Mr. Dixon

Earlier today, serial entrepreneur and investor Chris Dixon made it official. The cofounder of SiteAdvisor (acquired by McAfee) and Hunch (acquired by eBay), who invests both personally and through Founder Collective, will be decamping our fair city for sunnier shores to join Andreessen Horowitz as the Sand Hill Road powerhouse's seventh general partner. We spoke with Mr. Dixon by phone shortly after the announcement was made to find out what it means for the many ventures he's involved in here (like eBay's massive new Flatiron R&D lab, which is slated to house 200 developers and data scientists).

Don't hold your breath for an East Coast outpost, as cofounder Marc Andreessen emphasized earlier, his is a "single office firm." In fact, based on the tenor of our questions, Amy Grady, a representative from Andreessen Horowitz who was also on the call, wanted to assure us Mr. Dixon's hire was about more than just geography. "We didn’t hire Chris just because of New York. It’s a huge bonus, he’s obviously really tapped in, but if we find an entrepreneur with a great idea in Idaho, we’ll invest!"

Silicon Prairie, start your pitch decks.

Is this a way for Andreessen Horowitz to keep a better eye on New York without opening up an office here?
Chris Dixon: I’m keeping my apartment in New York, I plan to be there a lot. I plan to make a lot of investments there. I think they saw it as a positive that I have been in New York and know a lot of people there. That said, I’m going to be based in California and I think it’s important with these things--VC firms need to work together as a team and, you know, that just often requires being around each other a lot. But yeah, I’m going to be very aggressively looking for investments in New York.

What about your role at Founder Collective and the fate of Founder Collective in general?
CD: There’s two people who run Founder Collective, Eric Paley and Dave Frankel. They’re the general partners. I’m not a general partner. What I’ll do is I’m going to continue to support any companies that I invested in through them. So if I can be helpful to those entrepreneurs I will be--the same for my personal angel investments. [In addition to Founder Collective, Mr. Dixon has personally invested in Skype, Gerson Lehrman Group, OMGPOP, BillShrink, Oddcast, Knewton, and many others.] But I’ll be doing all my future investing through Andreessen Horowitz.

Will you still be an advisor at eBay or Hunch?
CD: It hasn’t been finalized yet, but I will have some kind of an advisory role at eBay and my cofounder [Tom Pinckney] from Hunch is going to be taking over the New York office. He’s been my cofounder for two companies now [including SiteAdvisor] so they’re in good hands.

You mentioned Andreessen Horowitz’s so-called CAA model of offering help in various domains like recruiting and research. Will your expertise be in bringing in deals?
Amy Grady: Just to be clear, he’s the check writer, he’ll be doing investing.
CD: So the way it works is there are seven general partners and I’m one of them. Those are the people who go out and find new investments and then make the investment and join the board and do things they can do to help. Then there’s 55 other people who provide all sorts of support for the entrepreneur, once the investment’s made.

Was it a difficult decision to leave New York? In a lot of ways you’re representative of the scene from its infancy. You started in Wall Street, transitioned into startups, and then to investing. Were you worried it would be a loss for the community?
CD: To the extent that I can try to get Andreessen Horowitz to be more active in New York, I think that’s a net win for the New York City tech scene. You could look at this glass half full or half empty, but that’s how I see it. I care a lot about the New York tech community, it’s in a great place and it’s growing quickly and I want to keep supporting it.

I’m not sure if Marc Andreessen or Ben Horowitz or anyone there commented on how vocal you are on Twitter or in your blog posts in terms of critiquing trends that you see?
CD: They’ve encouraged me to continue to be vocal and blogging and tweeting and doing all that stuff--Tumblring, Foursquaring [laughs]. So, yeah I intend to do that. They’re totally supportive and they like it.
AG: Yup, we welcome it, no censorship allowed. We welcome feedback. We love a fresh perspective so he actually fits in quite well with the culture.

What are you most excited about in terms of moving out there? To be immersed in a place that has a different kind of expertise than New York’s consumer web?
I think it will be nice to have a different perspective, I think I’ll learn a lot. The people at this firm are really, really impressive and I’ll learn a lot from them. Over the last few years--seven years--that I’ve been angel investing, it’s always been sort of a hobby for me. So it’s just going to be fun to try it as a full time thing.

I imagine part of the appeal is having so many resources behind you? In your blog post, you mentioned founders choosing the investor and Andreessen Horowitz excels at that.
Yeah, absolutely. I’ve always done the angel investing stuff totally by myself. It’s trying to do something on a larger stage with more resources, it’s pretty exciting.

What will you miss the most about not being here?
Well, I’ll be there, okay? [laughs] I’ll be there a lot! I love New York and I’ll be there a lot. And I want to make a lot investments there. I’m hoping I won’t miss anything because I'll be there a lot.

The cofounders. (Photo: Oyster)

An under-the-radar local startup named Oyster has raised a $3 million seed round, GigaOm reports, led by Founders Fund. Other backers include SV Angel, Founder Collective, Shari Redstone’s Advancit Capital, Chris Dixon, Sam Altman and others. But despite the foodie-friendly name, the company has other designs--namely, to feed you books to read on your iPhone.

As cofounder Eric Stromberg explained to Betabeat via email, "Simply put, we are building the best way to read books on your phone, and we think we accomplish that through the subscription model," he added.

The product is still in the testing phase; if you visit the company's site, you can sign up for an invitation, but there's not much digging around you can do. Eventually, however, the company will launch an iPhone app through which--after paying a monthly fee--subscribers get all-you-can-read access to the Oyster library.

On that most pesky of reader problems, discovery, Mr. Stromberg said, "we think about it in three ways - social, algorithmic, and curated. All will be an important part of finding the book that is right for you." We suppose that almost anything would be better than merely browsing the "recommended reads" (i.e. paid-for placement) in the front of Barnes and Noble.

And yes, there's something similar but free in the form of the IRL public library. However, it's worth noting that Oyster probably won't require signing onto a waiting list of 15o people for one of three copies of Bossypants, nor will they turn your unpaid library fines over to a collections agency, as the Queens Public Library has been known to do.

As for Oyster's business model, Mr. Stromberg somewhat pointedly added that, "Spotify and Netflix are interesting access-based models for other forms of media, but just like those two are different from one another, our product will be different from each of them."

Oyster's introductory blog post elaborates a little more on this theme:

Currently, people buy books online in the exact same way that they buy lamps, blenders, and kitchen knives. The process of finding your next book is very different from purchasing a knife, and it should be treated that way.

By moving from individual transactions to an access-based model, readers can explore and enjoy books freely; more like your corner bookstore than a big box retailer. This leads to a more fulfilling experience built exclusively on taste and relaxed reading.

The founders are a pack of tech-world vets. Mr. Stromberg previously did biz dev at Hunch, Andrew Brown worked at Google and Willem Van Lancker was formerly a UX designer for Google Maps. (Of course, the question is how far that'll get them in the publishing world.)

Asked why books--it's a tough business and the competition is Amazon, the ultimate goliath--Mr. Stromberg tried to strike a balance between dreamy-eyed ambition and practicalities: "We love reading and wanted to see this product exist," he told Betabeat, adding, "At the same time, we were very thoughtful about what makes sense for both publishers and authors, and have crafted our product and model to align with that."

Mr. Stromberg couldn't share a timeline for when the the service will open fully to the public, as the team plans on "slowly and carefully building the community and adding new users over a period of time." Nor could he provide any specifics in terms of what's in the library, but he did promise that "we do have agreements in place with several publishers and are expanding our catalogue every week."  

A floor of one's own.

A few weeks ago, The Observer first broke the news that eBay closed a deal for the entire third floor of 625 Avenue of the Americas at 18th Street to use it as an outpost for Hunch, the recommendation engine that eBay purchased last November. The company finally made the announcement official today and the Verge has some details. The 35,000 square foot space will house an R&D lab staffed by more than 200 developers, as well as big data scientists. Hunch cofounder and investor Chris Dixon will run the show.

The goal is to rival Google as one of the top employers for engineers in New York City. Expect hackathons and free coworking space for startups that qualify as "friends of eBay," as well as showcases about the future of commerce for PayPal, another eBay property. Corporations like AOL and Microsoft both came forward today to promote their nimble startup incubators, which might be why Mr. Dixon seemed a mite touchy about eBay's new lab. "Don't call it an incubator," Mr. Dixon told the Verge. "That term is pretty loaded these days."

Regardless new startup Pinwheel, which launched out of private beta last night, seems to fit her comfort zone. The app lets users "find and leave notes all around the world." The notes, which are pinned on a specific location on a map, can be both private or shared with an individual or group, as well as organized into sets.

For example, “Every place that you told me that you loved me, circa 2008" (one of the potential sets Ms. Fake offers) you might want to keep private. Whereas "Find me a Nearby Toilet NOW," (another example from Ms. Fake) might be a question you pose to a group. There is, of course, a social networking element, with the opportunity to follow both friends and sets:

"And in the future, you will get notifications on your phone from who and what you choose. Following sets is useful, because that friend of yours with the great taste in coffee shops may also have an unhealthy obsession with, say, 1970s glam metal band KISS, and frankly, in childhood you were traumatized by a photograph of Gene Simmons and don’t need to repeat that in your dotage."

Next on the docket is an iOS version of Pinwheel. Although the startup is seeding community and content in advance, Ms. Fake says she expects the primary experience to be mobile, where monetization would come in the form of sponsored posts, say from a realtor looking to drop a note about its services.

She also anticipates potential deja-vu:

But, that’s like…Flickr for Places!

You said it, not me. Is it like Flickr for Places? Ish. Part of why making Pinwheel is so fun, is so exploding with possibility, is that a note, like a photo, can be a container for all kinds of things. It is the perfect social object. Stories, advice, jokes, diatribes, information, memories, facts, advertisements, love letters, grocery lists and manifestoes can all be put into a note. It is the perfectly constrained, perfectly open thing that you can make into what you want.

What she probably didn't anticipate is the accusation that Pinwheel looks an awful lot like a little-known startup called Repudo. As TechPP points out:

That sounds nice for sure for many people, but for me it sounds like an echo. I remember hearing it somewhere else. Remember Repudo? Here is how Repudo works-

"Repudo is a platform to handle digital objects in the real world. With Repudo, you can drop all kinds of multimedia such as photos, text, video and audio messages at any location."

Ouch! Digital objects turn into notes and that’s it. The concept still remains the same. Both Repudo and Pinwheel are location based with multimedia thrown in to the mix.

We think the bigger hiccup might be the mandatory location-based element. Where exactly would you drop that “Every place that you told me that you loved me, circa 2008" list? And, unless its flooded with content, scrolling around on a wide open map could be an unfulfilling experience. That said, we'd love to see this baked into Google Maps.

In any case, it doesn't look like she'll be returning East anytime soon. For now, on its jobs base, Pinwheel says seven-person team is based out in Hayes Valley, San Francisco.

New York tech luminaries such as Chris Dixon and Fred Wilson have written about this issue before. Hunch cofounder Tom Pinckney calculated that each hour of lost internet is worth $1,000 in employee salaries. "We’re frankly not particularly price sensitive on this given how critical fast low-latency access is for our programmers. When our internet access is down our programmers cannot be productive and our site can’t be monitored — we’re helpless and twiddling our thumbs," he wrote.

Not only do startup founders have an issue keeping the connection at Hunch in the techie Flatiron district--there is a Twitter account chronicling the shakiness of the connection for the five startups on that block of 21st Street--they also have trouble getting service at home. Mr. Dixon lives next door to Kickstarter's Perry Chen. "We share internet and sadly our main topic of email conversation is 'Is your internet working?'" he writes.

There is some feeling that reliable broadband service should be a focus of Mayor Mike Bloomberg's efforts to make New York a digital business hub, rather than building a tech campus or fleshing out the city's Tumblr presence. "This is exactly what Bloomberg should be concentrating on. Forget building a "tech campus" somewhere, we NEED real bandwidth!" free range CTO Mike Caprio wrote on Mr. Dixon's blog. Oh Google, why did you have to pick Kansas for your fiberoptic generosity?

If you like these glasses, you may enjoy my blog

When it comes to big data and personal recommendations, Hunch and eBay are a match made in heaven. Both work with mountains of unstructured data and hope to improve user recommendations through social signals.

At least, that is what Chris Dixon and eBay CTO Mark Carges had to say in a phone call with Betabeat this morning, following news of the acquisition. But the pair laid out a compelling case for why the purchase makes sense.

"eBay is a very unique retailer," Mr. Dixon said. "When grandma posts a sweater for sale, it doesn't have a metadata to help sort and identify it. In working to understand user's taste on the open web, this is the challenge we have been solving at Hunch."

Something like 70% of items on eBay don't have traditional metadata like product IDs. "We have been working with our own data on consumer behavior to power recommendations," said eBay CTO Mark Carges. "Hunch brings in some really complimentary work that they have been doing with social signals." 

eBay is also unqiue in that it works with both buyers and sellers. "The peer-to-peer nature of their marketplace is very interesting. In the tests we have been running we have found opportunities for sellers to tweak, for example, the kind of camera they are selling in order to meet unfulfilled demand," Mr. Dixon said.

In recent months there has been a surge of users buying and selling gold on eBay. "Hunch discovered that a certain class of users who were buying gold coins were also the perfect customer for a microscope that they could use to examine these goods," says Mr. Carges. "That is the kind of odd association we never would have found on our own."

Mr. Carges says eBay is also excited about establishing a base in Silicon Alley. "When it comes to building out our expertise in design and fashion, we are definitely bullish on what we can learn with a presence in New York."

eBay's 97 million users and 200 million active listing add up to 9 petabytes of data across 2 billion daily page views. "There is only so much you can teach your system with the big academic data sets that are publicly available," Mr. Dixon said. "With eBay's data behind us, expect Hunch to get much, much better."

A big company like Ebay putting down such a sizable office in New York would be great news for Silicon Alley. The purchase prices seems like a modest win for the company's investors.

Feeling like some NC-17 from 1989 right about now.

One of Netflix's big selling points over the years has been its ability to recommend films its users will like, to the point where the company gave away a $1 million prize to the team of scientists who could improve its taste graph by 10 percent.

But let's say you're one of the 810,000 people who quit Netflix over the last quarter. You could always go back to your local video store (just kidding! It's closed). Or rebuild your taste graph by spending years watching films on a new service, like you did with Netflix, coming to know one another like trusting lovers, finally able to admit to yourself that yes, you love romantic foreign dramas with a comedic touch.

Luckily the local connoisseur from Hunch have got you covered. They just rolled out their Netflix Predictor this week, which allows users to log in with their Hunch account and get a wide selection of movies recommended to them. Based on the number of films it offered me which I have already seen and loved, it's a good bet they have cracked the "Napoleon Dynamite problem," in which some quirkier films are so polarizing that it's almost impossible to predict whether someone will like it.

If you're still a Netflix user you can actually connect your Netflix account to Hunch's taste graph, essentially doubling down on the targeted recommendation. The Hunch service also comes with a slider that allows you to select your decade, a good thing when you're in the mood for some 50s noir or some 80s cheese. And if you're with a group you can toggle between "best for you" and "most popular," a nice option to get something a little less targeted.

Have you recently quit Netflix? Switched to Amazon or Hulu or Shelby.tv? Let us know how you're finding good movie recommendations in the comments.

Bear in mind, these are large, statistical generalizations for which Hunch is providing detailed probabilities. But since fan boys tend to see things in black and white, let's just run down some of the key differences.

Android seems to be mainly for less well-educated males who are making less money than their Apple counterparts. We're statistically more introverted, pessimistic and likely to be followers, not leaders. We've likely not traveled outside our home country and probably shop at Costco or Sam's Club. iOS users by comparison, tend to use their frequent flyer to go on foreign vacations.

Android user are late adopters who prefer an ugly device if its got more features. We didn't use the web until after Y2K, don't back up our computers and may still be using Yahoo Mail. We'll stay on the phone with telemarketers, which you could interpret to mean we're really that desperate, or just that iPhone users don't have good enough cell service to bother.

In a way, this data seems to represent the class divide between the upper middle class owners of iPhones and the working class mass market for cheap Android phones. But hey, iOS users are 50 percent more likely to be texting while driving, so at least we'll live longer than those entitled bastards.

The whole thing ends with Pinckney saying that if you work for Hunch you will get to show off you programming ability. Not sure if that means you can throw everything up on GitHub or if Chris Dixon will personally tweet it out when you hammer out some seriously amazing lines code. Hacker fame is certainly a smart carrot to dangle when you can't compete with Google's checkbook, but can offer a work environment where individual work won't be hidden behind a pile of non-disclosure agreements.