September 2008
41 posts
WatchBest video blog post I have seen.
Best response to Calacanis' Startup Depresion... →
Jason Calacanis sent out a email about the future startup depression (click here to read) that is coming. It created a lot of chatter on the blogs. It is no surprise that the best and most insightful responses that I saw to this was on Fred’s blog.
Fred points out exactly where the weakness is, there are a lot of Angels and new VC’s that were able to invest and raise money using the...
Failed Banks and their Beautiful new HQ's
3 of the failed banks have very new and very palatial HQ’s. When the focus moves away from the business and more towards the show you have to worry.
Bear Sterns
Lehman Brothers
Wachovia (Still under Construction)
Great CNN article on the Bailout
My buddy Karni posted this link as a comment today. The article is great, thanks Karni.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/29/miron.bailout/index.html
Originally posted as a comment by Karni on James Siminoff using Disqus.
"Hope for the best, plan for the worst"
I have heard this said by a lot of people and it is just so true. The world goes through cycles and to be successful long term you have to live by the above, it is the only way to survive long term.
CNBC's ratings
Image via Wikipedia
With all of these financials issues I wonder what CNBC’s viewership is right now. I am sure it is breaking all records.
Congrats to Elon Musk
Image by jurvetson via Flickr
Elon Musk, who was one of the founders of PayPal, has had a big year.
First his electric car, Tesla, went into prodcution and hit the road. Now his spaceship company jsut got its first rocket into orbit today.
Elon is the type of person that America should celebrate and needs more of, he is the true definition of the insane entrepreneur, long live insanity!
Require Backup
Image by vscarpenter via Flickr
The one thing that most start ups lack in is processes. For example until today PhoneTag did not have a requirement for all (total of 10) employees to use some sort of back up service for everyone’s personal computers. As the CEO it is my fault that I did not have this in place.
I use carbonite and absolutely love it… Someone in the company (will...
Chance of McCain dying in office →
Interesting article which statistically shows the chance of McCain making it through a 4 year term of presidency. Lets just say if you don’t really like Palin then you should not vote for McCain.
Internet on the Plane is Awesome
I am on the flight from NYC to LA right now. The Internet on the plane is awesome. I thought that I would not like the distraction of it, as being on a plane is one of the few times I get to think.
The best part about it is that it makes day flights OK to take because you can now basically work the whole time. Also I am getting my voicemail (Thank you PhoneTag) as email so it is easy to...
This is funny...
azspot:
From: Henry Paulson Date: 9/23/2008 Subject: Supper secret transaction Need you’re help Bright Greetings Dear American: I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude. I am Ministry of Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had a crisis that has caused the need for a large transfer of funds of 700 billion...
Every industry has a Lehman brothers
Image by wallyg via Flickr
On my flight to Toronto today I was thinking about the collapse of the financial markets. My thoughts were around how the short term thinking in the stock market and the race for CEO’s to out do each other (have you seen Lehman’s HQ in NYC) has created these extreme boom and bust cycles.
When telecom was hot, all of the companies had to out do each other,...
Thinking about economic fundamentals
Image via Wikipedia
Now that McCain has established that fundamentals = people it is going to make things a lot easier for me. When an investor asks me how the fundamentals of the business are going, I can very quickly tell them that they are great. I can also tell them that one of the fundamentals got married over Labor Day weekend, another fundamental closed a 10 person account today and that...
WatchThis is the best online ad that I have ever seen.
Microsoft dropping Seinfeld from incredibly... →
marco:
What a loss. (thanks, John)
I can’t imagine anyone at Microsoft sitting in a boardroom, watching these ads, and saying, “This is a good idea.”
This is just incredible, what a blunder
8 tags
The Coffee Market
Image by Getty Images via Daylife
There are 2 businesses that I will never go into, restaurant/hospitality and airlines. So this post in no way is trying to elude to my entrance into the coffee market but I do think that it is becoming an interesting market and opportunity for entrepreneurs.
The coffee market is being split into 2 distinct verticals, high end (where Starbuck’s used to be)...
The biggest Apple Announcement Today
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The biggest Apple Announcement Today Apple announced 2 big new things today, a new iPod and a upgrade to iTunes. However I think that the biggest piece of news that Apple had come out today was that NBC came back onto iTunes. NBC was the first big network to break off of the iTunes platform. There coming back shows Apple’s clear dominance in the content area.
I also...
Testing the Blackberry Bold vs iPhone 3g
Guess it is time to buy an iPhone… This is a great comparison between the 2 platforms and it shows that Apple is really close to taking the enterprise market.
bijan:
The new Blackberry Bold is supposed to ship in October.
Luckily I got one yesterday thanks to a friend (i’m not sure I’m supposed to say his name or not).
I’ve been using various blackberry models for years until the...
TC50 Day 1
Well I spent half the day at the TechCrunch 50 event in SF today. Jason and Mike put on a great event. There are lots of people out there talking about the things that went wrong but to me the hardest part of an event like TC50 is getting the right audience there and that is something that they were definitely able to accomplish.
So far the companies that I saw were OK but I am there more to...
8 tags
WatchI feel like at this point all political news and reporting should be done exclusively on Comedy Central, because it really has become a total joke.
fred-wilson:
thank god for the Daily Show
“A recent study conducted by Zillow finds what they call a “Not My House!...”
– - Predictably / Irrational
Thanks Jamie for introducing me to this book/blog, great stuff!
(via daryn)
I really can not say enough good things about this book, and the blog is great as well. However I can not take all of the credit as Josh from First Round was initially who turned me on to...
SF Week
Image via CrunchBase
Next week is a big one in San Francisco. TechCrunch 50 is Monday-Wednesday and then CTIA is Wednesday through Friday. There are just so many people from all different areas, VC, Entrepreneurs, Mobile execs, etc., coming in for both events that I have basically been able to book meetings the entire week.
So I will be camping out in SF from Sunday-Thursday, should be a fun...
Google Chrome
Started playing with it today. The big problem will be all of the add-ons that I have running in Firefox will not work for a while. It will be interesting to see if this will be an achilles heal to Chrome, will developers want to add support for yet another browser for their apps. Very similar to game consoles and how content can make or break the console regardless of the actual consoles...
Motorola's abondoned PDA Phone
Image by Getty Images via Daylife
I was looking up some info on a PDA phone that Motorola was making that never came out called the MAP. I found this article from 1997, it is amazing how Moto basically had a first mover advantage on the PDA phone but abandoned it before it came out.
Imagine if they had launched it and put resources behind it, they would have been able to be a real competitor...
Starbucks genius coupon
Image via Wikipedia
It might be time to buy some Starbucks stock again as it finally seems like they are figuring out how to leverage their massive customer base.
If you buy any drink from Starbucks in the morning they are now offering any iced drink for $2 after 2pm. This is simply genius. Since (I am just assuming this) that 99% of their customers come to the chain only once per day they are...