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That Seldom Discussed Reason Why So Many Startups Fail

That Seldom Discussed Reason Why So Many Startups Fail

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We visited NYC recently and stayed at our apartment for the first time in over 18 months. We all know that the city has changed. Many people left, and have no intention of coming back, from what they’ve said to us, including founders, investors, developers and everyone in between. Their reasons are varied. The weather. The lifestyle. The changing school curriculum – and the policies in place for their children to be able to even show up. Not easy keeping rambunctious younger children in masks all day – what to speak of the possible long-term health effects. Ironic, since if you enter NYC from downtown, you’ll see New York Harbor where the Statue of Liberty stands as a welcoming beacon, with the words ‘yearning to breathe free,’ inscribed on the base. And thanks for playing.

Even though we’d lived in NYC since our college days, we were on terra incognita. Even our apartment felt foreign.  After having imbibed in only artisanal water for well over a year, the NYC tap water tasted horrible. Salty, with a distinct chemical-y flavor. Isn’t NYC tap water supposedly among the best in the world? Had that changed, too?

In-person networking events are back, and although we didn’t have time to attend any, papers required? Echoes of Nazi Germany and while it may be the new normal in NY, not required where we are and it felt disturbing. We’ve also gotten feedback from investors and readers who’ve attended the in-person events, commenting that they’ve changed. Not the same energy. And not the same level as they were prior to the exodus. Read More...

Whose Metaverse Is It, Anyway?

Whose Metaverse Is It, Anyway?

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Image by Okan Caliskan from Pixabay

The line is a reference to a comedic variety show hosted by Drew Carey, Whose Line Is It, Anyway?, which was basically an homage to the absurd.

Enter Meta, the Company Formerly Known as Facebook, which some wags have referred to as Mark Zuckerberg’s attempt to escape his many problems in the physical world.  Not the least of which is his loss of a younger audience, and every advertiser knows that it’s best to get them when they’re young.  Even Instagram can’t seem to hold on to those younger eyeballs. In Meta, kids can strap on their headsets (and CFKAF is betting that they will) and enter their own virtual worlds – with friends too, if they choose. Although it won’t be the Oculus headset, since FB is killing off the brand, which means, btw, as Techcrunch pointed out, that  it took Zuck roughly 15 seconds to tell his first lie: “Our mission remains the same — it’s still about bringing people together. Our apps and our brands — they’re not changing either.”

“Mr. Zuckerberg painted a picture of the metaverse as a clean, well-lit virtual world, entered with virtual and augmented reality hardware at first and more advanced body sensors (or neural implants?) later on, in which people can play virtual games, attend virtual concerts, go shopping for virtual goods, collect virtual art, hang out with each other’s virtual avatars and attend virtual work meetings,” wrote The New York Times. Read More...

Entrepreneurship and Natural Instinct

Entrepreneurship and Natural Instinct

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Our cat died late last week. Her name was Paris. She was 17 – a long life, in cat years. Although technically, she wasn’t our cat. Technically, she belonged to the super in the building next door when we’d had our ground floor Manhattan office, but as a tiny kitten living with three grown cats and a dog, all of whom would not let her get near the food, she had other ideas about staying put. And acted on them. Without hesitation. A true entrepreneur/go-getter so take heed, entrepreneurs and budding entrepreneurs: when you see a gaping need and find a solution/opportunity, go for it.

Our ground floor office had a huge walled in backyard. Little did we know that ground floor spaces in NYC tend to be overrun with mice and rats. Especially ones with large outdoor spaces. No matter how many accesses we plugged up and traps we set, they seemed to proliferate. We needed a cat – a mouser – but we didn’t live at the office, so getting a cat was a non-starter. Exterminators didn’t help much in our situation, either. Read More...

The Platform Formerly Known as Facebook

The Platform Formerly Known as Facebook

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When recording artist Prince got into a contract dispute with his record label, Warner Brothers, he literally changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol and was thereafter referred to as The Artist Formerly Known As Prince.

Which brings us to The Platform Currently Known As Facebook, which will soon be a name to forget, with a nod to those readers among you for whom that ship sailed long ago, name change or not.

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How to Make Money in Tech Without Starting a Company

How to Make Money in Tech Without Starting a Company

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Elon Musk is now worth $230 billion—as much as Bill Gates and Warren Buffett combined, and he has even surpassed Jeff Bezos. But, hey, a billion here, a billion there, why quibble? What was not mentioned in the CNBC piece is Elon Musk’s secret? Taxpayer money. His two companies that helped him to achieve that status – Tesla and SpaceX – “together have benefited from an estimated $4.9 billion in government support (subsidies),” according to the LA Times.

 

Considering that it’s lawmakers who decide who gets what, many of them have coincidentally done quite well picking stocks, even though we know that insider trading is illegal – at least for the rest of us. Still, congress is required to disclose their stock transactions. According to NPR, the “STOCK Act is a law that was passed and signed in 2012, (that) requires more disclosures by federal lawmakers when they trade, they purchase, they sell stocks. It also criminalizes trading on inside information.” Read More...

Words, Words, Words – or Is It All Talk?

Words, Words, Words – or Is It All Talk?

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Image by pencil parker from Pixabay

As a writer, we love words. New words enter the patois constantly, and always good to keep up, what, eh? Some we appreciate; some leave us utterly gobsmacked. You needed to turn that noun into a verb? Seriously??? Sometimes they make sense. Ofttimes, we roll our eyes at the absurdity. Those are the ones that we know in our heart of hearts will lead us right down the rabbit hole

We thought we’d share a few that have entered the vocabulary, for better or for worse:

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The Great Tech Lies: Do They Hold Up?

The Great Tech Lies: Do They Hold Up?

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When the tech industry was first establishing itself, it was something completely new to the planet, like, for example, the Industrial Age before it. Various mantras hit the zeitgeist: fake it til you make it; move fast and break things; fail fast. There are byproducts of these practices: the disregard for ethics, morality and responsibility or as we’ve said many times before, the only way to cover up a crime is to commit an even bigger crime.

 

The Elizabeth Holmes trial is on and it turns out that the Stanford dropout sidelined the real scientists at Theranos “By leaving them off email threads,” The Verge reported. Then attempted to blame them for Theranos’s failures. “A lot of new emails were introduced, showing Holmes was aware of the company’s problems, and was even actively trying to manage the situation. Several times in those emails, (former Theranos lab director Adam) Rosendorff tried to get Theranos labs to run FDA-approved tests instead of the ones Theranos developed. But maybe even more telling were the emails that Rosendorff was excluded from…“The company was more about PR and fundraising than patient care,” he said. Read More...

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Life, Investor Pitch Decks and All That

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Life, Investor Pitch Decks and All That

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Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay

The subject line references a book by Douglas Adams: the second in his Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy trilogy.

We’ve been out here in the countryside for over a year now, in the woods, not far from a small town. Quality restaurants are few and far between, if not basically non-existent, compared to the NYC restaurants to which we are accustomed.

We were doing errands a few years back and stopped for lunch at a restaurant right next door to one of the shops we’d visited. The décor was very ‘50s, and they did have a salad bar, which we took as a good sign, so we agreed to be seated. There was ‘50s and maybe early ’60s memorabilia everywhere, including in the salad bar, which offered up iceberg lettuce, onions, canned olives and what appeared to be cucumber and tomato slices. The latter two were the appropriate colors and shapes for said vegetables, so we’re assuming that that’s what they were. As for the lunch itself: all the vegetables came out of cans. In the middle of summer, in the midst of farm country, and where farm stands abound. Next, or as Oscar Wilde said, “Once is an experiment; twice is a perversion.” We never returned to that establishment. Read More...

EPIC!!!

EPIC!!!

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Image by Peggy und Marco Lachmann-Anke from Pixabay

The news of the week was that the closely-watched trial between Apple Computer and Epic Games concluded. It was not a win all around, but it did deal “a massive blow to the walled-garden business model of Apple’s App Store.”

According to CNBC, “Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers…issued an injunction that said Apple will no longer be allowed to prohibit developers from providing links or other communications that direct users away from Apple in-app purchasing. Apple typically takes a 15% to 30% cut of gross sales.”

“Apple will now be required to allow developers to direct users to third-party payment processors, meaning developers can now collect revenue directly, and can no longer disallow developers from using account registration data to contact users outside the app,” Gizmodo reported. “…but it’s very far from a complete victory. Gonzalez Rogers ruled against the gaming company on every single other count, finding that while Apple violated California’s Unfair Competition law, the case did not establish Apple to be an illegal monopolist…It’s not clear, as of this moment, how wide the ramifications will be beyond the App Store specifically. Google, which also booted Fortnite from its Play Store in response to Epic’s moves, is facing a similar lawsuit that has yet to be resolved.” Read More...

It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

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Image by Elchinator from Pixabay

We often get reader feedback/notes and have received several lately that brought various points to our attention which we feel are worth sharing.

One such reader is a so-called minority. We’ve met in person. We do not know his vax status, neither do we care, nor is it any of our business. He did note that with all the various programs that people, establishments and companies have put in place on both the private and professional fronts, whenever he is asked to show his proof of vax, qua ‘papers’ (unheard of since the Nazi era), what he feels is something not unfamiliar to him:

Discrimination. Read More...