When I first discovered Turntable.fm last month, I didn’t get a damn bit of work done for 3 hours. After that evening I banned myself from DJing. I’ve since gone back in to the Dubstep room as a fun, serendipitous “radio”, but concluded that 8tracks is a simpler solution for that use case. That said, quite a few people are …
Making Ad Agencies Lean
I was intrigued by the article “Why Ad Agencies Should Act More Like Tech Startups” that was just on FastCompany. Now, before I go on, let me just state that I’ve never worked within an ad agency, but I’ve sold plenty of projects/services to them and their brand clients while with The Electric Sheep Company. I like the general premise …
Is there a quality chasm in fashion startups?
There are a number of startups in the broader “fashion” category getting funded with versions of a subscription model. At first glance, these things seem pretty cool — pay an affordable, regular amount and you get sent something nice each month, ideally somewhat personalized to your tastes. Send it back if you hate it! A consistent trend is also to …
The Tech Crunch
CNN recently wrote an article on NYC startups and I laughed when Nosh Petigara from 10gen (MongoDb) said, “we don’t have trouble hiring engineers.” When you are a 10gen, Hunch, bit.ly — i.e. when you have a strong technical lead (your anchor) already and an interesting technical problem, good computer scientists want to work for you. Unfortunately, quite a few …
The Enterprise and Lean Startup: outsourcing app development
(aside: I’ve made a promise to myself to try to blog more often. It was tough to find the time over the winter, but I’m going to start with something I meant to write months ago) Big corporations aspire to innovate with web and mobile products, but their end results are too often bloated or uninspiring. The list of common …
Immigration Idiocy
Last night in the State of the Union address, Obama discussed our broken immigration policies, and how we train some of the brightest people in the world in our universities and then kick them out to compete against us. It almost happened with Aprizi. Liz, my co-founder, is Australian. She got her PhD in computer science at Carnegie Mellon. When …
Selling your company – some core questions and answers
A friend’s startup was recently approached by an interested buyer, which spurred me to write up some thoughts on M&A in hopes that they could be useful to other entrepreneurs. For those that do not know my background, I have both sold a startup and managed multiple tech deals as an investment banker at Broadview (now Jefferies). Here is my …
Hashable, the future of business relationships?
I’ve been playing around with Hashable since August, and have become a pretty regular user. Why? Relationships are the lifeblood of business. LinkedIn took a first step, and then stopped innovating in a meaningful way. From my perspective, they treat relationships as a commodity, and they are anything but! Hashable is taking the next step forward, with an appreciation of …
My letter to the USPTO on software patents
Thanks to Twitter, it just came to my attention that the USPTO is seeking input from the public in the wake of the Bilski case. I had to stop everything this afternoon and get a letter out — the deadline is Sept. 27. I’m sure there are more cogent arguments out there, but I had to do my part. If …
My Take on the iPad
I held off prognosticating on the iPad. I was not even planning on buying the first generation. That changed when someone demoed my own product to me over lunch. I love this thing and, if you aren’t bored of hearing about the iPad, you can read below for my reasons why: Sales: a laptop is a horrible thing during a …