With all of the content he released this year – 3 albums, one being a double album – there was a lot of good music from Ryan Adams this year. There was one song of his that was played through my speakers more than any other: Let it Ride.
I don’t know if there was a section in a song that bounced around my head more than this one, and if you’ve heard the song I’m sure you’ll agree:

“Loaded like a sailor / Tumbling off a ferry boat / I was at the bar till three / Oh Lord, and I wasn’t ready to go / I’m never ready to go / Tennessee’s a brother to my sister Carolina where they’re gonna bury me / And I ain’t ready to go /I’m never ready to go”

A bit of a country twang to the entire song, but that’s okay I enjoy it on this track. The unexplainable fun of belting out the chorus at the top of my lungs while driving on the QEW in the summertime makes this song the first added to the top 10 of ’05.

Those who know me know that I love music. I wanted to do a “top 10 albums of 2005″ type of thing but then I realized that I rarely consume music through the traditional album format. This is probably true of my entire generation and will only increasingly become the case. Downloads, mix cds, playlists, mp3 players have all killed the album format.

Most of the songs that make my top 10 of ’05 come from albums that would probably be strong enough to make an album list, but that’s on the strength of their independent songs, instead of their ‘albumness’. From now until the new year I’ll compile the list of my 10 favourite songs of the year. While most are from 2005, I didn’t limit the options to music that was released this year.

I’ll compile the list, one song per post, and then I’ll have a final post attempting to put them in order from 10th favourite to most favourite.

Let’s see how this goes.

Reading Peter Rip’s excellent post titled The Power of Venture Myth has me thinking this question: is the traditional VC industry ready for a disruption?

Doesn’t that seem unnecessary? Does focusing on the potential winner to make it a huge hit force the other investments to ‘lose’? Why must there be a huge winner and a median loss? Is this a healthy mentality to have as an investor – that you need to seek out the hits in the portfolio and focus on that? As an entrepreneur do you want to trust your company to someone who may end up kill it off to focus on a home run?

This seems like there is an opportunity here — disrupt the traditional VC business model.

(I think we’re already seeing it to some degree, but I’ll post more on that later).

I came across Your Elevator Pitch and immediately spent way too much time checking it out. It reminded me of how much time was wasted on Hot or Not when I was in first year of university.

It also reenforced two other things: how important a clearly communicated elevator pitch is; and, how so many are poorly communicated (if at all).

We were recently asked at work what our elevator pitch was and, well, we weren’t exactly sure of it. We’ve been so busy with what we’ve considered more important tasks that we haven’t done a crucial first step. Shame on us.

A clear elevator pitch not only helps you communicate exactly what it is the company does, but it also provides, and forces, focus. With a clearly defined elevator pitch everyone knows the direction the ship is sailing and there isn’t any uncertainty.

Spend some time thinking about your company’s elevator pitch. I bet you’ll find that it isn’t clear enough. Put the ‘more important’ tasks aside for a little bit and focus on the elevator pitch. It will focus you going forward and you’ll be better prepared to tackle the ‘important’ tasks.

My roommate and I had an interesting discussion the other day that I can’t shake from my head. It focused on the thought that renters are the non-techie early adopters of technology.

The thought is this – every time that a renter changes location they have to reasses their household technology options. Because they are forced to start over they examine all available options. Owners have invested money in infrastructure – wiring the house for ethernet, for example – and have less incentive to adopt newer technology.

I had a landline in Kingston and when I moved to Toronto following school I was forced to reexamine my telephone options. I dug around a bit and found that I could probably have all of my needs met, and then some, with only a cellphone. Turns out that while it has been a hassle at times (leaving my phone in LA) the experience has been worth it for a number of reasons and I wonder if I’ll ever have a landline again.

Looking back I see a definite trend of early adopting brought about through renting  – when I moved after first year I had to find a solution for networking all of the computers in the house. We were early adopters with wifi. Sure there were some issues, but we were true early adopters in the sense that we were happy trading them off for the benefits we enjoyed.

It’s somewhat of a crazy thought, but I think there is some truth in it. Are you a renter? Has that forced you into an early adopting role?