James Siminoff

"The interesting thing about Steve Jobs’ $5.5 Billion (making him the 136th richest person, up from..."

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 07:00:00 -0400

“The interesting thing about Steve Jobs’ $5.5 Billion (making him the 136th richest person, up from 3.6Billion/172nd richest last year) in assets is that only around $1 billion of that is from Apple. His Pixar-sold-to-Disney shares are worth $4.2 billion, down from the original $7.2 billion at the time of the deal.”

- Steve Jobs’ employment is a bargain for Apple | 9 to 5 Mac

How crazy is it that Steve Jobs has made less then a 1/4 of his net worth through Apple. I think what this really shows is that Steve is driven by much more then money, he just wants to take over the world, regardless of his percentage of ownership in it.

(via fillup)

The whole state sales tax thing when it comes to ecommerce...

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 07:00:00 -0400

The whole state sales tax thing when it comes to ecommerce is ridiculous.

I just bought a new SLR camera. I live in Los Angeles and there is a incredible camera store here, Samy’s. But instead of buying my camera from the local guy I bought it from B&H in New York City because that way I did not have to pay sales tax. Do not feel bad for Samy’s they told me that their biggest market online is shipping to New York for the same reason.

How stupid is that, Samy’s ships to NYC, B&H ships to CA… The way sales tax laws are today it actually punishes people for shopping local. I am not sure of what the best solution would be but I do know that incentivizing me to order something from out of state to avoid sales tax is not a great idea

photo via azspot via Mike Keefe

Is Push still relevant?

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 07:00:00 -0400

My first blackberry was a cosmic shift in my mobile experience. Going from wireless email that polled vs. one that pushed was life changing. The difference is that polling is set for a increment, say 15 minutes, while push sends email in real time as it is received.

When I switched to the iPhone I set it up for push email using the Microsoft Exchange back end. The problem was that setting up the iPhone for push killed the battery.

So while looking for a new solution I started using the Gmail mobile website to access my mail. I have now been accessing my mail on the mobile that way for over 6 months and I love it.

A few things have changed that have made both push and polling unnecessary. It used to be nice to know when a email came in so that you could deal with it. Now I get enough email, or too much, that it is more when I can look at it not if I have any.

The other big change is the interruption of constant email. When I am in a meeting or doing something I do not want to be buzzed by a email every minute. It is distracting. By controlling when I look at email I am able to be more attentive when I need to be.

While email is a really efficient way of communicating it is just no longer time sensitive for me.

"About 10 years ago I was having my annual holiday party, and my niece had come with her newly minted..."

Sun, 14 Mar 2010 07:00:00 -0400

“

About 10 years ago I was having my annual holiday party, and my niece had come with her newly minted M.B.A. boyfriend. As he looked around the room, he noted that my employees seemed happy. I told him that I thought they were.

Then, figuring I would take his new degree for a test drive, I asked him how he thought I did that. “I’m sure you treat them well,” he replied.

“That’s half of it,” I said. “Do you know what the other half is?”

He didn’t have the answer, and neither have the many other people that I have told this story. So what is the answer?

I fired the unhappy people.

”

- Jay Goltz

My friend Roger sent this great article to me. I find that people don’t really change, so surrounding yourself with the best people sometimes involves staying away from the non-best ones.

I think it was Predictably Irrational that had a chapter about people who are unlucky vs. people that feel they are lucky. In the end a lucky person is someone with no greater luck but just one who focusses on the positive and not the negative.

"if I was going to build something beyond a few hundred thousand dollars in annual revenue, I needed..."

Sat, 13 Mar 2010 07:00:00 -0500

“if I was going to build something beyond a few hundred thousand dollars in annual revenue, I needed to have a product that I could sell, that I could have the company make money while I was sleeping. If you’re company is not making money while you’re sleeping, it’s not a real business. It’s a job”

- Ryan Allis founder of iContact on Mixergy

Ryan has done an incredible job with iContact, building it to over $30 million in annual sales. I was listening to the interview he did on Mixergy and this quote just sort of popped out at me. I see too often people spending a big portion of their lives building companies that can not scale, in a way fooled into thinking that they own a business where in reality the business owns them.

This video for Tostitos is nothing new, about a month old, but I...

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 13:16:59 -0500

This video for Tostitos is nothing new, about a month old, but I just watched it again and I am still impressed by the overall experience the ad delivers. Just one more reason why big companies should move their media ad budgets from TV (where I only see flashes of them as I fast forward on Tivo) to online where I actually enjoy and choose to watch the content.

via johnfitzpatrick via fascinated

"Comfortably situated in Chicago outside of the “start-up” echo chamber, 37Signals is focused on..."

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 12:00:15 -0500

“Comfortably situated in Chicago outside of the “start-up” echo chamber, 37Signals is focused on getting sh*t done instead of chasing the Silicon Valley venture capital death spiral. Financing has it’s place, but it’s a means to an end and shouldn’t be confused with an end.”

- Tim Ferriss

Well said Tim. There are two things that people confuse for business success, press and VC cash, both are good but neither guarantee a successful business. I think for this reason we will start to see a better spread of successful startups outside of Silicon Valley over the next few years.

"What’s the right approach to new products? Pick three key attributes or features, get those things..."

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 20:10:13 -0500

“What’s the right approach to new products? Pick three key attributes or features, get those things very, very right, and then forget about everything else.”

- Paul Buchheit: If your product is Great, it doesn’t need to be Good

I hate watching great services become good services as they water themselves down with extraneous features. People will always ask for more crap and options but they do not always know what is best for them.

(via hiten)

Karma

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 08:43:32 -0500

I recently had someone contact me for advice based on a post I did on buying domain names on Tim Ferriss‘ Four Hour Work Week blog.

Their question involved a .com domain name that they had purchased a few years ago. It turns out that before they got the domain someone had filed for a trademark for the same name and has since been issued the mark, they have the .net.

The person with the mark offered to buy out the .com person for a decent number. The name is very long and in my opinion worth much less then the amount offered. So my advice was to just take it and live happily ever after.

Well the owner of the name wanted more, feeling that because the .com was a better extension for the business that they deserved more. Oh and by the way both people do the same exact thing which means that the .com person is stomping all over the trademark.

I first tried to give some broad advice around trademarks, if someone has the mark and you are doing the same business you are basically cooked unless there are millions at stake and then it might be worth a fight. But that advice did not seem to matter and they kept asking me how do they get more.

So I told them how I make many of my decisions in situations where you could go both ways, Karma. If you feel that the decision is good Karma then things always seem to work out correctly, when you go against Karma, at least for me, you always get screwed.

I get asked for advice based on my experiences frequently. Since I myself do not have all of the answers I try and steer people to the right answer by giving them examples of similar things that have happened to me. Usually I find working with people for things like this to be very fulfilling.

This was probably the first time that I have felt my time was really wasted. Today I received an email that the .com person was going to ask for more money, very bad karma. My bet is that now instead of getting a few dollars, they are going to lose their domain by force and have nothing. And if that happens Karma will win again.

iSearch

Sun, 07 Mar 2010 23:14:30 -0500

I was thinking today about the competition going on between Apple/Google/Microsoft. The fight is taking place on the mobile phone, PC, cloud and elsewhere.

With Apple’s incredible market share of devices that people access the internet from I think it is only a matter of time before Apple launches their own search. While search is a difficult problem to solve I do believe that with where technology has come since Google built its first algorithms it would not be out of the question for Apple with over $30 billion cash in the bank to make a big bet in search.

Regardless of if they do search or not the fight between these 3 titans is going to be interesting to watch over the next few years.

Entrepreneurs to the rescue

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 13:27:46 -0500

One of my favorite blogs, AZSpot, had a post about how Arizona has voted to lease state parks to private businesses. Government budgets are under extreme pressures and as a result a lot of public parks are being closed down to save money.

The picture above is of a long abandoned motel just outside of Los Angeles across the street from the ocean. The site is incredible but on national park property. People have tried to re-open it over the years but without any success, because it is just too hard to get the parks department to agree to anything.

Done properly allowing the private sector to take things like the above Motel and build something great, revenue producing and respectful of the park property is a win for everyone.

Must be Morse Code

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 07:00:00 -0500

I am really bad at looking at the details on bills but for some reason I looked through the details of the bill for my Verizon Mifi. What struck me as odd on the bill was that I had received 3 text messages on the devices and was charged $0.60 for it.

When I called customer support, the very nice (really she was nice) agent explained to me that if I wanted she could turn off text messaging. I asked her how a device that has only one button and no screen could possibly be used for text messaging and without skipping a beat she told me that the device is enabled for text but would not answer how you could see them or how you could possibly send them. I asked her if I had to tap the button to send a text like morse code, but I do not think she got the joke.

If you have a Mifi I suggest you call in and have them block text messaging as I did today.

Also I talked to a carrier exec who swears that they are not doing this for the extra revenue, the problem is in provisioning things like this they end up not doing the work for custom provisioning which causes issues like this.

"By most accounts Mint.com’s rapid rise to prominence and ultimate acquisition is the quintessential..."

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 08:07:00 -0500

“By most accounts Mint.com’s rapid rise to prominence and ultimate acquisition is the quintessential Silicon Valley success story. Yet, the Mint.com acquisition brought to light an interesting phenomenon, one I’ve coined the “Patzer Problem.” Prior to submitting offers to invest, three separate VCs wanted to confirm that we had no intention of “Pulling a Patzer,” modern-day Sand Hill Road parlance for selling too early… investors are becoming increasingly desperate for that single homerun investment that returns $1B or greater.”

- Tod Sacerdoti CEO BrightRoll in TechCrunch

To me it is not making sure you do not “pull a patzer” it is that you make sure that you stay away from some bloated out of date VC that can no longer live in the real world. Why let their out of date and mathematically incorrect business model get in the way of your own personal wealth creation.

Miami Food and Wine Festival, mmmmm

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 13:33:33 -0500

Miami Food and Wine Festival, mmmmm

A friend at Wharton, Matt Newberg, did this rap video of...

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 09:51:00 -0500

A friend at Wharton, Matt Newberg, did this rap video of Foursquare with his buddies. A much better use of his time, IMHO, then studying as this will get them a better job then A’s will.

Nice job on the video Matt, now get to work and do another one on Phonetag:)

fred-wilson:

“Badges Like Us”

good thing these guys are in business school because they are not the next Lil Wayne, but the rap itself is fun and gave me a chuckle

Speaking today at CAA in LA on te future of technology alongside...

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 15:47:06 -0500

Speaking today at CAA in LA on te future of technology alongside Rafi from Blip.tv. This conference room is probably the most amazing I have ever seen.

"I’m the Forrest Gump of the Internet."

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 14:07:54 -0500

“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...

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 07:00:00 -0500

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. A Russian skater, Evgeni Plushenko won the silver medal, beat out by a American skater Evan Lysasek.

Evgeni has been crying to the press that since he was able to land a quad jump and Evan only did a triple then he deserves the medal. Even though the event is for 4 and 1/2 minutes.

Just like in building a business there is not one single piece that guarantees a win. It is the combination of things executed correctly that create success. If it was only one thing it would be easy, then every skater would just practice the quad jump and whoever could land it would win the gold.

Smith and Wollensky created a really funny website called Steak...

Sun, 21 Feb 2010 07:00:00 -0500

Smith and Wollensky created a really funny website called Steak for Stock. At the bottom of the site is a calculator that you can put any ticker symbol in to see what a share of stock will get you.

Looks like we, Ditech (nasdaq: DITC) need to do better because parsley does not fill my stomach…

I use iTunes and On Demand for all my movies, which is the best...

Sat, 20 Feb 2010 07:00:00 -0500

I use iTunes and On Demand for all my movies, which is the best experience, no friction.

However when DVD’s mattered (and for me they do not anymore) the above was very true and something that Hollywood overlooked. Pirates do not take content just to save money they also do it because originally for music and movie’s the experience was better.

via hiten via i.imgur.com