MG Siegler is a general partner at Google Ventures and a columnist for TechCrunch, where he has been writing since 2009.
Previously, MG was a general partner at CrunchFund. And before TechCrunch, MG covered various technology beats for VentureBeat.
Originally from Ohio, MG attended the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI. He’s previously lived in Los Angeles where he worked in Hollywood and in San Diego where he was a web developer. He also writes at his own blogs, ParisLemon and Massive Greatness, writes movie reviews in haiku format, and tweets a lot.
He now lives in San Francisco.
============= Conflicts Of Interest =============
I am a partner at Google Ventures, a venture capital firm with investments in many startups around the world. I am also a limited partner in a couple other venture funds. And I’m an advisor to a few companies.
Previously, I was a partner at CrunchFund, and as such, have a vested interest in that portfolio of startups as well.
Currently, the only public stocks I own are Facebook and Apple — both of which I bought because their stock prices crashed way too low for no apparent reasons and because I like good deals.
I have compiled a list of investments here — though there are quite a few that aren’t yet public, so it’s not quite complete.
As an investor with a lot of positions, I’ll be transparent about them when appropriate. It’s that simple.
A few weeks ago, Chris Dixon tweeted something thought-provoking:
“What were the last Hollywood movies you saw about technology & the future that were optimistic? They seem to be systematically dystopian.”
I happened to be sitting in a movie theater waiting for Iron Man 3 to start, so I tried to come up with a good counter-example. It’s a lot harder than I thought it would be. Then the… → Read More
Just about two years ago, I went off the deep end. I had come home early from an event in an effort to do something responsible: email. I was on the road and knew the situation would be dire (since I had not been checking my email all day). I was wrong. It was a disaster. It may as well have been Inbox Trillion. There was no way I could get through it all with my sanity intact. So I did the only … → Read More
“This is not a Facebook Phone.” Yeah, whatever. The HTC First is the first phone that has Facebook partnering up with an OEM to bake an Android pie with Facebook Home filling, so I’m calling it the Facebook Phone. There will be more. This is just the first. And guess what?
It’s really good. → Read More
Facebook is absolutely, positively, 100 percent not working on a phone.
The first rule of tech news remains intact: when a company says they’re definitely not doing something, it’s as sure a sign as you can get that they will eventually do said thing. → Read More
If judged by my Twitter stream last week, the shutdown of Google Reader is the biggest story ever in the history of news. Of course, the reality is that Google is likely shutting down the product for a good reason: relatively few people used it, with less using it over time. More wood, fewer arrows, and all that.
But that doesn’t mean this move isn’t a mistake for a couple reasons. → Read More
This is the first Android device I would feel comfortable using on a regular basis.
That doesn’t mean I’m going to, but I would be just fine with it.
If I had to boil down my thoughts about the Nexus 4 into two sentences, those would be them. → Read More
The RapGenius breakdowns of recent Andrew Mason and Warren Buffet statements by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz are, well, genius. And they got me thinking back to some of my favorite blog posts along the same lines: breaking down corporate speak, vagueness, or pure bullshit line-by-line. Strolling down memory lane, I landed upon this post from June of 2010, in which I broke down some high and… → Read More
“Wait. That’s a touchscreen?!”
That wasn’t the first thought that popped into my head when I started to use the Chromebook Pixel — it was about the tenth. But that’s only because it seemed impossible that a screen this nice could be a touchscreen. Of course, being that nice, comes with a price. → Read More
When talking about Apple’s rise from near-bankruptcy to become the most valuable company in the world, people often credit the amazing string of products from the iMac to the iPod to the iPhone to the iPad. And rightfully so. But just as important was another piece of the puzzle that ensured said products would find mainstream appeal and acted as an accelerant for Apple’s success: the Apple… → Read More
What I’m about to say is undoubtedly going to piss some of you off. And that’s fine. Because in a few years, I’ll be right and you’ll look silly.
While everyone is focused on the next generation video game consoles from Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft — the latter two of which should be coming later this year — Apple is going to dominate them all. And it won’t even be that… → Read More
The year was 2004. I had just graduated college and my old Gateway mini tower PC was on its last legs. I was about to move out to California to begin my life. My parents asked what I wanted as a present before I left. But they already knew the answer. Dude, I was getting a Dell.
I went online and customized the hell out of an Inspiron 8600. The price tag was well over $3,000. The thing was a… → Read More
A few days ago, I read Nilay Patel’s review of the Pebble smartwatch for The Verge. Like many others, I bought a Pebble on Kickstarter, and I can’t wait to try it out myself. But one part of Patel’s review stuck out at me in particular:
Any incoming notification will quietly buzz the Pebble and light up the screen. Frankly, it’s great — being able to see who’s texting, emailing, or… → Read More
You know the drill, Apple posts a record $54.5 billion in revenue…
…and the stock tanks 10 percent in after-hours trading.
I mean. Fifty four and a half billion dollars. I went ahead and did the math: that’s an annual run-rate of $218 billion dollars (yes, I know Q1 is the holiday quarter, so it tends to be much larger than the others — but don’t underestimate the possibility of a new… → Read More
In The Lord of the Rings, when Sauron’s forces capture Gollum, they torture him in Mordor but are only able to get two things out of him: “Shire” and “Baggins”. Over the past few days, we’ve had similar frustrations in trying to track down the content of the Facebook event taking place this coming Tuesday. Despite hounding a number of people who might be in the know, the only… → Read More
CES attendee, why are you here? Are you hoping to see the latest and greatest gadget? Have you been here the past few years? Have you noticed you’ll find no such gadget anywhere near CES?
And if it were here, would it matter? Do such gadgets ever get released? Or are they figments of some marketing wizard’s imagination? Have you seen the press release? Have you noticed there is no price or… → Read More
We all know the “four horsemen” of tech: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. These are the companies that pretty much everyone agrees will shape the foreseeable future of the tech sector. In some circles, that list makes waves for who is not included: Microsoft. But any rational thinker (meaning those outside of Redmond or anyone who hasn’t made a career as a .Net developer) knows that… → Read More
Yesterday, we ran a big story: Is Apple Plotting A Route To A Waze Acquisition? Rumours On The Road Point To Yes. That’s huge news for a few reasons: Apple rarely makes startup acquisitions — Waze is a hot startup with good buzz — the Apple Maps fiasco — the list goes on. But there’s just one little problem: the deal isn’t actually happening.
That information comes from multiple sources… → Read More
Modern Apple owes pretty much everything to the iMac. Yes, it was the iPod and later the iPhone and iPad that took the company to new, almost unimaginable heights. But as everyone knows, the company was at death’s door when Steve Jobs unveiled the “Bondi Blue” iMac in 1998. The iMac saved Apple, giving the company the time to do everything else that followed.
But as we enter 2013, the… → Read More
The real world: Quit, verb, to leave (a place), usually permanently.
The internet: Quit, verb, to threaten to leave as loudly as possible, usually over something stupid, then do nothing.
Some days I feel like the blogosphere is full of paranoid attention whores. Other days, I’m sure of it. Today is one of those days. → Read More
We happen to live in a massive time of transition. The PC market that has dominated computing for the past few decades is decaying while mobile computing is soaring — with the only limit in sight being the total number of people on the planet. As a result, startups have been gradually shifting their focus from web-first to mobile-first. It’s the reason why I stay up late at night writing posts… → Read More
In three short weeks it will be 2013. Someone may want to send a fax to Flickr and Twitter to let them know.
Over the past couple of days, both of these services have pulled a move straight out of 2010: they launched new versions of their mobile apps with — get this — filters. Filters! These guys have millions of dollars and thousands of employees at their disposal and this is the kind of … → Read More
I use my phone far more than I use a computer these days. If you’re not already, soon, you’ll be doing the same. Yes, a huge part of this is that it’s a device that is always with you. But recently, there’s something else I’ve noticed too.
For a few services out there, I far prefer to use their apps instead of their websites. What’s interesting is that I don’t mean service that… → Read More
Well, The Daily failed. It wasn’t all that fun while it lasted. And it didn’t last all that long. If everyone had known that it was going to cost $25 million a year to run, it probably would have been easy to predict its eventual failure. At a high level, the reality is simple: the economics didn’t come close to working.
But because the media industry loves nothing more than talking about… → Read More
Yes, that headline. Obvious. But appropriate.
Yes, after much delay (about a month), iTunes 11 is here today. And yes, it is one of the biggest overhauls of the media management service yet. Perhaps the biggest. And yes, it is now better positioned to compete in the era of the cloud. And yes, they even made the icon a bit better.
It was back at the iPhone 5 event in September, when Apple… → Read More
So let me get this straight: this year’s “Cyber Monday” (the worst fake holiday name in the history of fake holidays — and names) was a new record day for Amazon when it came to Kindle sales. So was “Black Friday” (at least this one sounds like a plague). Overall, the holidays brought “more than double” the numbers of last year’s record sales.
Great! So what were last year’s… → Read More
When I saw the initial wave of Surface reviews hit, I started pinging some folks to see if I could get my hands on one to review as well. I wanted to try out Microsoft’s new device because I like testing all new devices, ensuring that I maintain a good sense of the overall landscape. Plus, I find it fascinating that Microsoft is now doing their own Windows-based hardware. It’s nothing if not… → Read More
For the past six months, I’ve heard the same thing over and over again: “The MacBook Pro with the retina screen looks amazing. I want that screen on a MacBook Air. That would be the perfect computer.” Well, we’re almost there. Not quite. But for some of you, we’re now close enough.
What I’m describing, of course, is the 13-inch MacBook Pro with the retina display.
Two years ago, I… → Read More
“Floored.” “Wow.” “Wild.”
Those are some of the reactions within Microsoft tonight upon hearing that Windows and Windows Live President Steven Sinofsky would be leaving the company “effective immediately“. Those are the reactions because nearly all Microsoft employees found out about the news tonight alongside the rest of us. → Read More
“What’s the best feature of the Surface?”
“Um, everything.”
Thus began my experience at a local mall buying a Microsoft Surface. → Read More
Yesterday, Instagram launched web profiles. To some, they’re lovely. To others, they’re long overdue. And to a great many, they’re ho-hum — an obvious way to inject yet another zinger about Facebook buying the startup for a billion dollars (but actually *only* $700-something million — ZING!).
To me, these profiles are actually a very clear window into why Facebook would spend so much… → Read More
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