My preview of Woz’s book, I, Woz, got me thinking about entrepreneurs who embody the “purity” of the process of creating great products. Another outstanding example of this is Pierre Omidyar, the founder of eBay. On September 5, 2000, I did a “fireside chat” with Pierre at a Garage event in London. Here is a [...]
A few miscellaneous items for today. HTML Editor Perhaps there is a better way. I’ve started to use two pieces of software to do this blog: Nvu and MarsEdit. Nvu. My buddy Will Mayall turned me on to this product. I now draft in Nvu. It’s the closest thing I can find to the Holy Grail [...]
From the fjords of Norway to the sands of Israel to the ice of Alberta to the waves of Honolulu, many regions of the world have Silicon Valley Envy. They look at the Valley as a place where people start cool companies that generate billions of dollars of wealth (and tax revenue), create thousands of [...]
I asked Dr. Chamie three additional questions based on the comments to his first interview. Here are his follow-on answers. Question: What will the demographics of the US look like in 2050? Answer: Later this year, sometime in mid-October, the US population is expected to hit the 300 million mark. The growth of the America’s [...]
A few years ago I met Dr. Joseph Chamie at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. (This was back when I was “hot” and invited to the World Economic Forum.) He was terrific there—stealing the show in his panel session. He has spoken at Garage events twice—stealing the show on both occasions too. He [...]
For the past few weeks I’ve been using a widget to enable readers to rank my postings. The company that created it, MajikWidgets, is now open for business. So far, there are three widgets: Ranking Polling Opening a new page from a link An example of a ranking is at the end of this posting. [...]
Gina Smith, the co-author of the upcoming autobiography called iWoz, provided me with a copy so that I could read it and provide a blurb. The book is slated for shipping in November, 2006, but there’s nothing wrong with a little pre-release publicity. After all, it will probably be out BV (Before Vista), and everyone [...]
Here is the story of Lucerna, designed to make the Bible printable on fewer pages for Tyndale House Publishers. Then check out this interesting blog about design by the creator of Lucerna. It contains the best definition of design that I’ve ever seen: Design consists of creating things for clients who may not know what [...]
At the suggestion of, and with the help of, Glenn Kelman, here are more lies. These are the lies of CEOs running a companies that are beyond the startup phase. Startup phase lies you’ve read here before. “Working together, we’ve established our goals.” In other words, these are the goals that the CEO decided will [...]
It’s been a challenging week for me. The easy part was “outing” myself. That hard part was...I’ll come to that soon, see item #3. I’ll have a more contentive (content + substantive) post in the next few days. Not sure what to make of this. Not trying to show off. But this is an interesting [...]
"I already have a meeting at lunch." This isn't a lie if you consider talking to people on the bench between shifts a "meeting." What can I say? One of my great joys in life is playing hockey, and some of the best games are at lunch time during the week. So if I tell [...]
Much of my blog, and other information for entrepreneurs, focuses on creating new products, raising money, and building a successful startup. The advice stops there, and everyone lives happily ever after. Guess again. Here’s some information about what happens after the honeymoon is over when the shiitake hits the fan. There are three parts to [...]
As reported in the San Jose Mercury News. You’ve got to love Scott McNealy’s sense of humor. He’s a very good hockey player, by the way. 10. “I don’t have to apologize for stuff I say to Wall Street.” 9. “I’m no longer on the most overpaid CEO list.” 8. “I just say, ‘See Jonathan on that.’” 7. “I [...]
This is an MP3 recording from the venture capital panel at a Garage event called The Art of the Start. In this panel, five prominent venture capitalists from Silicon Valley firms discuss entrepreneurship, fund raising, and market sectors. The panel occurred in 2005 (that is, after the dotcom implosion), so the information is still highly [...]
Oy vey, Uri calls out marketing gurus with this top twelve list. By my count, I’ve committed at least five of these sins, but I won’t reveal which five. :-)
Nathan MacNeill, the co-founder of a company called Network Streaming (recently renamed Bomgar), documented the lessons that he learned from winning the DEMOgod award at DEMO 2006. I am publishing what he wrote for three reasons: To supplement “How to Be a Demo God.” To help the entrepreneurs preparing for Red Herring Spring 2006 (especially [...]
In a manner of speaking, I’m running out of lies to tell. So far I’ve taken care of entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, engineers, and marketers. The target of this posting is “corporate partners.” (You might find a previous posting, “The Art of Partnering” interesting.) These are the large, infinitely rich, and high brand-recognition companies that supposedly [...]
If most venture capitalists weren’t liars, we’d tell you that if we had the opportunity to fund Google, we would have passed. Seriously, who would have thought the world needed another search engine in 1995? Fast forward to 2006. Does the world need another web conferencing product? Maybe. Check out Vyew. Vyew is a free [...]
I just learned that Jajah is giving away 100 minutes of long distance calls to moms. Check out the offer here. Powered by Qumana
Two little gems rolled across my desktop today: First, a blog about gift giving. Perhaps a little late for Mother's Day, but Father's Day is coming. Check out "The Art of Gift Giving" by Carolyn Goodwin. This is a great guide to getting more analog in a world that's too digital. I loved this little [...]