May 2009
22 posts
The Blank Entrepreneurial Canvas
I am not sure exactly how much retail space is now vacant but it is definitely high. However unlike most people, I see these spaces as a artist sees a blank canvas.
Landlords are pushed against the wall, the pendulum has swung to favor the entrepreneur. If I had more time I would probably try to launch something in a vacant space, if for no other reason then it is such a great opportunity right...
Great reader response to my Survey post
All of your points are valid, and I will offer this insight. When we (powerfeedback.com) started offering web-based surveys 16+ years ago, we were a pioneer in the field. We used (still do!) professional market researchers (most are Ph.D’s) to assemble the questionnaire in conjunction with the client. We produced great, and meaningful (still do!) surveys that participants enjoyed taking,...
Surveying your customers to death...
It is definitely a companies job to continually monitor the heath and happiness of its customer base. I think everyone can agree (they might not always act like it) that the customer is always the most important asset to a businesses long term success.
However constant intrusive surveying of your customer base is both unnecessary and in my belief negative to the customer experience. It just...
The Patents of Steve Jobs →
Very cool post about Steve Jobs. Really shows the incredible impact that this one person has had on consumer products and design in general.
via christmasgorilla
7 Great Reasons Not To Take VC Money →
Lately, and not really on purpose, I have been talking down the entire VC world. Probably a little too much but at this point I think that there model and most of the people involved in VC are just broken. This is a great post that I suggest you read talking about the business reasons behind not taking VC money. It was originally posted by a VC (one who I respect greatly).
(via bryc3)
“You sit there and say, ‘Holy crap, that model doesn’t work’”
– Josh Kopelman talking about the large fund VC model in Business Week’s article, “Super Angels” Shake up Venture Capital
Highly suggest that you read the article. Makes sense now why some VC’s are such a-holes, must be tough to go to work every morning knowing that your...
Thoughts about Greylock
Saw the below on Bijan’s blog today. Congragulations to Greylock for jumping on the Silicon Valley bandwagon, how creative. In the future the VC’s that will make returns will be leaders, not followers…
bijan:
Yesterday, the big news in the venture community was about Greylock Partners, one of the premier venture capital firms in the world. Greylock is moving its headquarters...
WatchI love the “Find a Phone that works” app…
Best Buy relaunches Napster, Pandora confuses...
Image via CrunchBase
Best Buy which bought Napster in September 2008 relaunched the brand today with a $5 per month music service. Which makes me question, how the hell does Pandora exist without charging or having any in song advertising*.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Pandora. In fact this weekend I centralized all of our tv’s and speakers so that I could stream Pandora (running on...
Hulu on the brain
Image via CrunchBase
I really loved Hulu until they started messing with my favorite new tech toy, Boxee. For those who do not know Boxee is a open source software that can run on PC’s and Apple TV (what I currently run it on). Also to put it bluntly, it is the future of television.
Hulu decided (their content providers forced them) to stop working with Boxee. Since then Boxee has done...
“For almost twenty years, I mostly avoided the ‘developers tools’...”
– Fred
It is great to see forward looking and smart VC’s like Fred Wilson getting excited around developer supply start-ups. This is exaclty what Grid.com does, a company which we started working on over 2 years ago…
“Business plans are like sausages, if you knew what went into them you wouldn’t...”
– Yossi Vardi (via betaworks) (via mokoyfman) (via pheelmore) (via echolot)
New Blog Location Widget
Image by Jeff Henshaw via Flickr
I used to use loki.com to show the location on the right side column of this blog. There were two issues that I had with the service, it only updated location when I loaded my browser from my laptop and it stopped working. The later issue was a big one for me:)
Google latitude which integrates into the Google maps application on the blackberry just added a blog...
iPhone outsold by the Blackberry Curve? - yeah but...
I agree strongly with Bijan’s point #3 below, the next version of the iPhone (software and possible hardware) is the beginning of the war. Until now serious blackberry enterprise users had trouble switching to the iPhone copy and paste, email search and the horizontal keyboard are all game changers.
It will be interested to see this same report at the end of this year…
bijan:
The...