Blogger's Lounge: Being Right or Making Money

As we get ready for John Boehner to take the gavel from Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday, I find myself thinking back to the last time a Republican speaker took control of the House from a Democrat -- and reflecting on how far down the wrong road we have traveled since then.

It was January 1995, and Newt Gingrich, now considered a right-wing bomb thrower, was taking the gavel from Tom Foley. After taking the oath of office, he delivered a speech that praised FDR as "the greatest president of the 20th century" and presented concern for the least among us as a shared national objective. "The balanced budget is the right thing to do," he said. "But it does not in my mind have the moral urgency of coming to grips with what is happening to the poorest Americans."

For the incoming Republican speaker, reducing poverty and lifting the poor into the middle class was a moral imperative beyond the left vs. right battlefield -- not just the purview of lefties, socialists, and community organizers:

I say to those Republicans who believe in total privatization, you cannot believe in the Good Samaritan and explain that as long as business is making money we can walk by a fellow American who is hurt and not do something.... If you cannot afford to leave the public housing project, you are not free. If you do not know how to find a job and do not know how to create a job, you are not free. If you cannot find a place that will educate you, you are not free. If you are afraid to walk to the store because you could get killed, you are not free.

So now, with poverty higher than it was 16 years ago, with greater income inequality, and with the middle class struggling to hold on, what will Speaker Boehner make his number one priority? According to the Washington Post, it's "cutting spending," followed by repealing the healthcare law, and "helping get our economy moving" (no specifics on how he plans to do that).

Yet we saw on 60 Minutes that he's very aware of how fragile the American Dream has become, telling Lesley Stahl, "I can't go to a school anymore. I used to go to a lot of schools. And you see all these little kids running around. Can't talk about it." And he choked up when he did try to talk about "making sure these kids have a shot at the American Dream, like I did. It's important."

Interestingly, in his first speech as speaker, Gingrich also talked about being moved by the woes of school kids.

"I have seldom been more shaken," he said, "than I was after the election when I had breakfast with two members of the Black Caucus. One of them said to me, 'Can you imagine what it is like to visit a first-grade class and realize that every fourth or fifth young boy in that class may be dead or in jail within 15 years? And they are your constituents and you are helpless to change it?' For some reason, I do not know why, maybe because I visit a lot of schools, that got through. I mean, that personalized it. That made it real, not just statistics, but real people."

But the trajectory of our political discourse over the last decade and a half has meant that taking on poverty has gone from a moral imperative and shared national objective to an afterthought -- or no thought at all.

The question is, is there anything that can be done to help Boehner make the connection between the policies he supports and the effect those policies have on the kids who bring him to tears?

Newt Gingrich failed to follow through on the moral imperative he identified in his first speech as speaker, trading in his moral vision and replacing it 15 months later with an announcement that the Republican agenda could be reduced to six words: "Earn more, keep more, do more."

Will Boehner's take be "Earn more, keep more, cut more"? Or is there a chance he will surprise us? Maybe it's because it's close enough to Christmas that I still believe in miracles, but wouldn't it be great if the John Boehner who takes the gavel on Wednesday is the one who weeps at the thought of kids denied a shot at the American Dream?

GroupMe, a service that lets users start a group chat using text messages, announced today that it has raised $10.6 million in its second round of funding — but it won’t be generating any kind of revenue any time soon.

The startup lets phone owners create a single phone number for a group chat. Whenever anyone sends a text message to that number, it’s sent out to everyone else in the group. It works for conference calls as well — anyone can dial into the number and start a group chat.

The first version of GroupMe was built over a weekend in May during a hackathon, a type of programming contest which challenges developers to swiftly create a working Web service, sponsored by TechCrunch, the technology blog now owned by AOL. Its creators famously drew offers for funding as soon as they left the stage.

GroupMe is built on top of a service provided by Twilio, a San Francisco-based startup which provides easy access to voice and text-messaging services which might otherwise be out of reach to small companies. Twilio has seen projects that use telephones to do anything from play tic-tac-toe to initiate group text messaging, has been particularly popular and even has its own seed funding program to go with it.

Right now, GroupMe doesn’t even generate any revenue — the service is completely free for users. Twilio, on the other hand, charges two cents to send or receive a text message, with potential volume discounts. Whatever GroupMe’s paying Twilio, it’s a cost that GroupMe appears to be bearing on its own for now. The development group doesn’t have any plans to try to develop a revenue-generating model in the near future. GroupMe has a few ideas like creating sponsored texting groups and brand groups. But that’s all they are for the time being — just ideas — said co-founder Jared Hecht.

“We compressed our 18-month road map into 9 months and we’re still finishing that up before we even consider thinking about revenue,” he said. “Obviously we are not focused on generating revenue right now.”

That didn’t stop Khosla Ventures or any of its other investors from throwing some cash their way. The group raised $850,000 in its first seed round of fundraising from the likes of Ron Conway’s SV Angel and Lerner Ventures. The most recent round of funding was led by Khosla Ventures, General Catalyst Partners and First Round Capital.

GroupMe brought on some pretty heavy-duty talent along with the funding as well. Jeremy Schoenherr, a former developer of Hot Potato and iPhone operating system iOS development expert, has come on board to help develop GroupMe’s mobile applications. Steve Cheney, a former writer with TechCrunch, also joined the team as a business development consultant.

Now that the “distracting” fundraising process is done and the company doesn’t have to worry about making any money for a while, it is turning its entire focus on improving the application, Hecht said.

“Now it’s product time, and it’s buckling down and spinning it out before we even consider finding a revenue,” he said.

Next Story: Access 360 Media raises $40 million-plus for outdoor digital advertising Previous Story: Consumer electronics market expected to grow 10 percent in 2011

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Blogger's Lounge

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Being Right or Making Money

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