February 2010
27 posts
“I’m the Forrest Gump of the Internet.”
– Craig Newmark via christmasgorilla
It is so true, he really is Forest Gump. From the same article I also saw this today, “Craigslist gets more traffic than either eBay or Amazon.com. eBay has more than 16,000 employees. Amazon has more than 20,000. Craigslist has 30”
via Mike Hudack
If it was only one thing...
Success is typically mix of a few things done right and some good old fashioned luck. When you read about market leading companies in books like Good to Great you see this. When it comes to the great managers and entrepreneurs there are major debates about what skill sets make for winners.
The controversy over the gold medal in the figure skating event in the Olympics is a good example of this....
WatchI need this for my home office… more about it here
PoketyPoke Succeed
We launched a new service called PoketyPoke in early January. For those who don’t know what it is, PoketyPoke is a personal conference manager (full explanation here).
Yesterday was the first time I was on a real conference call with a 3rd party where every participant used PoketyPoke. There were 5 people on the call and everyone came in at the same time. For those who do conference...
Blackberry is Windows Phone
Yesterday Microsoft announced its next dud-to-be operating system on the mobile, Windows Phone. I am negative on the platform because you already have too many big platforms out there getting developer attention and I just do not beleive that Microsoft can come in this late to the game with something attractive enough to developers/end users to make a difference.
Also in reality the Windows...
Time Scheduling Services
Before I describe the service I have to talk about the name. I am not one to throw stones about bad names, I did have a company called SimulScribe. A few days ago someone asked me if I used Tungle, my first reaction was what I do in my private life is private… when I realized that it was a scheduling service I loosened up a bit.
Anyway I have tried a lot of these online scheduling...
“If you pick the right people and give them the opportunity to spread their wings...”
– Jack Welch
Management is a giant waste of time and money. Hire great people, give them goals and watch them create magic…
via hiten
Being an entrepreneur
I saw the below post from David today. It brought back memories of a very brutal 2001.
I was very lucky to have fairly immediate success in my first venture which I started in 1999. The business quickly was profitable and doing millions in revenue per year. In early 2001 things got “tricky” and money went “missing”. All of a sudden I owed over $200,000 to vendors and...
“Is spending this much money — even for Google, which has about $25 billion in...”
– -Om Malik on Google’s plan to build fiber to the home
There are so many interesting things tabout Google’s plans to build real network infrastructure to the home. But I think all of my thoughts and feelings are best said in the quote by Om above. Google needs to continue to push the...
Take control over your destiny
The reason that PhoneTag had a successful deal and survived and thrived in such a difficult market was a direct result of our retail platform. The retail platform brought in enough profit to cover all of the costs of the business including a small profit. Additionally as Bijan pointed out in his post today (included below) it allowed us to have full control over our destiny.
Having tens of...
Thanks Fred
There are a few blogs that I read every morning, one of them is Fred Wilson’s. Fred is a VC and has a amazing track record of finding incredible companies before they hit the big times. One of his tricks is simple, he goes out there and tries everything himself. He was one of the first people to find PhoneTag and write about it.
Today he wrote about a service that I had never heard of...
Where is your line?
There are many moral/ethical lines that you often run into as a business owner/operator. In subscription services one of these has to do with how you message to your customers. There is always a percentage of customers (I do not care how great your service is) that have sort of forgot about it
Yesterday I go this reminder that my subscription to Carbonite, a service I loved, is up for renewal.
...
17 and Stupid
This year at CES I spent some time with the CrunchGear team. They are really a great group of passionate tech people. I even got to play the below prank on Matt when we were having drinks.
One of the people who wrote for CrunchGear Daniel Brusilovsky a bright, funny and I will say this with caution a “good” 17 year old kid just was caught taking bribes for posts.
When I was his...
WatchThis is the keynote presentation I did at the Startup Camp at ITexpo a few weeks ago.
The title “Startups Suck Which is why I love them” was inspired by my friend Matt Brezina who had a talk titled “No one cares about your stupid little startup”
It is my first time giving this presentation and some parts are a bit choppy. I have a few people that have asked me to give...
Up In the Air, a decent movie, total marketing...
I fly a lot, last year over 200,000 miles mostly on American Airlines. This gives me some pretty strong opinions about Airlines, Airports and how they operate. It is amazing to realize that overall the airline industry as a entirety is a money loser, which has made me question their advertising strategies and why they build mausoleums.
A movie that is now in theaters, Up In the Air, is about a...