Author Archives: Brian Alvey

A long, long time ago I saw the Chevy Chase and Goldie Hawn’s Foul Play in a Virginia movie theater with my sister Jennifer and my cousin Kimberly. To this day I vividly remember the car chase scene over the hills of San Francisco. Chevy had stolen a cab and it turned out there was a JapaneseContinue reading “Kojak, bang bang!”

I often love Fred Wilson‘s blog, A VC, but sometimes it’s not so easy to love. A few days ago Fred posted a dismissal of marketing. He said marketing is only for companies with lousy products or companies like Zynga, Budweiser or Viagra who can only grow their businesses marginally through customer acquisition. I’ve been on the roadContinue reading “Marketing”

My best friend in Texas, Chris Nottingham, asked me about an old computer wargame we used to play in college. He said his mother just got an iMac and he wanted to put that old game on there. A quick Google search for “old mac game destroyer tank island” uncovered Strategic Conquest. I spent so manyContinue reading “Strategic Conquest”

Lots of people are complaining about how everyone worked on The Huffington Post for free and how they should get paid now that AOL has paid $315 million for their work. Some have suggested $50 per post. Comedian Andy Borowitz tweeted: My share of the Huffington Post sale, zero dollars, was a little disappointing. This is nuts. First, everyone who blogged for free on Huffington PostContinue reading “Apologies to Arianna”

For one simple reason: I was sick of being the guy who runs the second hottest company in Greycroft’s portfolio. Recently, Greycroft partner Ian Sigalow wrote a blog post comparing VC exits to baseball hits. He said an exit of 2-3x is a double. 5x is a triple. I asked Ian if the AOL/Huffington Post deal was a double,Continue reading “I am so glad AOL bought the Huffington Post”

Friends of ours bought us tickets to see Prince at Madison Square Garden. It was my first Prince show ever and now I’m wondering how I waited so long to see him. Prince’s stage was shaped like that symbol he changed his name to years ago. After an opening act by the comedian Sinbad, legendary bass player LarryContinue reading “Too many hits: Prince at Madison Square Garden”

And by machine, I mean he is a powerhouse, not that his writing is stiff and robotic. Good grief people! Yesterday I saw that Darren Murph’s 17,212 Engadget-related blog posts had snagged him a Guinness World Record. My first thought was, “Now that is a staggering number of blog posts.” Between this blog, Blogstakes (from back inContinue reading “Darren Murph is a blogging machine”

Back in 2001 when Niki and I were having tons of fertility trouble — before we had our three kids — we did what fertility-challenged couples are not supposed to do. We got a puppy. Barkley was the first of our three Cavaliers, but she wasn’t the first Cavalier we tried to get. Our breederContinue reading “My dog died today”

Last fall at TechCrunch 50 (video here) professional Internet celebrity judge Robert Scoble asked me why I didn’t spend time talking about all of the big successful content management systems I’d built in the past. I answered that I only had 6 minutes on stage, so I focused on the product. But at NY Tech Meetup in March IContinue reading “Crowd Fusion for everyone”

About a month ago, I heard a beer commercial in my car and decided Crowd Fusion should have a more beer slogany slogan. Our current tagline is “It serves you right.” So I tweeted a few new slogan ideas: I’m thinking about rewriting @crowdfusion‘s site to sound more like a beer commercial. People like beerContinue reading “When you say Crowd Fusion, you’ve said it all”