Sachin Rekhi

As many of you know, I'm a huge proponent of on-demand computing as I believe it's the best starting point for most early stage web startups. Cloud computing allows a venture to substitute high initial capital expenditures for operating expenses that grow proportional to your traction. Equally important is its ability to flexibility scale and retract with the ebb and flow of your business. While it may make sense at a later stage to move to your own data center as you look to optimize costs, it rarely should be a priority in the tumultuous early days when you are still searching for product/market fit.

At my previous startup Anywhere.FM, we were an early adopter of Amazon Web Services in 2007. I've continued to be an early adopter of next generation cloud platforms as I'm always interested in understanding the bleeding edge innovations. Last year I initially saw a lot of promise in Google App Engine, but ultimately chose to abandon it due to its shortcomings. Just recently I tried the Rackspace Cloud, which is shaping up to be the fiercest competitor against AWS. I thought I'd share my experience with you.

Over the past two decades we have seen an evolution in the way we discover the content we consume online. I wanted to chronicle this evolution as well as offer a better way to take advantage of the next chapter in content consumption.

As many of you know, I'm a big proponent of open platforms and have spent much of my career designing, building, or leveraging open platforms and APIs. While we have seen explosive growth in social platforms over the past several years, I believe they are still very early in their history.

I wanted to put out my 5 social platform predictions for 2010, as I think we are poised to see another exciting year of innovation.

After last week's post I got quite a few folks asking me what exactly is an Entrepreneur-in-Residence. Since I didn't describe it in my previous post and there isn't very good information out there about the role, I thought I would provide an overview, it's benefits, and drawbacks.

As many of you know, I spent the better half of 2009 as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Trinity Ventures. It was one of the most rewarding experiences I've ever had and would encourage anyone who gets the opportunity to do it. Working alongside Gus Tai, Ajay Chopra, Jim Tybur, Dan Scholnick, and the rest of the Trinity team provided an inside look into the world of venture capital. Given that I've spent most of my entrepreneurial career in scrappy startup environments, I developed a valuable new perspective on evaluating opportunities.

I thought I would take a moment to share some of the most compelling lessons I learned during my Entrepreneurship-in-Residence.