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Tag Archives: startups
Smart Entrepreneurs vs. Wise Entrepreneurs
There is a set of interrelated concepts I’m fond of reminding entrepreneurs about but I’ve never found a really good way to summarize them into a sentence that conveys the right meaning and tone. Here are various renditions: Be different, … Continue reading
The Easy Road To Incremental Innovation
I was chatting with Hank Williams today about startups and the evolving venture capital landscape and he pointed me to Judy Estrin‘s upcoming book “Closing The Innovation Gap.” I guess I just added another title to my ever-growing, impossible-to-catch-up-with reading … Continue reading
Posted in startups, VC
Tagged entrepreneurship, Hank Williams, incremental innovation, innovation gap, Judy Estrin, startups, VC, venture model
4 Comments
Artificial Scarcity For Entrepreneurs, Not Just Economists
Ryan Freitas @ Plinky pointed me to Aaron Schwartz’s riff on 37signals’ advice on how entrepreneurs should launch startups using the “Holywood method” (teaser, preview, launch). Aaron makes a solid point that web sites are not movies. Movies are fixed … Continue reading
Posted in startups, Web 2.0
Tagged artificial scarcity, entrepreneurship, startups, Web 2.0
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Eureka Moments
My partner Alan Spoon pointed me to this New Yorker article on the neurophysiology of Eureka moments. Only the abstract is available online so you’d have to find the full article the old-fashioned way. Serendipity and depth of insight are … Continue reading
Growing The Plinky Team
Jason and I are really excited to have Ryan Freitas joining the Plinky team. Ryan comes from Adaptive Path where he did led the recent MySpace redesign and a lot of the work on Plazes and Sphere, both of which … Continue reading
Posted in startups, Web 2.0
Tagged Adaptive Path, interactive design, Plinky, Ryan Freitas, startups, Web 2.0
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Transaction Costs Are Subjective
Jason Shellen and I are in NYC for John Battelle’s conversational marketing summit and a number of Plinky-related meetings. We grabbed a quick lunch in-between meetings at a small sandwich shop in SoHo where I saw the following sign: Beyond the … Continue reading
Starting Up Plinky
Om Malik broke the news today about Plinky. Plinky is the brainchild of founder/CEO Jason Shellen, a former Googler who worked on Blogger and shipped Google Reader. Jason and I partnered up last fall and just raised our seed round from my … Continue reading
Posted in startups, VC, Venture Capital, Web 2.0
Tagged Industry News, Jason Shellen, Om Malik, Plinky, Polaris Venture Partners, seed financing, social media, startups, VC, Venture Capital, Web 2.0
7 Comments
Should VCs Bet on the Idea or the Team?
My partner Bryce Youngren pointed me to some research by Chicago GSB Professor Steven Kaplan who tackles the perennial question of whether one should bet on the jockey or the horse. The presentation, although meandering, does have some good data in … Continue reading
Posted in startups, VC, Venture Capital
Tagged Polaris Venture Partners, startups, VC, Venture Capital
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Forced Upgrades
Rolling out a product upgrade used to be a big deal. Decades ago it was about replacing boards and ICs. Twenty years ago it was about shipping stacks of floppies and hoping they survive the UPS trip. A decade ago … Continue reading
Posted in cloud computing, SaaS, startups, Web 2.0
Tagged cloud computing, PaaS, SaaS, startups, Web 2.0
4 Comments
Amazon Funds AWS Darling Animoto
My friend Stevie Clifton, CTO at Animoto, pinged me early this morning with the news that Amazon has funded his company. This comes on the heels of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos using Animoto as a great example of how to leverage … Continue reading