January 2009
27 posts
Maybe We Should Call Them Venture Pessimists →
Good article, worth a read.
Excuses should at least make sense
Image via Wikipedia
It is hard to go one hour in the work day without hearing “We had to do this because of the economy”. Some of the things that people are doing in reaction to the economy are absolutely legitimate, other things are using the economy as a convenient excuse.
In a similar spirit, American Airlines woke me up at midnight last night with an automated call explaining...
I am working at least twice as hard...
First of all, let me say that in this economy I consider myself very fortunate. I carry no personal debt, my companies are either profitable or have adequate funding and low burn.
However in order to make the same amount of progress as in past years I find that I am working multiple times as hard. In January alone I have flown 50% more then in years past and probably have increased conference...
Naming Your Product
I like Bijan’s thoughts below. I am a big believer that a good product can be beaten by a better name.
bijan:
I had lunch with a good friend of mine last week. He’s working on a very interesting product and seems possessed by its possiblities.
But he’s stuck on something. He’s stuck on what to name the product. Something easy to spell. Something memorable. Something serious but not too...
Business Plan Competition News Article →
A nice article about the business plan competition that I was at today. The kids that presented were incredible sophisticated for their ages and did a great job. I look forward to watching there businesses grow now that they are funded.
Obama's economic stimulus
I have been meaning to write my thoughts on the Obama stimulus plan since he announced it a few weeks ago. Fred Wilson did a post today with his thoughts about it which I have included at the bottom of this post which motivated me to finnaly put my thoughts together.
So far I think that the government has taken a very 1920’s approach to a 2009 problem. The issues with the economy is that...
Best way to back up your Mac
I did a post talking about my frustration with backup on the Mac. Below is a comment that I received. It accomplishes everything I need, 100% data recovery when I am away and the benefits of Time Capsule. One more reason why I love having comments on my blog…
You really don’t care about the apps…apps can easily be reinstalled. I find mozy to be actually much better than...
2 tags
America's Caste System
I watched Slumdog Millionaire a few weeks ago. I used to do a lot of business in India and travel there fairly often, one of the culture things that always frustrated me in India was the caste system that exists which watching the movie reminded me of. For those that do not know about the caste system, it is basically a classifier that you are born into that determines who you will be able to...
5 tags
Backing up my Apple
Image by Erik mit k via Flickr
The thing that I miss the most since I have switched from PC to Mac is my online backup. On the PC I used to use Carbonite. The best part about the service is that it backed up the entire hard drive to the cloud whenever I was online, not jsut selected files or folders.
Apple offers an awesome back-up solution called Time Capsule but the major drawback is that...
5 tags
Competition is a way of life... deal with it
I remember when I started PhoneTag (back then SimulScribe). Everyone who I would tell the idea to would immediately start to look for competitors. I would always get an email 2-3 days later saying, “You are too late XYZ is already doing what you want to do”. I think it is built into most people’s DNA to fear competition and want to be the only one.
Well in the case of...
WatchI did an interview with Andrew Warner from Mixergy a few weeks ago. Andrew is an LA based entrepreneur whom I met while at lunch with Tyler from Mahalo (another great LA based entrepreneur).
I really like what Andrew did here, our interview is a podcast on his site but by adding the additional play by play as a video it is much more interesting then listening to me just talk about this stuff. ...
“Work smart not hard. If all you do is work hard making incremental improvements...”
– -Markus Frind, Founder of Plentyoffish.com
Working hard not smart is a critical mistake that I see a lot of business leaders do. I think that for a lot of us, the “how many hours” have you worked has been so beaten into our DNA that it is hard to just take off and sit on the beach and...
A well-lived life is not a tour of gas stations
bijan:
Tim O’Reilly has a great post today and clarifying his point about working on stuff that matters.
This was my favorite part:.
“I want to remind you that financial success is not the only goal or the only measure of success. It’s easy to get caught up in the heady buzz of making money. You should regard money as fuel for what you really want to do, not as a goal in and of itself. Money...
New Bug Modules!
This is great. I needed the BUGwifi module to finish my little speed trap project!
bijan:
The team over at Bug Labs is heading over to CES (did I mention I wish I was at CES this year).
Today they announced five super cool new modules. The new modules are:
1 - BUGsound (pictured here)
2 - BUGbee (802.15.4) for short range wireless applications
3 - BUGwifi (802.11)
4- BUGbluetooh
...
Great podcast that Chris Sacca did with the BBC. ...
CES...
Image by brandon shigeta via Flickr
I was on the fence whether or not to go to CES in Vegas this year. Well at the last minute (show starts Thursday) decided that I should go. I have been pleasantly suprised by the number of people that I spoke to who are going.
If you are going to be out at CES in Vegas, email me and we can meet up as this year I will jsut be doing meetings, parties and...
WatchThe Onion guys are awesome, this is hysterical.
The Best Communications Conference
I will be talking more about Ecomm as it gets closer but if you are interested/involved in anything around communications I suggest that you get a ticket and book yourself to be in SF March 12th-14th. The telecom market is over $1 trillion per year and very little true innovation has opened over the last 10-15 years. It is my belief as well as the founders of Ecomm that this is about to change,...
“However, I’ve decided that in the future my posts will be more rambling, and...”
– I think that the blog world will see more of this and Bijan is right that Tumblr is at a perfect place to benefit from this.
Paul Buchheit after an 8 month break in blogging.
I think the problem is that traditional platforms are too much for most people. They are confusing and odd in many ways....
“consider the strange story of Harry Markopolos. Mr. Markopolos is the former...”
– Read the below article in full. It is a fantastic run down of last years financial issues and some of the root causes around them.
Op-Ed Contributors - The End of the Financial World as We Know It - NYTimes.com
(via fred-wilson)
One of the "New Years" posts I liked
via CrunchBase
I have always been against new years resolutions and all of the ideas that surround them. I believe that you should do what you do when you think it is right to do, setting “New Years” resolutions in my opinion is just a waste of time. Goals are important but starting them on a specific date in the future does not make any sense to me.
So with that I read Tim...