I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw that number.

What could a startup do with $48 million?

It's an incomprehensibly large number of dollars.

I was reminded of a similar investment I heard about a long time ago. A company named Firedrop, that had a product that looked like a loser (it was, in fact a loser) raised something like $90 million from Kleiner, Perkins, which was then the leading venture capital firm.

It didn't make sense until I realized that KP had raised a fund of over $1 billion. How could they explain that to their investors? Where would they find companies to use that much money? So (I guess) they parked big buckets of money in several of their startups, with no plans to spend it or invest it. I don't know if that theory was correct, but the fund, the investor and the company are long-gone.

It would be really interesting to get some ideas of what a company like Box.net will do with so much money.

 2/26/2011; 7:48:18 PM.   .

Best picture: King's Speech.

Best actress: Hailee Steinfeld. (Nominated in Supporting Actress.)

Best supporting actress: Helena Bonham Carter.

Best actor: Colin Firth.

Supporting actor: Geoffrey Rush.

Best documentary: Inside Job.

Here's a list of all the nominees.

PS: I'd love to get a list of people live-blogging the Oscars. I want their feeds to turn into a river.

 2/26/2011; 12:31:34 PM.   .

Two quick mini-posts in one, both about media.

1. Reading Keith Richards' autobiography, just starting it, but already there's been a huge payoff. Something I had never thought about. Before vinyl records there was no way to mass-exchange music between people. The new medium made it possible for Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters, Solomon Burke and Jerry Lee Lewis, all Americans, to influence two British teens, Richards and his co-Stone, Mick Jagger. He says that's why we saw an explosion in music in the 50s and 60s. Before that it was all Mozart, Beethoven and Tchaikovsky. Richards ought to know, he was a part of the explosion. And the book is an eye-opener because I, like others, assumed Richards was kind of a stoner idiot savant. Quite the opposite, he's a hacker -- a brilliant one.

2. I watched a video with David Carr and AO Scott of the NY Times. Carr said the TV networks love shows like the Oscars because of the realtime connection. I know what he means. I am a huge fan of movies, and am rooting for and against a bunch of movies that are up for awards tonight. He says the Grammys had record viewing this year because of social media. I certainly experience that, I don't know if I've ever watched the Grammys, but I did this year because of all the interesting back and forth on Twitter among my cohorts. I will of course watch the Oscars. TV and realtime networks go really well together. Glad the TV guys now see that. (And don't let Al Jazeera sweep up the whole net-based news thing while you guys are pretending it's the 90s in your news departments.)

 2/26/2011; 10:40:42 AM.   .

Normally I would tweet this and link to something that explained.

This is what communication was like before Twitter.

That, and maybe it will be once again.

PS: Often when I post a note like this, Twitter immediately comes back.

PPS: At 10:10AM Eastern it's back.

 2/26/2011; 9:30:03 AM.   .