Feb
26
Posts about creative destruction as of February 26, 2010
Filed Under Posts about creative destruction | Leave a Comment
10/26/2009
Where you are is still important. Location has a huge impact on the resources available to you, the education of the people that you work with, the money available to try out radical ideas, and the cultural attitudes towards new things. Check out this from a Time Magazine article on California : Ignore the California whinery. It’s still a dream state.
10/26/2009
Ravi Nagarajan submits: Barron’s published an interesting article this weekend by Jonathan A. Knee, director of the Media Program at Columbia Business School and co-author of The Curse of the Mogul . (Note: Mr. Knee’s co-author for the book is Bruce Greenwald who has been discussed here in the past.) Mr. Knee’s article pertains directly to a topic that appeared here in May regarding newspapers and “creative destruction” . Mr. Knee’s article in Barron’s is entitled “This Dying Medium Has Plenty of Life”.
10/26/2009
So much creative destruction to document, so little time. Much will be revealed this week in the Aussie market, although a lot will probably remain obscure too. Producer price data for the September quarter comes out from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Inflation anyone? Maybe not in wages. But certainly in raw materials (energy). And speaking of inflation, the Housing Industry Association will report new homes sales data for September later this week too.
10/25/2009
Cory Doctorow. Makers (Tor, 2009). The major themes I’ve written about here lately — the decline of traditional mass-production industry, the crisis of value and shift of production outside the cash nexus, the rise of micromanufacturing (see “ The Homebrew Industrial Revolution “), the digital/network culture — are all central to Makers . And given my research and writing interests, it’s a foregone conclusion that any work of cyberpunk or other near-future sci fi is going to wind up marked and dogeared beyond belief. Just about anything I’ve read by Neal Stephenson or William Gibson has ended up that way, as did the machine shop material in the first volume of S.
10/25/2009
Nobody can predict the future. But I have a hunch, so I might as well share it.I believe the United States economy has been so hollowed out that we will not return to the prosperity we were accustomed to in the latter part of the 20th Century. There is no economic foundation on which to build. For more analysis and explanation of the economic decay, see Jon Taplin’s Blog.The American industrial base has been eroding for four decades. There is almost no industrial base left.
10/24/2009
Zero Hedge Have you ever taken the time to talk to someone who was old enough to remember the Great Depression? My guess is that you would inevitably find that his or her views on the economy, the role of government and the financial markets were meaningfully different from those of a person who came of age during 1960s or 1990s, for example. Specifically, since many of these perspectives were indelibly shaped by the traumatic circumstances of that period, people who lived through the Depression often tend to be more conservative in nature.
10/24/2009
ObamaCare’s Tax on Work: Middle-income families will face a big marginal rate increase. – theabsurdreport.com 10/24/2009 This is an equity catastrophe waiting to happen—and senior Democrats know it. They’re laying a political booby-trap that will transfer even more health spending to government after ObamaCare passes. NRLC – Warns House on Abortion in Public Plan – nhinsider.com 10/24/2009 CRS memo confirms: The “public plan” will spend federal funds National Right to Life warns U.S.
10/23/2009
tedr : bijan : Much has been said about the issues facing publishers and advertisers particularly when it comes to branded advertising. My head always hurts when I hear people say that at least with television, brands can safely advertise their brands. Yes, television has been a success story when it comes to branded advertising. The dollars are big. Forget big, they are enormous. But I’m convinced that it’s a fragile business. First, it’s not growing. And our attention is shifting.
10/23/2009
Japan has gone through two lost decades, in and out of deflation, with nothing to show for it but increasing debt to GDP and a stock market still 70% below its peak. Now, Richard Koo of Nomura Research Institute Ltd. says U.S. Risks Japan-Like ‘Lost Decade’ on Stimulus Exit . U.S. officials contemplating an exit from record fiscal stimulus are in danger of repeating mistakes that plunged Japan into its lost decade of stagnant growth, according to Richard Koo of Nomura Research Institute Ltd.
10/23/2009
China has for several years been heralded by western business leaders as ‘the place to be’. Yet despite the widespread excitement, the business successes of foreign companies operating and investing there have been limited, both in terms of quantity and in terms of magnitude. This week’s edition of The Economist , however, draws attention to the recent stellar performance of Israeli-Chinese venture firm Infinity in addressing the Chinese opportunity via its Infinity I-China fund.
Feb
26
Posts about venture capital as of February 26, 2010
Filed Under Posts about venture capital | Leave a Comment
10/29/2009
I had an opportunity to sit in on an investor meeting for an Indianapolis-based angel network. Creo Quality was asked because the services we provide and experience we have might be an asset to this group and its portfolio companies. During the meeting, there were two established, albeit still early stage companies, presenting. One company has achieved over $10M in revenue and is cashflow positive in just under 4 years. The second is a venture-backed company seeking additional investments to launch a second generation product line.
10/28/2009
Intel and startup Numonyx said today they have accomplished a breakthrough in a new kind of memory chip that combines the best features of a variety of memory types. The “phase change memory” has been under research for years and the companies view it as a candidate for the ideal memory chip. If this kind of chip can be manufactured, it can eventually be used in everything electronic from cell phones to servers in data centers. Memory chips need to be fast, dense in terms of storage capacity, and hold their data even when the power is off.
10/28/2009
Music services are popping up like daisies in October. Not Pirate Bay-style bootleg sites, but licensed services that let you listen to music without worring about being arrested. The latest is JukeFly , a San Jose-based startup originally launched last year, but now revamped to make online playing and sharing of personal playlists easy. I have trouble tracking the differences between JukeFly, blip.fm, GrooveShark, imeem, Facebook Music, MySpace and whatever people are tweeting.
10/28/2009
Thank you everyone who made it to ArcticEvening Helsinki last night. The evening was a great success and a special thank you for that goes out to the panelists David O’Weger who covered for Ari-Pekka Salovaara from Severa, Michael Falck from Relex as well as Mikko Kaarela from Technopolis Ventures as well as our sponsors for making the event possible in the first place. The evening was started by a little introduction to the BizSpark program by Kim Nielsen, who oversees 14 countries and their development regarding the program itself.
10/28/2009
The Obama administration has just funded the rollout of 18 million meters with stimulus funds, but here’s another way to get access to energy data without one of those new digital meters: This morning UK energy management startup AlertMe says it has joined up with Google’s energy management tool PowerMeter . AlertMe, which makes the monitoring device and is backed by venture capital firms like Index Ventures and VantagePoint Venture Partners, will use PowerMeter to help customers track their energy consumption online in the iGoogle format.
10/28/2009
October 28, 2009 By Alison van Diggelen, host of Fresh DialoguesDownload or listen to this lively Fresh Dialogues interview We welcome feedback at FreshDialogues.com, click on the Contact TabThis week, we feature an interview with Apple evangelist and venture capitalist, Guy Kawasaki. He shares his candid thoughts on the venture capital industry; the fragile economy and why he sees light at the end of the tunnel.On the stock market and VC investing“If you are investing in two people in a garage today, it doesn’t matter what the Dow Jones Industrial Averageis at all…if you say ‘the market is down so I’m not going to invest in a startup today,’ there’s something ass backward about that.
10/28/2009
Metabolon , a startup focused on biomarker and metabolomics research, has closed on $6 million in new venture funding.
10/28/2009
Yeah ok it isn’t that Apple Tablet. But this is a picture, taken around 1990, of the Apple Pen Mac, a little known and never launched Apple tablet project. As far as we can tell there is no other image of this device anywhere on the Internet, and very few references to it at all. The Pen Mac was a fully functional Mac computer (it even played the Mac startup chime ) with a pen based touch screen. The screen itself was identical to the Mac Portable , but with the addition of pen touch.
10/28/2009
Silicon Valley is known the world over for its acceptance of failure as a rite of passage. Technology legends from Netscape founder Marc Andreessen to Apple founder Steve Jobs have all experience failured, revived their careers, and then gone on to change the world. In other regions, failure leads to disgrace. But futurist Paul Saffo has said that in the tech-obssessed valley,” the spires of success are built on the rubble of failure.” This religion runs so deep that it now has its own conference, FailCon .
10/28/2009
reMail , a startup incubated by Y Combinator , has already convinced many email junkies that it offers a better way to store and search their messages than Apple’s built-in iPhone app. The latest version, which just went live in the App Store, helps reMail stand head and shoulders above the native email app — now users can access multiple email accounts, and search all of them from one box. Before this, I liked the fact that reMail stores all your email on phone (meaning you can read it when you don’t have a network connection) and lets you search the full text of the messages.
Feb
26
10/29/2009
New Economy, New RulesNovember 6, 2009 8:00 a.m. – 9:30 a.m. Barnes & Thornburg LLPHealthcare IT Innovation 8:00 a.m. EDT Registration and continental breakfast 8:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. EDT Presentation – Adjournment will be on timeInformation technology has the potential to transform the U.S. healthcare system, reducing medical errors, improving care, cutting waste and red tape while driving down costs.
10/29/2009
Author : Gregg Hall Become one of the thousands who have embraced the technology of satellite radio with the Delphi XM Roady Radio Receiver The smallest receiver currently obtainable, the Delphi XM Roady enhances the listener’s music experience by providing an almost unlimited selection of programming to choose from With over 170 digital channels, listeners can check out commercial free music from country to classical and rock to reggae, the latest live concert events, up to date news
10/29/2009
Rosabeth Moss Kanter, author of the newly released book, SuperCorp : How Vanguard Companies Create Innovation, Profits, Growth, and Social Good , summarizes five Fs that characterize vanguard companies —companies that are at the forefront of an action, examples of change to come. Kanter notes, “Vanguard companies are able to manage change internally with fewer stumbles and less resistance because they empower people to make change themselves.
10/29/2009
Not only does Windows Mobile sucks at kick ball – they aren’t even fun. But since they’ve been best friends with Coach HTC for twelve years, they’ve not only got a spot in the starting lineup but they’re batting cleanup as the Designated Hitter. Being World Series time (Go Yankees!), that’s what I thought of when I heard HTC CEO’s comments about the HTC Touch HD2 and Windows Mobile: HTC may be updating its brand, but it’s sticking by its longtime partner, Microsoft ( MSFT – news – people ).
10/29/2009
“Pretty much, Apple and Dell are the only ones in this industry making money. They make it by being Wal-Mart. We make it by innovation.” – Steve Jobs
10/29/2009
Ricardo, Inc., the US subsidiary of Ricardo plc, the leading independent provider of technology, product innovation and engineering solutions to the world’s automotive, defense, transport and new energy industries, has been awarded a contract for the development of a new vehicle under the Fuel Efficient Ground Vehicle Demonstrator (FED) program launched by TARDEC, the U.S. Army’s Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center in Warren, Michigan.
10/29/2009
Diet pills are one of the modern inventions for weight loss and prevent excessive weight gain. While the original idea was diet pills to suppress appetite so they will have less desire to eat, or overeat, the newest innovation in the sector involves the provision of diet pills to burn body fat and carbohydrates. [...]
10/29/2009
The 27th Annual Excellence Awards: Honoring the Region’s Small Businesses are coming up on November 5! Small businesses and small business owners are the backbone of the Greater Philadelphia business community (and make up about 85% of our membership), which is why we think it’s important to recognize some of our region’s most successful small businesses for their innovation, diversity, perseverance and entrepreneurial spirit.
10/29/2009
Boy, oh boy, there are a lot of changes to the Mavericks Surf Contest this go around. The El Nino The expanded Contest Window The new “ if they say ‘go,’ we go” method of deciding when to hold La Competencia Don’t miss the big wave action, baby! Click to expand All the deets, after the jump. See you there in San Mateo County! THE HIGHLY-ANTICIPATED MAVERICKS SURF CONTEST® PRESENTED BY SONY ERICSSON RETURNS AMIDST A PROMISING, EL NIÑO SEASON The Official 2009/2010 Contest Window Will Open on November 1, 2009 HALF MOON BAY, Calif., Oct.
10/29/2009
Starting today, Thursday, October 29th, Best Buy has started pre-selling verizon’s “highly anticipated” Motorola DROID for $199.99 after an instant rebate with a 2-year contract. This means you won’t have to mail in any forms to get a discount. As many of you already know, the DROID is set to be released on November 6th on Verizon Wireless. Just as a sidenote, I thought Best Buy’s press release was quite funny. It talks about the Motorola Droind for a little bit only, the rest just talks about how great Best Buy is.
Feb
23
Posts about creative destruction as of February 23, 2010
Filed Under Posts about creative destruction | Leave a Comment
10/26/2009
Where you are is still important. Location has a huge impact on the resources available to you, the education of the people that you work with, the money available to try out radical ideas, and the cultural attitudes towards new things. Check out this from a Time Magazine article on California : Ignore the California whinery. It’s still a dream state.
10/26/2009
Ravi Nagarajan submits: Barron’s published an interesting article this weekend by Jonathan A. Knee, director of the Media Program at Columbia Business School and co-author of The Curse of the Mogul . (Note: Mr. Knee’s co-author for the book is Bruce Greenwald who has been discussed here in the past.) Mr. Knee’s article pertains directly to a topic that appeared here in May regarding newspapers and “creative destruction” . Mr. Knee’s article in Barron’s is entitled “This Dying Medium Has Plenty of Life”.
10/26/2009
So much creative destruction to document, so little time. Much will be revealed this week in the Aussie market, although a lot will probably remain obscure too. Producer price data for the September quarter comes out from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Inflation anyone? Maybe not in wages. But certainly in raw materials (energy). And speaking of inflation, the Housing Industry Association will report new homes sales data for September later this week too.
10/25/2009
Cory Doctorow. Makers (Tor, 2009). The major themes I’ve written about here lately — the decline of traditional mass-production industry, the crisis of value and shift of production outside the cash nexus, the rise of micromanufacturing (see “ The Homebrew Industrial Revolution “), the digital/network culture — are all central to Makers . And given my research and writing interests, it’s a foregone conclusion that any work of cyberpunk or other near-future sci fi is going to wind up marked and dogeared beyond belief. Just about anything I’ve read by Neal Stephenson or William Gibson has ended up that way, as did the machine shop material in the first volume of S.
10/25/2009
Nobody can predict the future. But I have a hunch, so I might as well share it.I believe the United States economy has been so hollowed out that we will not return to the prosperity we were accustomed to in the latter part of the 20th Century. There is no economic foundation on which to build. For more analysis and explanation of the economic decay, see Jon Taplin’s Blog.The American industrial base has been eroding for four decades. There is almost no industrial base left.
10/24/2009
Zero Hedge Have you ever taken the time to talk to someone who was old enough to remember the Great Depression? My guess is that you would inevitably find that his or her views on the economy, the role of government and the financial markets were meaningfully different from those of a person who came of age during 1960s or 1990s, for example. Specifically, since many of these perspectives were indelibly shaped by the traumatic circumstances of that period, people who lived through the Depression often tend to be more conservative in nature.
10/24/2009
ObamaCare’s Tax on Work: Middle-income families will face a big marginal rate increase. – theabsurdreport.com 10/24/2009 This is an equity catastrophe waiting to happen—and senior Democrats know it. They’re laying a political booby-trap that will transfer even more health spending to government after ObamaCare passes. NRLC – Warns House on Abortion in Public Plan – nhinsider.com 10/24/2009 CRS memo confirms: The “public plan” will spend federal funds National Right to Life warns U.S.
10/23/2009
tedr : bijan : Much has been said about the issues facing publishers and advertisers particularly when it comes to branded advertising. My head always hurts when I hear people say that at least with television, brands can safely advertise their brands. Yes, television has been a success story when it comes to branded advertising. The dollars are big. Forget big, they are enormous. But I’m convinced that it’s a fragile business. First, it’s not growing. And our attention is shifting.
10/23/2009
Japan has gone through two lost decades, in and out of deflation, with nothing to show for it but increasing debt to GDP and a stock market still 70% below its peak. Now, Richard Koo of Nomura Research Institute Ltd. says U.S. Risks Japan-Like ‘Lost Decade’ on Stimulus Exit . U.S. officials contemplating an exit from record fiscal stimulus are in danger of repeating mistakes that plunged Japan into its lost decade of stagnant growth, according to Richard Koo of Nomura Research Institute Ltd.
10/23/2009
China has for several years been heralded by western business leaders as ‘the place to be’. Yet despite the widespread excitement, the business successes of foreign companies operating and investing there have been limited, both in terms of quantity and in terms of magnitude. This week’s edition of The Economist , however, draws attention to the recent stellar performance of Israeli-Chinese venture firm Infinity in addressing the Chinese opportunity via its Infinity I-China fund.
Feb
23
Posts about venture capital as of February 23, 2010
Filed Under Posts about venture capital | Leave a Comment
10/29/2009
I had an opportunity to sit in on an investor meeting for an Indianapolis-based angel network. Creo Quality was asked because the services we provide and experience we have might be an asset to this group and its portfolio companies. During the meeting, there were two established, albeit still early stage companies, presenting. One company has achieved over $10M in revenue and is cashflow positive in just under 4 years. The second is a venture-backed company seeking additional investments to launch a second generation product line.
10/28/2009
Intel and startup Numonyx said today they have accomplished a breakthrough in a new kind of memory chip that combines the best features of a variety of memory types. The “phase change memory” has been under research for years and the companies view it as a candidate for the ideal memory chip. If this kind of chip can be manufactured, it can eventually be used in everything electronic from cell phones to servers in data centers. Memory chips need to be fast, dense in terms of storage capacity, and hold their data even when the power is off.
10/28/2009
Music services are popping up like daisies in October. Not Pirate Bay-style bootleg sites, but licensed services that let you listen to music without worring about being arrested. The latest is JukeFly , a San Jose-based startup originally launched last year, but now revamped to make online playing and sharing of personal playlists easy. I have trouble tracking the differences between JukeFly, blip.fm, GrooveShark, imeem, Facebook Music, MySpace and whatever people are tweeting.
10/28/2009
Thank you everyone who made it to ArcticEvening Helsinki last night. The evening was a great success and a special thank you for that goes out to the panelists David O’Weger who covered for Ari-Pekka Salovaara from Severa, Michael Falck from Relex as well as Mikko Kaarela from Technopolis Ventures as well as our sponsors for making the event possible in the first place. The evening was started by a little introduction to the BizSpark program by Kim Nielsen, who oversees 14 countries and their development regarding the program itself.
10/28/2009
The Obama administration has just funded the rollout of 18 million meters with stimulus funds, but here’s another way to get access to energy data without one of those new digital meters: This morning UK energy management startup AlertMe says it has joined up with Google’s energy management tool PowerMeter . AlertMe, which makes the monitoring device and is backed by venture capital firms like Index Ventures and VantagePoint Venture Partners, will use PowerMeter to help customers track their energy consumption online in the iGoogle format.
10/28/2009
October 28, 2009 By Alison van Diggelen, host of Fresh DialoguesDownload or listen to this lively Fresh Dialogues interview We welcome feedback at FreshDialogues.com, click on the Contact TabThis week, we feature an interview with Apple evangelist and venture capitalist, Guy Kawasaki. He shares his candid thoughts on the venture capital industry; the fragile economy and why he sees light at the end of the tunnel.On the stock market and VC investing“If you are investing in two people in a garage today, it doesn’t matter what the Dow Jones Industrial Averageis at all…if you say ‘the market is down so I’m not going to invest in a startup today,’ there’s something ass backward about that.
10/28/2009
Metabolon , a startup focused on biomarker and metabolomics research, has closed on $6 million in new venture funding.
10/28/2009
Yeah ok it isn’t that Apple Tablet. But this is a picture, taken around 1990, of the Apple Pen Mac, a little known and never launched Apple tablet project. As far as we can tell there is no other image of this device anywhere on the Internet, and very few references to it at all. The Pen Mac was a fully functional Mac computer (it even played the Mac startup chime ) with a pen based touch screen. The screen itself was identical to the Mac Portable , but with the addition of pen touch.
10/28/2009
Silicon Valley is known the world over for its acceptance of failure as a rite of passage. Technology legends from Netscape founder Marc Andreessen to Apple founder Steve Jobs have all experience failured, revived their careers, and then gone on to change the world. In other regions, failure leads to disgrace. But futurist Paul Saffo has said that in the tech-obssessed valley,” the spires of success are built on the rubble of failure.” This religion runs so deep that it now has its own conference, FailCon .
10/28/2009
reMail , a startup incubated by Y Combinator , has already convinced many email junkies that it offers a better way to store and search their messages than Apple’s built-in iPhone app. The latest version, which just went live in the App Store, helps reMail stand head and shoulders above the native email app — now users can access multiple email accounts, and search all of them from one box. Before this, I liked the fact that reMail stores all your email on phone (meaning you can read it when you don’t have a network connection) and lets you search the full text of the messages.
Feb
23
10/29/2009
New Economy, New RulesNovember 6, 2009 8:00 a.m. – 9:30 a.m. Barnes & Thornburg LLPHealthcare IT Innovation 8:00 a.m. EDT Registration and continental breakfast 8:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. EDT Presentation – Adjournment will be on timeInformation technology has the potential to transform the U.S. healthcare system, reducing medical errors, improving care, cutting waste and red tape while driving down costs.
10/29/2009
Author : Gregg Hall Become one of the thousands who have embraced the technology of satellite radio with the Delphi XM Roady Radio Receiver The smallest receiver currently obtainable, the Delphi XM Roady enhances the listener’s music experience by providing an almost unlimited selection of programming to choose from With over 170 digital channels, listeners can check out commercial free music from country to classical and rock to reggae, the latest live concert events, up to date news
10/29/2009
Rosabeth Moss Kanter, author of the newly released book, SuperCorp : How Vanguard Companies Create Innovation, Profits, Growth, and Social Good , summarizes five Fs that characterize vanguard companies —companies that are at the forefront of an action, examples of change to come. Kanter notes, “Vanguard companies are able to manage change internally with fewer stumbles and less resistance because they empower people to make change themselves.
10/29/2009
Not only does Windows Mobile sucks at kick ball – they aren’t even fun. But since they’ve been best friends with Coach HTC for twelve years, they’ve not only got a spot in the starting lineup but they’re batting cleanup as the Designated Hitter. Being World Series time (Go Yankees!), that’s what I thought of when I heard HTC CEO’s comments about the HTC Touch HD2 and Windows Mobile: HTC may be updating its brand, but it’s sticking by its longtime partner, Microsoft ( MSFT – news – people ).
10/29/2009
“Pretty much, Apple and Dell are the only ones in this industry making money. They make it by being Wal-Mart. We make it by innovation.” – Steve Jobs
10/29/2009
Ricardo, Inc., the US subsidiary of Ricardo plc, the leading independent provider of technology, product innovation and engineering solutions to the world’s automotive, defense, transport and new energy industries, has been awarded a contract for the development of a new vehicle under the Fuel Efficient Ground Vehicle Demonstrator (FED) program launched by TARDEC, the U.S. Army’s Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center in Warren, Michigan.
10/29/2009
Diet pills are one of the modern inventions for weight loss and prevent excessive weight gain. While the original idea was diet pills to suppress appetite so they will have less desire to eat, or overeat, the newest innovation in the sector involves the provision of diet pills to burn body fat and carbohydrates. [...]
10/29/2009
The 27th Annual Excellence Awards: Honoring the Region’s Small Businesses are coming up on November 5! Small businesses and small business owners are the backbone of the Greater Philadelphia business community (and make up about 85% of our membership), which is why we think it’s important to recognize some of our region’s most successful small businesses for their innovation, diversity, perseverance and entrepreneurial spirit.
10/29/2009
Boy, oh boy, there are a lot of changes to the Mavericks Surf Contest this go around. The El Nino The expanded Contest Window The new “ if they say ‘go,’ we go” method of deciding when to hold La Competencia Don’t miss the big wave action, baby! Click to expand All the deets, after the jump. See you there in San Mateo County! THE HIGHLY-ANTICIPATED MAVERICKS SURF CONTEST® PRESENTED BY SONY ERICSSON RETURNS AMIDST A PROMISING, EL NIÑO SEASON The Official 2009/2010 Contest Window Will Open on November 1, 2009 HALF MOON BAY, Calif., Oct.
10/29/2009
Starting today, Thursday, October 29th, Best Buy has started pre-selling verizon’s “highly anticipated” Motorola DROID for $199.99 after an instant rebate with a 2-year contract. This means you won’t have to mail in any forms to get a discount. As many of you already know, the DROID is set to be released on November 6th on Verizon Wireless. Just as a sidenote, I thought Best Buy’s press release was quite funny. It talks about the Motorola Droind for a little bit only, the rest just talks about how great Best Buy is.
Feb
20
Posts about creative destruction as of February 20, 2010
Filed Under Posts about creative destruction | Leave a Comment
10/26/2009
Where you are is still important. Location has a huge impact on the resources available to you, the education of the people that you work with, the money available to try out radical ideas, and the cultural attitudes towards new things. Check out this from a Time Magazine article on California : Ignore the California whinery. It’s still a dream state.
10/26/2009
Ravi Nagarajan submits: Barron’s published an interesting article this weekend by Jonathan A. Knee, director of the Media Program at Columbia Business School and co-author of The Curse of the Mogul . (Note: Mr. Knee’s co-author for the book is Bruce Greenwald who has been discussed here in the past.) Mr. Knee’s article pertains directly to a topic that appeared here in May regarding newspapers and “creative destruction” . Mr. Knee’s article in Barron’s is entitled “This Dying Medium Has Plenty of Life”.
10/26/2009
So much creative destruction to document, so little time. Much will be revealed this week in the Aussie market, although a lot will probably remain obscure too. Producer price data for the September quarter comes out from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Inflation anyone? Maybe not in wages. But certainly in raw materials (energy). And speaking of inflation, the Housing Industry Association will report new homes sales data for September later this week too.
10/25/2009
Cory Doctorow. Makers (Tor, 2009). The major themes I’ve written about here lately — the decline of traditional mass-production industry, the crisis of value and shift of production outside the cash nexus, the rise of micromanufacturing (see “ The Homebrew Industrial Revolution “), the digital/network culture — are all central to Makers . And given my research and writing interests, it’s a foregone conclusion that any work of cyberpunk or other near-future sci fi is going to wind up marked and dogeared beyond belief. Just about anything I’ve read by Neal Stephenson or William Gibson has ended up that way, as did the machine shop material in the first volume of S.
10/25/2009
Nobody can predict the future. But I have a hunch, so I might as well share it.I believe the United States economy has been so hollowed out that we will not return to the prosperity we were accustomed to in the latter part of the 20th Century. There is no economic foundation on which to build. For more analysis and explanation of the economic decay, see Jon Taplin’s Blog.The American industrial base has been eroding for four decades. There is almost no industrial base left.
10/24/2009
Zero Hedge Have you ever taken the time to talk to someone who was old enough to remember the Great Depression? My guess is that you would inevitably find that his or her views on the economy, the role of government and the financial markets were meaningfully different from those of a person who came of age during 1960s or 1990s, for example. Specifically, since many of these perspectives were indelibly shaped by the traumatic circumstances of that period, people who lived through the Depression often tend to be more conservative in nature.
10/24/2009
ObamaCare’s Tax on Work: Middle-income families will face a big marginal rate increase. – theabsurdreport.com 10/24/2009 This is an equity catastrophe waiting to happen—and senior Democrats know it. They’re laying a political booby-trap that will transfer even more health spending to government after ObamaCare passes. NRLC – Warns House on Abortion in Public Plan – nhinsider.com 10/24/2009 CRS memo confirms: The “public plan” will spend federal funds National Right to Life warns U.S.
10/23/2009
tedr : bijan : Much has been said about the issues facing publishers and advertisers particularly when it comes to branded advertising. My head always hurts when I hear people say that at least with television, brands can safely advertise their brands. Yes, television has been a success story when it comes to branded advertising. The dollars are big. Forget big, they are enormous. But I’m convinced that it’s a fragile business. First, it’s not growing. And our attention is shifting.
10/23/2009
Japan has gone through two lost decades, in and out of deflation, with nothing to show for it but increasing debt to GDP and a stock market still 70% below its peak. Now, Richard Koo of Nomura Research Institute Ltd. says U.S. Risks Japan-Like ‘Lost Decade’ on Stimulus Exit . U.S. officials contemplating an exit from record fiscal stimulus are in danger of repeating mistakes that plunged Japan into its lost decade of stagnant growth, according to Richard Koo of Nomura Research Institute Ltd.
10/23/2009
China has for several years been heralded by western business leaders as ‘the place to be’. Yet despite the widespread excitement, the business successes of foreign companies operating and investing there have been limited, both in terms of quantity and in terms of magnitude. This week’s edition of The Economist , however, draws attention to the recent stellar performance of Israeli-Chinese venture firm Infinity in addressing the Chinese opportunity via its Infinity I-China fund.
Feb
20
Posts about venture capital as of February 20, 2010
Filed Under Posts about venture capital | Leave a Comment
10/29/2009
I had an opportunity to sit in on an investor meeting for an Indianapolis-based angel network. Creo Quality was asked because the services we provide and experience we have might be an asset to this group and its portfolio companies. During the meeting, there were two established, albeit still early stage companies, presenting. One company has achieved over $10M in revenue and is cashflow positive in just under 4 years. The second is a venture-backed company seeking additional investments to launch a second generation product line.
10/28/2009
Intel and startup Numonyx said today they have accomplished a breakthrough in a new kind of memory chip that combines the best features of a variety of memory types. The “phase change memory” has been under research for years and the companies view it as a candidate for the ideal memory chip. If this kind of chip can be manufactured, it can eventually be used in everything electronic from cell phones to servers in data centers. Memory chips need to be fast, dense in terms of storage capacity, and hold their data even when the power is off.
10/28/2009
Music services are popping up like daisies in October. Not Pirate Bay-style bootleg sites, but licensed services that let you listen to music without worring about being arrested. The latest is JukeFly , a San Jose-based startup originally launched last year, but now revamped to make online playing and sharing of personal playlists easy. I have trouble tracking the differences between JukeFly, blip.fm, GrooveShark, imeem, Facebook Music, MySpace and whatever people are tweeting.
10/28/2009
Thank you everyone who made it to ArcticEvening Helsinki last night. The evening was a great success and a special thank you for that goes out to the panelists David O’Weger who covered for Ari-Pekka Salovaara from Severa, Michael Falck from Relex as well as Mikko Kaarela from Technopolis Ventures as well as our sponsors for making the event possible in the first place. The evening was started by a little introduction to the BizSpark program by Kim Nielsen, who oversees 14 countries and their development regarding the program itself.
10/28/2009
The Obama administration has just funded the rollout of 18 million meters with stimulus funds, but here’s another way to get access to energy data without one of those new digital meters: This morning UK energy management startup AlertMe says it has joined up with Google’s energy management tool PowerMeter . AlertMe, which makes the monitoring device and is backed by venture capital firms like Index Ventures and VantagePoint Venture Partners, will use PowerMeter to help customers track their energy consumption online in the iGoogle format.
10/28/2009
October 28, 2009 By Alison van Diggelen, host of Fresh DialoguesDownload or listen to this lively Fresh Dialogues interview We welcome feedback at FreshDialogues.com, click on the Contact TabThis week, we feature an interview with Apple evangelist and venture capitalist, Guy Kawasaki. He shares his candid thoughts on the venture capital industry; the fragile economy and why he sees light at the end of the tunnel.On the stock market and VC investing“If you are investing in two people in a garage today, it doesn’t matter what the Dow Jones Industrial Averageis at all…if you say ‘the market is down so I’m not going to invest in a startup today,’ there’s something ass backward about that.
10/28/2009
Metabolon , a startup focused on biomarker and metabolomics research, has closed on $6 million in new venture funding.
10/28/2009
Yeah ok it isn’t that Apple Tablet. But this is a picture, taken around 1990, of the Apple Pen Mac, a little known and never launched Apple tablet project. As far as we can tell there is no other image of this device anywhere on the Internet, and very few references to it at all. The Pen Mac was a fully functional Mac computer (it even played the Mac startup chime ) with a pen based touch screen. The screen itself was identical to the Mac Portable , but with the addition of pen touch.
10/28/2009
Silicon Valley is known the world over for its acceptance of failure as a rite of passage. Technology legends from Netscape founder Marc Andreessen to Apple founder Steve Jobs have all experience failured, revived their careers, and then gone on to change the world. In other regions, failure leads to disgrace. But futurist Paul Saffo has said that in the tech-obssessed valley,” the spires of success are built on the rubble of failure.” This religion runs so deep that it now has its own conference, FailCon .
10/28/2009
reMail , a startup incubated by Y Combinator , has already convinced many email junkies that it offers a better way to store and search their messages than Apple’s built-in iPhone app. The latest version, which just went live in the App Store, helps reMail stand head and shoulders above the native email app — now users can access multiple email accounts, and search all of them from one box. Before this, I liked the fact that reMail stores all your email on phone (meaning you can read it when you don’t have a network connection) and lets you search the full text of the messages.
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10/29/2009
New Economy, New RulesNovember 6, 2009 8:00 a.m. – 9:30 a.m. Barnes & Thornburg LLPHealthcare IT Innovation 8:00 a.m. EDT Registration and continental breakfast 8:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. EDT Presentation – Adjournment will be on timeInformation technology has the potential to transform the U.S. healthcare system, reducing medical errors, improving care, cutting waste and red tape while driving down costs.
10/29/2009
Author : Gregg Hall Become one of the thousands who have embraced the technology of satellite radio with the Delphi XM Roady Radio Receiver The smallest receiver currently obtainable, the Delphi XM Roady enhances the listener’s music experience by providing an almost unlimited selection of programming to choose from With over 170 digital channels, listeners can check out commercial free music from country to classical and rock to reggae, the latest live concert events, up to date news
10/29/2009
Rosabeth Moss Kanter, author of the newly released book, SuperCorp : How Vanguard Companies Create Innovation, Profits, Growth, and Social Good , summarizes five Fs that characterize vanguard companies —companies that are at the forefront of an action, examples of change to come. Kanter notes, “Vanguard companies are able to manage change internally with fewer stumbles and less resistance because they empower people to make change themselves.
10/29/2009
Not only does Windows Mobile sucks at kick ball – they aren’t even fun. But since they’ve been best friends with Coach HTC for twelve years, they’ve not only got a spot in the starting lineup but they’re batting cleanup as the Designated Hitter. Being World Series time (Go Yankees!), that’s what I thought of when I heard HTC CEO’s comments about the HTC Touch HD2 and Windows Mobile: HTC may be updating its brand, but it’s sticking by its longtime partner, Microsoft ( MSFT – news – people ).
10/29/2009
“Pretty much, Apple and Dell are the only ones in this industry making money. They make it by being Wal-Mart. We make it by innovation.” – Steve Jobs
10/29/2009
Ricardo, Inc., the US subsidiary of Ricardo plc, the leading independent provider of technology, product innovation and engineering solutions to the world’s automotive, defense, transport and new energy industries, has been awarded a contract for the development of a new vehicle under the Fuel Efficient Ground Vehicle Demonstrator (FED) program launched by TARDEC, the U.S. Army’s Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center in Warren, Michigan.
10/29/2009
Diet pills are one of the modern inventions for weight loss and prevent excessive weight gain. While the original idea was diet pills to suppress appetite so they will have less desire to eat, or overeat, the newest innovation in the sector involves the provision of diet pills to burn body fat and carbohydrates. [...]
10/29/2009
The 27th Annual Excellence Awards: Honoring the Region’s Small Businesses are coming up on November 5! Small businesses and small business owners are the backbone of the Greater Philadelphia business community (and make up about 85% of our membership), which is why we think it’s important to recognize some of our region’s most successful small businesses for their innovation, diversity, perseverance and entrepreneurial spirit.
10/29/2009
Boy, oh boy, there are a lot of changes to the Mavericks Surf Contest this go around. The El Nino The expanded Contest Window The new “ if they say ‘go,’ we go” method of deciding when to hold La Competencia Don’t miss the big wave action, baby! Click to expand All the deets, after the jump. See you there in San Mateo County! THE HIGHLY-ANTICIPATED MAVERICKS SURF CONTEST® PRESENTED BY SONY ERICSSON RETURNS AMIDST A PROMISING, EL NIÑO SEASON The Official 2009/2010 Contest Window Will Open on November 1, 2009 HALF MOON BAY, Calif., Oct.
10/29/2009
Starting today, Thursday, October 29th, Best Buy has started pre-selling verizon’s “highly anticipated” Motorola DROID for $199.99 after an instant rebate with a 2-year contract. This means you won’t have to mail in any forms to get a discount. As many of you already know, the DROID is set to be released on November 6th on Verizon Wireless. Just as a sidenote, I thought Best Buy’s press release was quite funny. It talks about the Motorola Droind for a little bit only, the rest just talks about how great Best Buy is.
Feb
19
Sex in the app store no more
Filed Under innovation, technology | Leave a Comment
It looks like Apple is removing ‘adult’ flavored apps from the App Store. While it has never allowed explicit sexual content, there are some apps that toe the line by including pictures of scantily clad women.
From a strategy standpoint, there are positives and negatives depending on which side you are on. On the negative side, the developers of these are going to take a hit. According to reports, download numbers for some of these apps are well above 500,000 and the lifetime revenue generated over $100,000. That’s a huge hit to take if Apple is banning your App.
For Apple, this ‘filtering’ is a brilliant strategy. It’s a move that indicates long term strategic thinking as opposed to short-term results.
Here’s what I mean…
Currently, these downloads are pulling in fantastic numbers. But these apps are early entrants. Over time, more players will rush into the market, squeezing out the profits and leveling out the download numbers. This happens in every market. (What we can’t predict is the time frame.)
As the number of bikini apps goes up, the search costs for other iPhone applications will go up. These increasing search costs will play a role in the overall usefulness of the device. Most people aren’t going to use a device that is ostensibly ‘filled with porn.’ Further, Apple will suffer from issues related to perception and credibility. Users who are browsing through the App Store will likely be turned off by the overtly sexual material.
In the long term, this negative perception will diminish the end user’s overall utility of the App Store, causing them to switch to a different device. This user exodus from the iPhone lowers the incentives for application developers for the platform. Eventually, you have a platform full of bikini apps all battling for a few eyeballs.
By controlling the content now and suffering small hits in metrics, Apple is continuing to build a platform that has longevity and sustainability.
Links:
Did Apple Just Ban Sexual Content From The App Store?
Apple Now Blocking ‘Overtly Sexual’ Apps from App Store
Apple’s War On Porn Is Just Getting Started
