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This one is hard to answer generically — it’s easy to say, great team! Or big market! Or technology differentiation! Or something generic like that. However, being in venture capital is about being in the “exceptions” business.There were hundreds of mobile photo apps prior to Instagram and Snapchat, and they would have been money-losing investments. Same for social networks before Facebook, or there were more than a dozen investor-backed search engines before Google.My job is to find the exception to the rule, and pick an individual company that will stand out, and I don’t have to be bullish about an entire category of companies. In practice, this happens also because individually, I’m focused on doing 2–3 investments per year, and don’t have the capacity to, say, invest in every single company working on XYZ.All of that said, beyond the obvious things (team, market, product, etc.) there are a few things that make me lean into understanding a company, in particular.First, it’s interesting when a startup using a new platform or a new technology in a clever way. For example, Instagram Stories and Snap Stories are a huge new short-form video format, and an app that might interact with these stories in an interesting way might be compelling. Or because esports is so huge, if someone builds on the idea that perhaps games content could be streamable-first, then that’s intriguing too. Taking advantage of a new technology helps answer the “Why now?” question and explains why it’s a fresh opportunity that should be tried. If your new startup could have been built 15 years ago, perhaps the idea’s already been tried and just isn’t that good.Second, technology changes constantly but people stay the same. And their motivations — in particular, to spend time with friends, to date, to be able to earn more, to find better work over their careers, to take care of their pets, etc., etc. — also stay constant over time. So when a new startup purports to create new consumer behavior, I’m sometimes skeptical. But if a product allows people to tap into a pre-existing motivation but in a new, fresh way, then I’m interested.Third, I like to see a strong insight around how the product will grow. For example, it’s important if a new video streaming startup, for instance, has deep relationships with the YouTube/Instagram influencer community to get it off the ground. Or if a new workplace collaboration tool is built to tap into calendars and be inherently viral through cal invites. The reason for this is that we are in an interesting era of new technology products where in general building the technology is not all that hard. Startups typically don’t fail because of technology issues, given open source, AWS, lots of collaboration tools, a network of smart people, etc., etc. This used to be the case decades ago, but these days, startups fail because they don’t get traction in the market. As a result, I like to see something clever and insightful in how the product will get off the ground — especially if it’s driven by viral growth, or some form of organic, as opposed to paid marketing.Usually at the stage where I am seeing companies, one of the big things I’m evaluating for is “it works!” I usually look at their growth metrics, cohort charts, acquisition mix, engagement data, etc., and try to make sure that it’s sticky now and will remain so over time. Once I validate this, then I move onto some of the bigger qualitative questions like the ones above — what’s the trick that makes it grow? Why now? What new technology does it exploit? What classic human motivation does it tap into?And finally, I want to reiterate that it’s all about finding the exceptions. You can spend as much time as you want analyzing a space, but it’s just about picking the individual startup you like most.

The interface is just part of the problem that Apple has to fix in order to succeed in the TV market. Primarily Apple's entrance into the TV market can't be just a TV service which co-exists with the existing infrastructure of cable providers and set-top boxes. No matter how simple or elegant a Siri interface may be, the bottleneck comes from basic issues like Siri needing access to the channel listings and letting the user define which filters and shows they are interested in. This is a problem which is even more complicated in a global market where different countries have multiple competing providers and each with their own ways of doing things. How would Apple let you setup your choice of channels and providers for your own country so Siri is only aware of the content that matters to you? What sort of interface is that initial setup going to require, not voice combined with pages of text and options surely? And would Apple really want to be at the heart of updating the channels and cable packages that you use, worldwide, when the source of that information, the networks, are the ones beating the drums and choosing when and how the updates occur. It would be like herding cats. Apple won't want to put themselves in that sort of position, owner of the problem but without any power to make it all work as seamlessly as they would like.TV is too well entrenched to attack it head-on and win big with just a fancy interface on top of the existing network structure. Look at Google's approach to TV to see how hard it is to get traction in that way. Apple can either join in and be another TiVo-like spin-off service or they can try a different approach, and clean up.It is one reason why Apple was only able to enter the US smartphone market on one carrier, AT&T in 2007, they were on the back foot, had to prove that they knew what they were doing and they needed to start small. Apple didn't want to be playing someone else's game, they wanted to do it on their own terms with the sort of control necessary to make the iPhone a global success, and something which had a long term future to give them other options, like the app store. (This sort of tight control paves the way and allows products like the iPad to exist). The carriers don't control the iPhone, and that was exactly what Apple wanted and needed. The carriers want the iPhone now, but they still don't get to choose what it does or how it works, they just provide the plumbing. This has never happened before. Look at Android phones in general to see the old model of carriers being in control of the devices to see where that leads, where the majority of money goes and the majority of the mind share. The unlocked Nexus Android phone is Google's attempt at doing the same thing as Apple with the carriers.But back to TV. The internet is the battlefield where the TV revolution will occur. YouTube is a clear example of how TV can be globalised. Hulu and Netflix shows how streaming content can be very successful and yet they aren't big enough to threaten the existing model or make it worthwhile for Apple to bother taking a shot. Whatever Apple does to seriously enter the TV market, it will be through doing something different with the source of the content as much as a new interface. The current rental model through iTunes is limited by content and provider rights, it doesn't scale well enough to compete with the existing model that the networks offer.I think Apple TV more than hints at the way forward. It is "just a hobby", or so they say, but I think that is just a way of disarming everyone. Just like the iPad it's is merely a blank slate and the medium for high-quality content. It might look like yet another over-priced media centre, and AirPlay is just Apple's answer to DLNA, but it is iOS that has the power to undermine the entire TV industry. Why? Because iOS powers apps - individual apps as TV channels to stream or download content. Disintermediation through the app store and over the internet. It provides ownership and power to all relevant parties. Each app is an island which the content creator can own and still operate in a global market with region specific controls and rights. It allows them to start small and dabble at first and then commit fully as demand increases. Consumers benefit by getting more choice and control, paying for specific content at respectable prices rather than just paying a lump sum for a generic service. Apple would get their cut and get the sort of control required to make it work and push it forward. The list goes on:- interactivity, self broadcasting, different devices...This, is where Siri fits in the picture.

The equation might be right, but it hides the meaning of the pieces that constitue the left hand side.. Understanding the role of each component makes the comparison easier.Underscore.js is meant to be a lightweight library for common JavaScript tasks. It defines all of its methods on the "_" object so as not to collide with core JavaScript methods. It is stand-alone and a generic tool for making JavaScript programming easier.Backbone.js is a framework for creating MVC JavaScript web apps. It's key benefit is in decoupling the DOM from the data that drives the page. By doing this, it makes things like server-side persistence, DOM synchronization, and model collections easy. Backbone.js provides model, view, controller, and collection classes that can easily be inherited from to create app-specific MVC components. The structure of Backbone.js very much enforces a particular way to build web apps.Backbone.js's most built-out MVC component is the model, and has many features that make things like instantiation, validation, and serialization easy. Backbone.js controllers are there but aren't commonly used. Instead, the model is coupled directly to the view via events. The model will issue events whenever attributes are changed, and a view can monitor and react to these events. The Backbone.js view doesn't, however, manipulate the DOM directly. It relies upon a third party library for that.Backbone.js depends upon Underscore.js. Both library and framework do not have methods for interacting with the DOM. So, the left-hand side of the equation should actually be:(Underscore.js + Backbone.js) + <DOM manipulation library>jQuery is a fan favorite, but it could easily be substituted with MooTools, Prototype.js, Dojo, or any other favorite JavaScript library for DOM manipulation. This library is used solely for DOM manipulation and avoided for any type of logic or computation necessary in the app.Prototype.js, in comparison, has many of the same individual core features (e.g. class inheritance, JavaScript extensions, DOM manipulation, etc.) of Underscore.js, Backbone.js, and jQuery. It does not, however, have the higher level features (e.g. MVC structure of Backbone.js, animations of jQuery, etc.), nor the forced programming style that the three offer together.