Media business is a changin' - @Hubspot is leading the way

via Boston.com

“I’ve spent my entire career in the media business, and now I’ve bailed out. In the end it was a pretty simple decision. I came to the realization that advertising is dying, and therefore any business that depends on advertising to pay the bills is a dead end,” Lyons wrote. “At my first meeting with HubSpot, they told me about one of their customers, a company that used to spend $800,000 a year running newspaper ads but now spends $12,000 a year for a subscription to HubSpot and gets better results.”

Why does almost every site out there make it so hard to leave? @NYTimes reports

via NYTimes

Still, not every site takes the “Never Gonna Give You Up” approach. Alexis Ohanian, the co-founder of the social news site Reddit, said that if users wanted to delete an account, “they should be able to do that as easily as they signed up.”

“It puts the onus on us to keep delivering a great product, and not retaining users simply because they can’t find the exit,” he said.

Times are changing in venture - Adapt or GTFO

VC world returning to its roots, eh? Ben Horowitz has a way with words:
“You can’t go into Compton to rehabilitate gang members if you haven’t been a Crip.” — Ben Horowitz, co-founder of fast-rising venture outfit Andreessen Horowitz.

Twenty years ago, the typical VC looked like a traditional banker, complete with an MBA and a background in finance. But a Wall Street background is becoming increasingly rare on Sand Hill Rd. The most coveted VCs are people who have built and scaled businesses, and who are deep in a particular domain.

FlightCar & sharing economy "could be the big economic story of this decade"

Paul Graham on FlightCar, via Hacker News:
There is clearly something to the "sharing economy" that everyone is talking about. There will be glitches along the way, but I'm pretty sure this idea is here to stay. Considering the value of the assets involved, it could be the big economic story of this decade.

Here's the fundraising news on TechCrunch. And when you're ready to start making money from parking your car at the airport, visit FlightCar.com.

Coding is the American Dream

The learn-to-code movement keeps gaining steam and it makes my heart grow three sizes. This quote from Code.org founder Hadi Partovi could be an excerpt from my book, Without Their Permission:
“Coding is the American Dream. If you want to be the next Mark Zuckerberg or even want a high-paying job, those jobs are for programmers. … And yet the opportunity to be exposed to that is going to the top 10 percent, and that is just morally wrong.”