BLOG STARTUPS, VENTURE AND THE TECH BUSINESS
Posts Tagged ‘Innovation’
January 27 2012
by Scott Johnson
2012: Smartphones are now a social necessity
My last post, outlined five things to be excited about as we enter 2012. Number one on this list was smartphone ubiquity. I am not sure on what day last year this occurred, but the smart phone went from luxury to social necessity. Has the smart phone eclipsed the television in our hierarchy of needs? ...
January 26 2012
by Scott Johnson
No Better Time, Ever, To Be An Entrepreneur
I am often asked “what is new and exciting” by pretty much anyone that knows what I do for a living. And it is a great question that I relish answering – usually. Of late, however, I have been responding in a way that needs polish. I will say “smartphones” or “Health IT” or “the ...
July 4 2011
by Todd Hixon
A Tale of Three Cities
In the past month I’ve been to venture conferences in three cities: New York, San Francisco, and Boston. (I rarely go to so many; events conspired this year.) This invites a comparison. The New York conference (TechCrunch/Disrupt) stropped its edge and trumpeted media, personalities, and disrupting everything, not least venture capital (more here). There were ...
June 15 2011
by Thanasis Delistathis
Think Different: Apple Retail Stores
A couple of months ago my Mac Air’s operating system was fried. The Finder was malfunctioning and I couldn’t get an anything done. I took it to the Apple store around the corner from our office. The rep at the Genius Bar hooked it up to a hard drive and asked me to come back ...
June 8 2011
by Thanasis Delistathis
Feature-Not-A-Company
I wrote a post yesterday about the general euphoria in the tech market. One of the signs of things are heating up is the large volume of startups that are pursuing niche product strategies. Consumer internet is a busy space and in a race to differentiate themselves, startups are positioning themselves in tighter product spaces. ...
May 31 2011
by Scott Johnson
Way Too Early – On Market Timing
Market timing is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for venture success. Obvious, right? The problem is that timing is obvious only in retrospect. Predicting how markets will evolve is an art, and probably is the single most important job of a venture firm. Boiled down to its essence, our role is to help companies ...
May 2 2011
by Scott Johnson
Waste = Opportunity
Waste is something I abhor. Waste of time, waste of resource, I love funding businesses that help others be more efficient and stop waste. Time wasters are fertile ground for new business ideas. If anyone is wasting your time, think about how that happened and create a solution for it. Resource wasters are also ...
April 19 2011
by Todd Hixon
How Entrepreneurs Can Help Fix Health Care
I’ve long thought that health care entrepreneurship was about finding new and better treatments for disease. Most innovations offer new therapies or diagnostics, often at very high price points: e.g., drug-eluting coronary artery stents and erythropoietin (EPO), a bio-pharmaceutical that promotes blood cell production, were expensive, breakthrough capabilities that became major businesses. There is another ...
January 28 2011
by Scott Johnson
Mobile Clicks Are Garbage!
Most mobile advertisement banner clicks are accidental. The Harris group published a study yesterday saying this. Surprised? I’m not! Has anyone actually clicked a mobile banner on purpose? Really? I can’t imagine doing so – the experience is so bad. I think Shakespeare might have been thinking of mobile banner ads when he quipped “It is ...
January 18 2011
by Scott Johnson
Mobile Monetization 2.0
Mobile monetization 2.0 is going to happen in 2011. Marketing budgets against mobile are showing up in the hundreds of millions, some new monetization schemes (CPL and CPD) are paying good eCPMs, 4G is coming, and this is all really great news for entrepreneurs and mobile app publishers as everyone everywhere taps into mobile apps. ...
