You are here: Home / Archives for 2011

Archives for 2011

Ten Rules For Navigating in The Age of Outrage

December 30, 2011 by 1 Comment

Is Social Media the New Participatory Democracy?

Verizon just folded like a cheap lawn chair on their recently-announced plan to impose a ridiculous $2 fee for customers who used a one-time electronic bill payment feature on their website. Turns out that charging customers for the right to pay you was not popular: the internet rose up and roared. Almost immediately after announcing it, Verizon was faced with a 50,000+ signature petition demanding that they withdraw the proposed new fee. The protestors even raised the ire of regulators who publicly expressed concern and threatened to have a closer look. (Some WSJ coverage here.) Verizon had no choice but to beat a hasty and humiliating retreat.

I think this is the latest example a very broad and very deep trend at work.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Business, Communication, Entrepreneurship, Internet / Big Data / Internet of Things, Social Networking

That Vision Thing

December 12, 2011 by 6 Comments

What is the best way for an entrepreneur to balance demonstrating the large scope of his/her vision and opportunity space on the one hand, versus showing she is tighly focused on a realistic near term go-to-market strategy on the other hand?

Since I repeat this advice constantly, I figured I’d post it once and for all.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Angel Investing, Business, Communication, Entrepreneurship, Greatest Hits

Cloud-Enabled Business Models (Or Why iTunes Match Will Change Your Phone)

December 8, 2011 by 1 Comment

Gartner’s hype cycle charts how all emergent technologies start with a trigger, quickly ramp up to a peak of inflated expectations, drop in to a trough of disillusionment and then move back up a slope of enlightenment onto a relatively stable plateau of productivity. Cloud computing is moving right along that curve; the initial buzz was followed by a paralyzing fear of security issues, but we are now well up the slope of enlightenment: cloud computing is here to stay, and nobody disputes that it’s going to have a huge impact.

The power of cloud computing to enable radical new business models is really starting to be felt on a massive scale.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Apple / Google / Amazon / Big Tech, Business, Internet / Big Data / Internet of Things, Mobile / Gadgets, Portfolio Companies

The Future Of Publishing – The Book is Dead; Long Live the Book

December 3, 2011 by 1 Comment

Is the traditional publishing model dead?

I’ve touched on this topic before (for example,  Amazon becoming a publisher; Amazon really stepping up publication efforts; ebook growth; blogcasting), but three recent events bring it back to the forefront. First was a conversation with someone at a TCN panel talk I gave last week who had just self-published her own book, second was a conversation with a friend who had just published a book with a traditional publisher and third was an interesting piece just published by Matthew Ingram at GigaOM about the value of publishers.

At the panel last week I was discussing intellectual property issues in the start-up context, and one of the participants was focused on IP questions around a book she had just published. The questions were straight-forward, but what was interesting was that when asked who her publisher was, she said that she had self-published.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Apple / Google / Amazon / Big Tech, Business, Crowd Sourcing, Internet / Big Data / Internet of Things, Literary Humor & Miscellaneous, Media / Publishing, Photography, Social Networking

The Solar Project – Notes On Our Installer (Video Interview)

December 2, 2011 by 2 Comments

www.solarips.com

[This post is part of a series about our net-zero residential solar project – see a list of links to the full series here, a list of frequently asked questions here or click here to bring up all Green-related posts. Previous Post in Series.]

I talked a bit about the installer of our system, Independent Power Systems, in this post and this post, but I have few additional thoughts and a video interview to add to the mix.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Green, Portfolio Companies

Zynga’s Bad Kharma

November 29, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Promotional Image from Zynga's CastleVille

Quick follow up to my recent post about Mark Pincus hitting a new low at Zynga by demanding stock back from employees on threat of termination.  NYTimes has picked up on the story in a piece by Evelyn Rusli: Zynga’s Tough Culture Risks a Talent Drain.  My point in my recent post as well as the original one was that Pincus seems to have difficulty not being a selfish *sshole and that it should, and would, eventually catch up with him.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Business, Entrepreneurship, Internet / Big Data / Internet of Things

The Solar Project – Installation Process (with Time-Lapse Video)

November 25, 2011 by Leave a Comment

[This post is part of a series about our net-zero residential solar project – see a list of links to the full series here, a list of frequently asked questions here or click here to bring up all Green-related posts. Previous Post in Series / Next Post in Series.]

For a conceptually simple system with no moving parts, a solar array system is actually surprisingly complicated to install. Perhaps things will change over time, but at the moment it takes a lot of manual labor to mesh gee whiz technology with the physical realities of a residential roof and electrical system.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Green, Portfolio Companies

The Power of An Advisory Board

November 22, 2011 by 1 Comment

Advisory boards can be a huge driver of success for start ups. They can provide you with experience, connections, perspective, legitimacy, and encouragement.

Below are some pointers on how to deal with advisory boards, then afterwards a great story for you to watch. My buddy Ty Danco just posted the best advisory board story I have ever heard. It is a video of his talk last week at the SVB Boston CEO Summit. Fantastic story well worth a watch. (And for a discussion on the difference between an advisory board and a regular corporate board, see here.)

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Angel Investing, Business, Entrepreneurship

The Solar Project – Frequently Asked Questions

November 20, 2011 by 2 Comments

[This post is part of a series about our net-zero residential solar project – to see a list of links to the full Solar Project series, click here or to bring up a list of all green-themed posts, click here. Next Post in Series / Previous Post in Series.]

I have been getting enough questions from the blog readers and neighbors that it is time to do a frequently asked questions list.  I have divided the common questions into four groups: practical questions, financial questions, technology questions, project questions and philosophical questions.  Here is the master list of questions:

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Green

The Solar Project – Financing

November 20, 2011 by Leave a Comment

[This post is part of a series about our net-zero residential solar project – see a list of links to the full series here, a list of frequently asked questions here or click here to bring up all Green-related posts. Next Post in Series / Previous Post in Series.]

Once you have a basic equipment list, you can take a more detailed look at the costs and financing alternatives. As discussed in the posts on state incentives and federal incentives, there are a number of programs in place to ease the cost burden of paying for all this exotic and expensive equipment. And there are a number of different ways you can go about paying for it.

Below is a diagram outlining the basic decisions, courtesy of our installer Independent Power Systems.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Green
Next Page »