:: The Park Paradigm ::

Markets for the Digital Generation

I’ve just spent a bit of time going through the various suggestions you’ve all had for our new company name. I really appreciate the input, which also includes a few email entries as well for a couple people who were too shy to commit to their suggestions publicly.

Unfortunately, there hasn’t been one yet that has really stood out and elicited that “Yep, that’s the one!” moment… nonetheless the exercise has been very useful, not the least for giving us more confidence that we haven’t missed an obvious trick and underlining just how hard it is to come up with a good, original, meaningful name without degenerating into bullshit jargon bingo and/or having it not fit on a business card.

We haven’t closed the book yet (but will when the next milestone comes up in the next fortnight or so) so any last minute inspiration is still welcome. If however you are stumped, and want a new riddle to solve, we are trying to think up a punchy and pithy tagline that would work with Nauiokas Park to frame the venture and that plays on the double meaning of ‘Park’. Along the lines of:

Nauiokas Park : …where ideas and capital meet…

…but better!

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A heartfelt thank you to the early entries into the ‘help-name-the-new-company-sweepstakes’! Not sure we have a winner yet but some great ideas and food for thought for sure. And my old friend Tres has definitely broken into the lead in the most ‘funny’ name category but unfortunately has been tripped up by the always nasty plausibility clause… (I feel for you man, I really do…)

Bet The Farm Investments LLP

Loaded Dice Investments LLP (A Risk Management Fund…)

Over/Under Investments

…although if it were up to me I might just go for Loaded Dice (without the Investments.) Amy?

Anyhow, still a week or so to get your suggestions in; I’ll send an other update next Friday.

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Anyone who has ever had the occasion to name a new company or venture knows that for the vast majority of us, it is annoyingly hard. Especially as we look enviously at all the great company names out there already. How did they come up with them? Worse, just when you think you’ve cracked it, you rush to Google and find ten plus companies have beat you to it… Or, especially if you are trying to be a bit clever or fanciful, you realize the product of your inspiration means or sounds like something let’s just say…”less than flattering” in seven other languages.

So as we prepare to emerge from our ‘incubation’ phase, we can no longer prevaricate and need to settle on a name for our new venture. Given the number of great people and ideas I have discovered via the Park Paradigm, I thought it might be interesting to ask for suggestions from ‘the crowd’ and discover what wisdom lay within. So we are open to suggestions - but not committed to adopting any of them - from all of you. Brainstorm away: comments are open!

Here is the brief:

[We are] an investment company established by Sean Park and Amy Nauiokas to provide vision, strategy, leadership and capital to growth-stage companies with innovative business models at the intersection of financial services, markets and technology.

Our core proposition is to deliver exceptional financial and strategic returns to our investors through our ability to identify, source and nurture investments in companies with “disruptive” business models or technology.  We do this by combining our expertise in strategy and operational execution with our network and experience for the benefit of our portfolio companies.

We help our investors and portfolio companies succeed in a world increasingly shaped by accelerating technological change and the inevitable accompanying transition to a new paradigm in financial services and markets.

Building off the work of Carlota Perez and her fantastic work - Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital - one of the key elements of our investment thesis is the idea of anticipating and participating in the ’sixth (techno-economic) paradigm’; it’s a neat metaphor for looking forward and seeking to understand how technological progress will drive disruptive innovation and a ‘new paradigm’ in our industry. For practical reasons, we have been using this as our working name for the company. While we will almost certainly keep the name to use in various ways, for a number of reasons we didn’t feel it was the best name to use for the company itself. So this is where you come in. Help us come up with something better. We are of course seriously considering Nauiokas Park as a classic and solid option, but would also love to consider something a bit more original. Maybe it doesn’t exist. We haven’t come up with it in a few months of thinking about it, so we figured why not give a few more people a crack at it before we settle on one of the ones on our current short list.

To make it more interesting, if we end up using a name you come up with, we’d be happy to buy you dinner (you wouldn’t of course be obliged…), either in New York or London. And a bottle of champagne to the person that comes up with the most creative or funny or clever plausible name, even if we don’t end up using it. Of course this is entirely subjective and up to our discretion. To avoid grumpiness - this will not be awarded unless a minimum quality threshold is surpassed. (I’m hedging in the case that maybe only one or two people will reply… )

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I’m not sure how many emerging entrepreneurs are amongst my readers, but if you are in the midst of starting up the next great disruptive soon-to-be-huge (don’t worry we’ll give you 2-3 years to get to the huge part…) then perhaps you should be considering throwing your hat in the ring to try to win one of the highly prestigious and extremely valuable invites to seedcamp 2008:

Seedcamp is where Europe’s top young founders can come together in one place.

From securing funding to developing the right network, young entrepreneurs in Europe face challenges in building globally competitive technology businesses. Through the provision of seed capital and a world class network of mentors, we want to provide a catalyst for Europe’s next generation of entrepreneurs.

Applications for Seedcamp 2008 are open!

We’re now ready to accept applications for Seedcamp Week 2008, have opened the gates to our online application system, and are anticipating another great pool of entries. For additional information, and to review the questions prior to applying, you may download our 2008 application guide. We’ve also posted milestones on our key dates page. We encourage you to think through each question carefully and also to apply well before the August 10th deadline. You really don’t want to be trying to submit the application at 11:59pm with 100 other people!

As noted before Seedcamp Week is set for September 15-18 2008 in Central London at UCL.

For those of you that are unaware, seedcamp was launched last year to provide a focal point for the start-up community in Europe. Realizing that one of the key strengths of Silicon Valley is the broad and deep ecosystem supporting start-ups and new ventures - human capital, specialist financial capital, legal and other operational support, etc. - and that all these elements existed in Europe but tended to be geographically dispersed and somewhat ‘hard to find’ for an aspiring entrepreneur, Saul Klein came up with the brilliant idea of creating seedcamp. Last year was the first year, and despite an extremely short gestation period and steep learning curve, the week was extremely successful and enriching for all that attended: investors, mentors, suppliers, and of course entrepreneurs. This year I’m sure it will be even better, building off the lessons learned last September and a year of hard work by Saul and CEO Reshma Sohoni and her team. To give you an idea of what goes on and why attending is actually more important than winning (seedcamp invests in a small number of the start-ups judged ‘best in show’), think of it as an extremely intense 5 days of Entrepreneurship University: if you go in with an open mind (and no fear of sleep deprivation) you’ll come out with an education and network worth (dare I say) more than a year at Wharton or LBS. My company, sixth paradigm llp, is proud to be a founding investor in seedcamp alongside some of the giants of European venture capital - and as a start-up ourselves, it’s even more fun to participate - one minute giving advice, the next minute taking notes!

Last year saw a predominance of consumer-oriented internet business ideas, I know one of the hopes for this year is to garner a broader and more heterogeneous group of applicants. Speaking selfishly, I’d love to see one or two killer idea in financial services, markets, data and identity fields.

So what are you waiting for? Dust of that business plan, spruce up that website, and hopefully we’ll see you in September! And to whet your appetite, here is just a tiny taste of the profound advice that surrounds you at seedcamp(!):

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Here at the Park Paradigm, I try to post only when I see an opportunity to add to the conversation - a unique point of view, specific analysis, a different angle - and so generally have avoided simply pointing to other articles or commentaries I am reading and find interesting. This approach has worked well for me - and I hope for you as well - but left me somewhat frustrated with a virtual pile of links and articles in my groaning ‘to blog about’ inbox: a back-log that probably would never get cleared even if blogging was my full time job. (To be fair, this is almost certainly a good thing for my poor readers who would be drowned in a sea of ranting repetitive ramblings…)

So when I discovered Tumblr (via Stowe I think…) it seemed to be the perfect solution: giving me a clean and easy outlet to record and share my ’stream of consciousness’ without diluting or cluttering up the Park Paradigm. Most importantly, readers can take it or leave it. We’ll see how it goes but it will be interesting to see how you react - I’m curious to see if my tumblr blog ends up helping me decide what to write about in more depth.

I’ve linked to it in the sidebar and you can find it at (I’ve borrowed one of my favorite quotes from Pablo Picasso as a title):

Everything you can imagine is real.

or subscribe to the RSS feed.

Hope you find this useful and interesting. Let me know.

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I sometimes get asked why I decided to make a career change and - while I knew the reasons - until now I never had a concise and articulate answer. It’s about “singing and dancing while the music is being played.”

Many thanks to Euan for finding this and posting it.

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I don’t want to sound all gloomy, but in a few years the universe might just go completely dark (according to Professor Fred Adams, who will be presenting his ideas at the upcoming conference on Global Catastrophic Risks:)

This talk outlines astrophysical issues related to the long term fate of the cosmos. We consider the evolution of planets, stars, stellar populations, galaxies, and the universe itself over time scales that greatly exceed the current age of the universe. The discussion starts with the effects of accelerated cosmic expansion, which causes every galaxy cluster to become its own island universe in the near future. Next we discuss stellar evolution calculations that follow the development of the low mass stars (the most common stars) and consider the end of conventional star formation. We then determine the mass distribution of stellar remnants–the neutron stars, white dwarfs, and brown dwarfs remaining after stellar evolution has run its course. After several trillion years, the supply of interstellar gas grows depleted, yet star formation continues at a highly attenuated rate through brown dwarf collisions. This process tails off as the galaxy gradually loses its stars by ejecting the majority, and driving a minority toward accretion onto massive black holes. As the galaxy disperses, weakly interacting dark matter particles are accreted by white dwarfs, where they subsequently annihilate and keep the old stellar remnants relatively warm. After accounting for the demise of the galaxy, we consider the evaporation of expelled degenerate objects (planets, white dwarfs, and neutron stars). The evolution and eventual sublimation of these objects is dictated by the decay of their constituent nucleons. After white dwarfs and neutron stars have disappeared, the black holes are the brightest astrophysical objects, slowly losing their mass as they emit Hawking radiation. After the largest black holes have evaporated, the universe slowly slides into darkness.

“…the universe slowly slides into darkness.” OK, fair enough this is a few trillion years away, but how do you pick the top?

Talk about contingent liabilities! Even with the power of compound interest, surely something for Mr Buffet to think about?

(thanks to the TED Blog for the pointer)

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On yesterday’s announcements from Apple. Many hundreds and thousands of professional and amateur commentators I’m sure have already insightfully and accurately dissected Steve’s keynote and written complete and intelligent reviews of Apple’s new products. So I’m not going to bore you by trying to compete. Just two observations - admittedly first impressions, one which is somewhat tangential but still germane to some of the ideas I’ve been throwing around with respect to the entertainment industry (although I’ve been mainly focused on music and live events.)

1. The new Apple TV might just be as transformative for the movie business, as the iPod was for the music business. Very impressed. The rental model also - while not ideal - is probably a good compromise (at least in the short term): a good transition model to clear the way for future business models that are completely digitally native. I would have liked to have seen slightly longer time windows, in particular for the once started viewing - say 48 or 72 hours (instead of 24) but not a bad start. And being able to buy DVD’s with digital copies is also a good idea. (What would be fantastic would be a DVD exchange facility whereby you could exchange your old DVDs for new (HD if available) DVDs that include a digital copy, for say half-price. I think the studios would make lots of money as people would then be motivated to renew their entire DVD libraries at once, and as an added benefit, the old DVDs (collected in bulk) could be disposed of in an environmentally friendly way.
2. Apple needs just one more piece of hardware - one more appliance - in order to kit out a 21st century digital home: something that combines the Apple TV, with a touchscreen (and iPod Touch GUI) and an amplifier. For anyone that has their home wired with speakers in each room, this appliance would allow you to access your iTunes music and play it through the speakers in each room.

Apple (AAPL) was down heavily yesterday with the rest of the market, but if my first gut feeling about Apple TV is right, it goes from being a very expensive stock to something worth considering once more (especially if this market sell-off knocks it even lower.) Thoughts appreciated. (Disclosure: I own a small number of Apple shares in my pension plan.)

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(via FSJ)

Just waiting for the credit market version…

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It had to happen. (Thanks to FSJ for the pointer.)

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