Luckily, this was right around the time I met with Patrick Peterson. Pat has a long history in email. He was one of the earliest people at IronPort and later, after the company was acquired, became one of 13 Cisco Fellows. Before Pat could even begin his pitch, I had begun pleading with him for some free advice about our email predicament. It turned out, that was all the pitch he needed.

Email is an opportunity for big data. Think of the information each message contains. To, From, Subject, Time, IP address, DKIM, SPF, server data, the message itself. And now multiply that by the volume of messages sent every second. Pat recognized that this data could be used to protect not just consumers, but brands too.With Pat’s help, and the help of billions of email messages, we were able to identify and shut down a spammer who had hijacked our domain.

Today, we’re thrilled to announce that after that, First Round went back to business as usual and along with Alloy Ventures, Battery Ventures and Greylock Partners, invested in Pat and his company, Agari.

That’s also the sound a registered user makes when booking a hotel with HotelTonight. All the sound a user makes. Four taps and done. Try doing the same with Orbitz. 60+ taps. Priceline? 70+ taps. Travelocity? 80+ taps. Hotels.com? 100+ taps.

The reason that HotelTonight could create such an improved user experience is that unlike the other online travel companies, Founder & CEO Sam Shank, built it from the ground up for a mobile world. Mobile products work best when they are designed “mobile first.” Compare an iPhone with your computer. The screen is smaller. The keyboard is worse. The Internet connection is slower. For mobile experiences, this means that each pixel matters more, every inputs needs to simpler and anything which slows the experience needs to be eliminated. Every step, every delay has the potential to become a user offramp.

When these design needs are combined with a big market, the stakes become enormous. $50B worth of hotels booked online annually. A significant portion of this amount is rapidly shifting from desktop browsers to mobile browsers / apps. Every extra tap, every extra input, every extra second, creates a window for a user to walk through and away from a booking. HotelTonight solves this in brilliant, award-winning fashion.

So, it’s not surprising that as soon as the First Round team met with Sam and saw HotelTonight, we immediately wanted to invest. Today, along with Battery Ventures and Accel Partners, we’re thrilled to be part of a the company’s $3.25 Series A financing. First Round has had some good luck with some of our other “mobile first” investments, like Uber and Path. We’re excited to help HotelTonight continue the trend.

For the first 550 years after Gutenberg invented the printing press, it remained pretty difficult for individuals to publish and share their ideas. Writing and editorial remained in the province of broadcasting corporations, family newspaper dynasties and book publishers. Of course, the Internet changed that. Blogging services like WordPress, SixApart and Tumblr made it simple and free for anyone to share their ideas with the world and to build a personal brand.

As much as commerce has evolved in the past few years, it hasn’t kept pace with the forces which shaped modern publishing. Twenty years ago, if you wanted to open a store, it meant you had to rent a physical space and apply for business permits down at city hall. There was a significant expense and to seeing whether or not a retail idea would be welcomed into the world. The experience was daunting. In the mid-1990′s, Amazon launched and opened the world to e-commerce. In the early part of this millenium, platforms like Magento have made building an online retail presence easier, but my no means easy. Ebay and Etsy have been available as lower cost alternatives, but the experience was still analogous to taking out a classifieds ad. The UX didn’t belong to the person doing the selling. The retailer had as much control over their brand as they did over the font in their newspaper ads.

Storenvy changes this. It brings the blogging revolution to retail. FREE branded online stores for everyone. A sense of community for the buyers and the sellers. An easy way for merchants to sell on Facebook. Much the way GigaOm and TechCrunch operate on wordpress.com, Storenvy will have it’s share of larger merchants like indie record lable, Lil’ Chief Records. But, what gets me most excited is that now anyone can be a retail entrepreneur. In fact, the t-shirt to appearing on the left of this post, well, it hasn’t been produced yet. Amore Apparel, the Storenvy merchant behind the design can test some designs and see which ones generate the most interest. Even the smallest retailer can test the appeal of their product before committing to inventory. Retail has never been more democratized.

We’re thrilled to be working with founders Jon & Janette Crawford, Spark Capital, Kleiner Perkins and Charles River Ventures. We know with terrific advisers like Jeffrey, David and Willo, there will be lots of gorgeous (and funnel effective) stores blooming.

BTW, if you’re as excited by this as we are, you should know that Storenvy is looking for a few good hires.

Thus, when the E-Type was being planned, Jaguar did not have to develop a powerful new engine. Nor did it have to invest in tooling to make it. The same could be said for the modern disc-brakes that are taken for granted nowadays. These were introduced to the world on the C-Type in 1952 for the Mille Miglia race in Italy, where sceptical officials, never having seen such things, demanded a demonstration before allowing the car to compete. By 1958, Jaguar had fitted fade-free disc-brakes as standard to the XK150 sportscar, the E-Type’s predecessor.

The money saved from not having to develop a powerful new engine nor an advanced braking system was devoted instead to other innovations—most notably, the E-Type’s aerodynamics, unitary body construction and, above all, its revolutionary independent rear suspension.

via Automotive innovation: The Difference Engine: Birth of an icon | The Economist.

Without the aerodynamics & that gorgeous silhouette, or the improvements to braking & suspension, would the E-Type have been The E-Type? The engine was terrific in it’s day, buit it’s the details that continue to distinguish this car. Engine and chasis sharing is standard operating procedure in the automotive world – the Audi/VW 2.0T, BMW N54/55, Nissan V6, and Merecedes 63 engines come to mind – but the Economist’s post reads to me like an advertisement for web services. The Jaguar V6 straight six that was so good, the company no longer had to divert funding to engine R&D? That’s a web service like SimpleGeo or Amazon’s S3 or EC2. Find an great “engine” to be your building block. Then distinguish your product by directing your resources to the parts of your product that make it really great. Invest in differentiation.

I recently answered this question on Quora and wanted to repost my answer on this blog. If you have any comments or questions, please direct them to the Quora post which can be found here:

It is very important for founders to take the time to work through many aspects of a business before they reach the point when they are ready to incorporate. Founding a company can be exciting – even seductive – however, early actions and decisions ultimately form the foundation of a company. It is worth taking the time to move toward common ground and to consider whether any differences of opinion are reason enough to halt their plans.

I’ve generally tried to lay out my thoughts on a step by step basis. Address one before moving to the next.

Product & Business Roadmap. There should be general agreement here, but ultimately much of the product and business roadmaps will be shaped by external forces. Because of this, it’s as important to understand the flexibility of your co-founder(s). Match with others who’s tolerance for change is not radically different from your own.

Roles. Have a clear understanding of each others’ operating roles and responsibilities. Who is CEO and who is CTO? Co-founders work best when their skills compliment one another, so establish the roles accordingly. Also, plan how you provide honest feedback to one another. A crucial part of this discussion is to ask, “How long do you expect to have this role? In what circumstances would you feel comfortable stepping aside for another executive? If you did step aside, what role would you want to assume going forward?”

Performance Expectations. This is critical. Being a founder does not provide immunity to underperformance. Related to the roles discussion, each founder should have a clear understanding of what the other founder(s) expect of them. This includes work output, as well as company culture.

Equity. Come to agreement on the equity splits and vesting schedules. If there are differences in the amount of equity awarded to each founder, openly discuss and understand why the difference exists. Whatever discomfort a founder may feel discussing this issue at this stage, will grow exponentially with time. Clear the air early. And then drop it, until their are voting matters. More equity does not necessarily mean a louder voice in technical, product or business planning.

Money. If one founder contributes cash, how will it be valued? What are the cash compensation needs and expectations?

By no means is this an exhaustive list. I hope it helps to provide a good starting point.

via (47/2) What are the most common questions/issues startup co-founders should agree on? – Quora.