Archives for October 2010

Paul Graham on Founder Dynamics

Interesting set of observations about founder dynamics by Paul Graham, one of the smartest and nicest guys in the start-up world. (TechCrunch Video Interview)

Introducing Your Start-Up

Terrific guide to the ins & outs of getting your story known.  By Leighton Read who is a venture partner and a former managing member at Alloy Ventures in Palo Alto, CA, and a serial entrepreneur currently working on Seriosity, Inc.

MS Outlook for the Mac – Snore…

Having trouble getting excited for MS Outlook for the Mac (notwithstanding WSJ review).  The Office software is so bloated, buggy and poorly integrated with OSX that it is painful to use and meanwhile Apple’s native applications like Mail and iCal have become better and better, faster and faster and more deeply integrated with the iOS mobile devices.  Features are nice, but reliability, speed and integration into daily life trump.

 

Platform Economics at Work

Platform Economics at work:

…What’s happening now is that corporate IT is looking around and realizing that many employees already have iPhones and Android devices. Why pay for a blackberry device when IT can just pay for the service plan for a device the employee already has? The company saves money and the employee is happy because they don’t have to carry around two devices…

Part 2 of a Seeking Alpha Post on Platform Economics by Contributor “Tulip Farmer.”

 

Check-Ins On Their Own Are Uninteresting

Check ins on their own are uninteresting, but combined with conversations and purchases, they form the future of loyalty programs.
For further reading see: Loyalty in 4D Whitepaper by Allen & Gerritsen (warning: links to a PDF)

Twitter Explained

Finally a really cogent explanation of the key difference between the facebook SOCIAL graph and the twitter INTEREST graph.  Twitter makes more sense to me because as compared to Facebook it is:

  • Built on one-way following rather than two-way friending
  • Organized around shared interests, not personal relationships
  • Public by default, not private by default

This is a great article.  Well worth a read: TechCrunch Link