Aprizi appeared in The New York Times today, in an article on privacy and innovation for consumers. In my quote, I tried to emphasize that this is about an honorable agreement with the customer, not some kind of bait and switch. There is a new wave of startups where everything is above-board and totally opt-in. As a consumer myself, I …
The Cold Reality of First-Time Funding
Earlier today, I watched Fred Wilson and Ben Horowitz debate lean vs fat fundraising approaches (very different from “lean startup” concepts even if often confused). The reality is very very simple: unless you are a celebrity/proven founder, “lean” is your only option. I don’t buy for a second that Horowitz would write a “fat” check to an unproven entrepreneur no …
Trends with the Sample Sale Sites
Last night I attended the Fashion 2.0 meetup in New York. Needless to say, it was *quite* a different scene from the Lean Startup meetup the night before. The fashion panel (with some bright people like Suzanne Norris of Kate Spade, Florent Peyre of Elle/HFM, Steve Hafner of Kayak, and Apar Kothari of MyNines) helped round out my thoughts about …
Lean Startup “Marketing Bullshit”
Venture Hacks‘ daily email delivered an enjoyable post by Sean Fioritto called “Steve Blank is my hero“, exhorting the Hacker News readership to pay attention to Blank’s philosophies. Sean’s explanation of resistance jumped off the screen at me: “if you can’t see through the halo of marketing bullshit to the nuggets of genius underneath…” “I sometimes worry that the Hacker …