BLOG STARTUPS, VENTURE AND THE TECH BUSINESS
December 8 2011
by Todd Hixon
The Battle For The Clouds
The recent launch of iCloud introduced a new phase of cloud computing: the battle for dominance of the consumer cloud. Consumers have used cloud-based services for years: Facebook, Yahoo Mail and Flickr, Hotmail and Windows Live Mesh, Apple’s MobileMe, and a series of loosely connected (often great) offerings from Google (GMail, Google Docs, PicasaWeb, etc.). ...
December 7 2011
by Todd Hixon
Consumer Driven Healthcare Proponents Finally Proven Wrong — NOT!
I’m commenting on a blog post by fellow Forbes.com contributor Rick Ungar: Consumer Driven Health Care Proponents Finally Proven Wrong. I am an advocate of consumer-driven health care, and I don’t agree with his conclusion. Rick cites the example of Grand Junction, Colorado, a community that has achieved low health care costs (Medicare spend about ...
December 6 2011
by Scott Johnson
iMessage Goodbye SMS?
I love anything that takes undeserved and absurd profit away from telecom companies. This is because of the “WTF Gap”. In case this gap is new to you, which it probably is since I just invented the name, the WTF gap is the large difference between what your telco advertised you were going to pay ...
December 2 2011
by John Backus
The Future of Television
Have you looked at your cable bill lately? Mine is $240 a month. Ok, take out $40 for Internet service and $30 for phone service, and I am paying $170 for television in three rooms, with all of the attendant cable box rentals, DVR fees etc. For what? How many channels do we REALLY watch ...
November 22 2011
by Todd Hixon
Down With The 1%! Whoever They Are …
Unless you live in a deep cave, you’ve probably heard that the “1%” (top 1% of U.S. households ranked by income) enjoys a large percentage of U.S. after tax income (about 20% in 2007), famously documented by the CBO* (link). The Occupy Wall Street protesters imply that the 1% is mostly Wall Street traders and ...
November 11 2011
by Todd Hixon
Steve Jobs And The Jobs Crisis
Homage to Steve Jobs’ exceptional qualities as a business leader has poured out since his death last month. I’ve been reflecting on the learning and inspiration that I draw from his career relative to the work I do and the economic challenge of this decade, which, ironically, has come to be called the “jobs crisis”. ...
November 4 2011
by Todd Hixon
Occupy Wall Street: No Whining!
Rush Limbaugh might see justice in the early snow that descended on the tents of the Occupy Wall Street (“OWS”) protesters last weekend. He told his radio audience “When I was 10 years old I was more self-sufficient than this parade of human debris calling itself Occupy Wall Street.” More temperate observers criticize OWS for ...
November 2 2011
by John Backus
A Tech Bubble? Boom? or Bust?
Not a day goes by without another doomsday prediction for technology companies and investors. The sky is falling! The tech bubble is about to burst! Get out while you can! Comparisons to Nasdaq’s 5046 March 2000 peak — and subsequent crash to below 2000 — rule the day. What does this mean to entrepreneurs and ...
October 28 2011
by Todd Hixon
One Network To Rule Them All
It’s not news that Facebook is the leading social network, but sometimes (as the U.S. Army says about the Chinese) “quantity has a quality all of its own”. I was amazed when I came across the chart below, which shows how completely Facebook dominates time spent on social networks. Source: Comscore Mark Zuckerberg and his ...
October 21 2011
by John Backus
Why Entrepreneurs and Obama should Care About Capital Gains Taxes
I had the privilege last week of interviewing Steve Case, on stage, in a sold-out, standing room only event hosted by the Northern Virginia Technology Council. Steve has been active lately as an angel investor through Revolution Ventures, as a late stage investor through Revolution Partners, as a cheerleader for entrepreneurship, running the Startup America ...
