Tag Archives: startups

Coolest Tech Gadget for Millionaires

If I sold stock earlier during Bubble 1.0 and if my house had a basement I’d get an SC5832. SC stands for SiCortext, a Polaris portfolio company I’m involved with. 5832 is the number of processors in this dense Linux … Continue reading

Posted in startups | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

Top 10 Security Companies

A friend once told me that when the media puts you on a pedestal it is because they want to swing at you with a baseball bat. So it is slightly bittersweet to see Veracode on NetworkWorld‘s list of top 10 IT security … Continue reading

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Nokia & Navteq: Vertical Integration or Diversification?

Mapping is the killer mobile app. Whether you have location-based services (LBS) or not, the chances are that you are using mobile mapping software on your smartphone and starting to take it for granted that it will just be there … Continue reading

Posted in Mobile, startups | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Amazon Web Services Talk: Beyond Bootstrapping

The AWS event last Wed went very well. Thanks to everyone in the audience for coming and talking geek on such a gorgeous day in NYC. Worth noting: S3 is really getting some load–peaking at 27,000 requests/second. The VM marketplace … Continue reading

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Google Addressing the "Facebook issue"

I’ve been slammed with two financings but this news merits taking time on a Sunday night to blog… Ever since word got out that Brad Fitzpatrick (previously chief architect at Six Apart) had joined Google people had a pretty clear idea what Brad’s … Continue reading

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Making Money on MySpace

It’s always been possible to make money on MySpace if you didn’t pay much attention to the terms of service. The site has never consistently enforced its ban on commerce. That’s partly due to technical reasons–from a content filtering standpoint, … Continue reading

Posted in Advertising, Digital Media, Facebook, MySpace, Social Commerce, startups, Web 2.0 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Social Commerce Goes Mainstream: an Industry Insider’s Take on the Kaboodle Acquisition

Social commerce is one of the three pillars of E-Commerce 2.0: Richer user experiences (e-commerce becomes engaging) Accelerating disaggregation (e-commerce happens everywhere) Social commerce (e-commerce leverages emotional/social forces) It has also been the one people have been most skeptical about… … Continue reading

Posted in Digital Media, Social Commerce, startups, Web 2.0 | Tagged , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Facebook’s Secret Plan

I’ve figured out Facebook’s secret plan and I love it. Everyone gets everything for nothing. The everyone is truly everyone since Facebook is no longer about highschool and college kids. Most of the friend invites I get these days are … Continue reading

Posted in Digital Media, Facebook, startups, Web 2.0 | Tagged , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

The Law of Social Networks and Virtual Worlds

I am very interested in the emerging social infrastructure (Facebook, Ning, …) and virtual world (Second Life, …) platforms because I expect to see more and more startups leveraging these not just for viral distribution but at the core of their businesses. … Continue reading

Posted in startups, VC, Venture Capital, virtual worlds | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Emerging Ecosystems & Platforms

I’m at David Kirkpatrick’s iMeme conference in SF. It’s likely going to be a treat. The speakers and the attendees are of great caliber. As an ex-platform guy who’s recently spent a lot of time thinking about social infrastructure, I’m … Continue reading

Posted in Digital Media, Google, Microsoft, SaaS, startups, virtual worlds, Web 2.0 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments