The Future of Computing
Now that I have your attention with a grandiose title, I am going to share with you an iPad tech support story: I am in London and had to switch out my iPad - I could not get the O2 sim card working for UK wireless connectivity, so Steve at ...
What is a StartUp?
An innocent question, and fundamentally too wide a question for an objective answer. For me a startup is a new company run by bright, driven individuals that want to change the world. The see the current set-up as wrong and that they can fix it, and make a ton of ...
The Un-Stone Age
This post is a follow up post on our systemic dependence on the Internet, and is as a result of general encouragement of Phil Hotchkiss. It is estimated that as we exit 2011 50% of phones will be smart phones. So what? Well, just as more and more of our ...
Current Tech Destroys Newspapers, Future Tech Supports Them
There is increased discussion about the imminent end to newspapers, such as the quote by the publisher of the New York Times, Arthur Sulzberger Jr: Asked about his response to the suggestion that the NYT might print its last edition in 2015, Sulzberger said he saw no point in making ...
Feature or Product or Business or Defensible Business?
Sanjay Anandaram posted a great article in Plugged.in, and I suggest that you read the full article, though to get his full perspective. The money quote for me is: Today I know that a feature doesn’t make a product. A product doesn’t make a business; And most importantly, a business ...
Life Mechanics
As a child I read books about Transactional Analysis and OneUpmanship, probably at the prompting of my mother. I found these interesting in the way they described bow people play games in life and expect a reaction for every action. Have you never been in a crowd and someone waived ...
Raising Money? Easy? Investing? Easy? - Why Not?
A few days ago Dave McClure posed this: This was the consummation of a heated debate on Twitter regarding a blog posting by Niki Scevak entitled Angel Index Funding Bullshit. Niki argues that Ron Conway and Dave McClure by investing in a large number of startups leads to them being ...
The Internet of People
Since the mass adoption of services such as LinkedIn and Facebook people have increasingly come online using their real names. There has been a shift from representing yourself as angrybear101@aol.com to using your actual identity. This phenomenon is culturally more important. I like to refer to it as the Internet ...
Mad Men Made Mad by Marketing New Normal
On my last trip to San Francisco I happen to catch 10 minutes of Carlie Rose. Jeff Bezos was being interviewed and there was something he said that I though was particularly significant: Before if you were making a product, the right business strategy was to put 70% of your ...
Laser Focus
Many VC blogs deal with fund raising and pivoting, but few cover just as important an area: managing a team in a high growth environment, ensuring that everyone knows what the firm stands for and what is expected of them. It is easier in low growth companies as the challenges ...
My Love Hate Relationship with Google Docs, and by Extension Google
I have been a strong proponent of using Google Docs to create off-line storage of your important files. No more. What happened? Simply put: it worked until it stopped. I do not know if that is because I reached 96% usage of the 1 GB of non Google Docs formatted ...
"I Don't Use Twitter" - Huh?
I hear this from a lot of very intelligent people. In fact, when I ask someone if they tweet I generally know the answer before I even ask it. I do not then proselytize, but it is instructive how many people do not understand the benefit of using Twitter. To ...
Is it a Business?
My run-rate for looking at businesses is over one a day, and rapidly approaching two. I enjoy almost every meeting, and in fact cannot think of one that I have not found useful. As a firm we end up investing in a very small proportion of what we see, perhaps ...
Drugs, Alcohol, Sex and Credit Cards
When each of my kids heads to college they get the DASC (drugs, alcohol, sex and credit card) speech. They know the first three well and have given me the rolling-eye-yawn response years before. The focus, though is the last and to make sure they understand that college debt, like ...
The Fed is to Blame!
For what, you might ask? For the mess the current financial system is in, and the wealth destruction that has ensued. Well, in fact, we all are to blame in some interconnected way, but it is clear to me that actions taken by the Fed a decade ago have been ...
The Internet is a Black Hole
I think most epiphanies are trite as soon as they are discovered. It might be pithy, or simple, or even "elegant" as we used to say at college, but ultimately it is trite and obvious once it is stated. The Internet is a black hole. There is a great giant ...
Microsoft: No Plans To Offer Office Version For Apple iPad
This headline from Barron's again shows why Microsoft's market cap is about to be eclipsed by Apple's. The just do not get it. But they will after it is, perhaps, too late. Apple has dominant market share in high end PC's and nominal share in PC's below $1,000. The iPad ...
iPad Pre-Release Thoughts
FOur quick observations: 1. Take a page from a color magazine and fold it until the screen is the size of the screen on an iPhone. Do you think a magazine this size would be as compelling an experience? 2. Think of the iPad as an attack on the education ...
Online Reputation
[Okay, this post refers to a portfolio company, and hopefully is not seen as a shameless plug] During the due diligence for a recent investment in Klout by my fund, ff Asset Management, we have been thinking about online identity and reputation and trying to understand what is changing here. ...
Investment Landscape - in 10 Soundbites
On Change: Everything is in flux. Everything is a "fad". Nothing is constant. Change comes, so accept it and embrace it. On Capitalism: Capitalism is about efficient allocation of capital. Regulations that get in the way distort capitalism and lead to inefficient allocations, often to the financial supporters of government. ...
Should an Entrepreneur Pay to Pitch?
No. They never should, and if they do then it indicates a lack of drive, verve and creativity in reaching angels and VC's. Here is how I see it: VC's make money by investing in successful companies, and like to believe that their input along the way with regard to ...
