 

Nicco and I discuss Democratic politics with Joe Trippi.

http://sundaygang.com/002.mp3

We talked with him via Skype at his home in Maryland.

I scanned my notes into Flickr.

Links for 03/09/2008 

Charles Cooper supports the public release of campaign conference call MP3s. 

Must-read: Marc Cooper compares Samantha Power with the Clintons on genocide and Rwanda. 

Maybe Obamaman should name his VP now 

First, I can't get this video of this adorable kid out of my head. It was sent to me by Ross Mayfield, and I think it might be his son? This is one smart kid, probably the kind who will grow up to start a company and will be able to lead people because they all love him. I dare you to watch the video without loving the kid.

He calls the likely Democratic nominee for President Obamaman. So I call him that now too.

Read this comment by Josh Whalen who says that Obama should name his VP now. He even says who he should name. I think the first half might be right, not sure about his choice.

I'd like to see Obama choose Jim Webb, first-term Democratic senator from Virginia, a sizable state that usually goes Republican that Obama could carry in the fall. Having Webb on the ticket, a white male with a strong military background, ex Secretary of the Navy under a Republican president, Reagan, and a fantastic fighter, a no-bullshit debater, who can bring the battle to the Clintons and their surrogates. Let Webb organize the fight, and Obamaman stays above it. Webb is enough of an idealist to fit in the Obama regime, but he gets angry in a very productive way. I've watched him on Meet The Press, arguing with one of McCain's chief surrogates, Lindsey Graham, and he's hot shit. An attractive choice, imho.

It may be time for Obamaman to let us dream about his team, without a Clinton anywhere in sight. Goodbye Hillary. Goodbye Bill. Thanks for the memories, now get off the stage.

Hot products make successful startups 

There's a thread on Techmeme about startups and money, and how important it is that they watch every penny.

Mike Arrington says they must do this or fail. Something really bothered me about this, and I couldn't immediately put my finger on it, but then I re-read the piece in the morning and it struck me.

Companies can't watch every penny. Of course everyone you hire in a startup has stock options, so theoretically they're all doing everything they can to make the company successful at all times. But that's just a theory, even the founder isn't going to watch every penny. You go out to eat a nice sushi dinner with people you want to influence, you go to a nice restaurant, order a nice bottle of wine. All that adds up to a lot of pennies that weren't watched.

As a general rule, no one in a startup works harder than the founder, and no one watches pennies more carefully than the founder. If the founder upgrades to business class, so does everyone else.

Companies even small ones are out of control messes that waste a lot of everything. All organizations do. Can't help it.

Yet some of them don't fail.

Imho, having started two companies -- one that failed and one that succeeded, and watched dozens of others over 30 years, the difference is the ones that succeed have a hot product that lots of people want, and the ones that fail don't. I don't think whether you savor every penny makes much of a difference, in fact if you pinch them too hard your people are going to hate you, and they have to love the founder, just as the customers must and the press and even the competitors.

When I think about the people who had runaway successes that made them fortunes the ones that had great products and were admired by many were the ones that really hit it out of the park. I can't think of anyone who had a great product and failed because they didn't watch every penny.

Clocks turn themselves 

Last night was the "spring forward" night.

Spring forward fall back.

And it's a sign of the times that most of the clocks in the house took care of themselves. The wall clocks have radio receivers that receive the time from a government clock, and when there's a difference, the clocks self-adjust.

All the computers self-adjust too.

My watch does not, and I had to change it manually. But so far that's the only one.

But maybe Amazon S3 is having a problem?

Weird message, it showed up four times and then went away.

Oh well. Onward!