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The Age of the Soonicorn

The Age of the Soonicorn

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Image by Susan Cipriano from Pixabay

In case you haven’t been following it, the stock market has been taking a huge hit, especially in the tech sector. Truth be told, tech stocks have long been overvalued, and although no one wants to mention the word, let’s go there: the bubble is finally bursting. It’s overdue. Waaay overdue.

 

Consider: Facebook revenue slows but user gains boost stock. Strange math, what, eh?  “The company shares had fallen by about 44 percent in addition to recording a $400 billion loss in market value,” TechStory reported. But the stock was up! But not for long. Of course, Zuckerberg has assured us that his metaverse will be hugely profitable by 2030, no matter that it lost $3B this past year. The hype machine, it seems, is alive and well. Read More...

What Does a Guy Have to Do to Acquire a Media Company Around Here?

What Does a Guy Have to Do to Acquire a Media Company Around Here?

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Tech has been long overdue for a correction, and it certainly hit this week, with a vengeance and on all fronts, and especially in the stock market, where Jeff Bezos lost $13B in just a few hours. He’s still one of the wealthiest people on the planet but, hey, a billion here, a billion there, before you know it, it adds up to real money

Elon Musk had been battling for Twitter for weeks. The board scoffed at his initial offer. Twitter workers freaked out over Elon Musk in internal Slack messages (“Physically cringy watching Elon talk about free speech,” wrote one site reliability engineer, and for fook’s sake, doesn’t the South African-born billionaire realize that he’s in America now!!!). Now that Musk has more or less been handed the keys, the tech press is up in arms, too, that yet another billionaire owns a media company. Or so it was reported by MSN (backed by billionaire Bill Gates), in a Bloomberg opinion piece (owned by billionaire Michael Bloomberg) published in the Washington Post (owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos).

With all of those forces against him, makes you wonder what a guy has to do to acquire a media company in this day and age? Read More...

The Great Resignation or the Great Rethink?

The Great Resignation or the Great Rethink?

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Image by Mo Hassan

According to all reports, we’re in the midst of a Great Resignation. People are leaving their jobs in great numbers, but what it is actually all about?

Pew Research reported that the Majority of workers who quit a job in 2021 cite low pay, no opportunities for advancement, feeling disrespected.

“Workers aren’t just looking for higher pay, more time off, or more days at home (though those things would surely help in the short term). They’re actually questioning the whole meaning of the daily grind. Why do we put so much of ourselves into our careers? And are we getting a fair deal from our employers in return for all this stress and heartache?,” said Inc. “The period of prolonged uncertainty of a year and a half is going to make people consider their priorities on many, many levels, including the work they do.” Read More...

Elon Musk and the Battle for Twitter Explained

Elon Musk and the Battle for Twitter Explained

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Image by Iván Jesus Rojas from Pixabay

You gotta love Elon Musk, whether you’re a fan or not. Or at least give him the fist bump of respect for his – going there – elan. No one has that flair for shaking up the tech landscape quite like him, and one never quite knows what his next move will be, or why.

So, what’s with Musk’s focus on Twitter, be it as a majority shareholder or actual owner? At the end of the day, does it really matter?  Forest through the trees: every tech cabalist owns a media outlet: Apple has Apple News and Apple TV; Google has Google and YouTube, Meta has Facebook and Instagram; Amazon has The Washington Post. With Twitter, power influencer Musk now has his. Period.

The Twitterverse has gone wild since Musk announced his takeover plans, especially Twitter employees. OMG! He’s threatening to restore freedom of speech! Can you imagine??? Yet, “Several employees noted in internal messages that Musk, who considers himself to be a champion of free speech, has appeared to express disdain for the use of gender pronouns,” The Washington Post reported. Or is controversy the tool he uses to shine a light on hypocrisy? Hmmm…. Read More...

Bitcoin2022: The Bull from Miami (Not!)

Bitcoin2022: The Bull from Miami (Not!)

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We were recently in Miami for the Bitcoin 2022 conference – the first time we’ve traveled to a conference in years and as a compulsive networker and superconnector, we didn’t realize how much we had missed the serendipity and synergies that only happens at in-person events.

This is a lesson in tech hubs and why they shift. Boston was long the center of technology, but with the advent of the internet, Boston lost it. Boston was set in its ways and had its processes.  A young, unproven sector was not in its purview: Boston was about Real Tech, not a bunch of upstarts with a bold vision of a tech future that might well never happen.

The energy shifted to Silicon Valley and in due time, New York. Other hubs sprung up around the country and the world, although with all due respect, our focus here is the US. The SV and NY hubs quickly took the lead, at least in terms of where the investor dollars were. And how did they become investors? For the most part, they were founders who had enjoyed exits. Boston might still have been in the mix, but as a distant third: it was not an internet hub. Read More...

Same Schmidt, Different Day

Same Schmidt, Different Day

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It’s been a while since we’ve checked in on the tech cabal,. You know that there’s always something to see. And something they’d prefer you’d not see.

One of the latest reports is that Apple and Meta Gave User Data to Hackers Who Used Forged Legal Requests. It seems the two behemoths “provided customer data to hackers who masqueraded as law enforcement officials,” Yahoo!finance reported, including “basic subscriber details, such as a customer’s address, phone number and IP address, in mid-2021 in response to the forged “emergency data requests.””

It seems that rather than hacking Apple and Meta (nee Facebook) directly, given their armies of coders, instead, the hackers breached law enforcement agencies worldwide. For the record, the hackers who sell this information to various and nefarious, only charge $100-$250 for this service. In 2021, Meta received 21,000+ ‘emergency requests’ which do not need to be signed off by a judge, and complied with 77% of them, while Apple received over 1100 and complied with 93% of them. Read More...

Is Diversity the New Lean-In Movement?

Is Diversity the New Lean-In Movement?

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 Diversity/inclusion is definitely the catchphrase of the day and having been in the industry since the Web 1.0 days, when we’d attend conferences and would never find a queue at the women’s loo ever, while at the men’s loo, the line would snake around corners. Not so much when Web 2.0 hit and cheers to that, despite the wait we then encountered: the industry was becoming more gender-inclusive at some levels and there’s a start, anyway, even though not all companies seemed to have gotten the memo, or the message, or didn’t quite understand that it’s not all about numbers alone: Black former employees sue Google for racial discrimination.

 

The pendulum does have a way of swinging from one extreme to the other before righting itself at the midway point, or so one would hope, and so it seems to be going  with diversity and inclusion, Hollywood/the movie industry being an extreme example (Are the Oscars Over?). Viewership of the Academy Awards has been way down in recent years, and despite the fact that many entertainers accepting their awards or presenting use the moment as a way to air their pollical views, the Academy has somehow decided that it’s all about diversity/inclusion, or the lack thereof. Read More...

The Founder Test: Do You Have What It Takes?

The Founder Test: Do You Have What It Takes?

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We all know the statistics: most startups fail for various reasons, primarily because they run out of money, or didn’t raise enough – or any. There is another factor to consider: do you have what it takes to be a founder of a company? There’s a lot of advice out there on the slides you need in your deck and why startups fail, but what about some basic skills you need to be a founder? We do know that many founders of very successful companies are psychopaths – do try to avoid going that route – and that aside, here are some things you need to consider: Read More...

W-A-T-E-R

W-A-T-E-R

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Image by congerdesign @Pixabay

It took ‘Miracle Worker’ and teacher Anne Sullivan a long time and a lot of effort to get through to a blind and deaf young Helen Keller. An exasperated Sullivan finally did succeed. The first word that made an impact and succeeded in helping the girl to understand the relationship between words and everything in her world was ‘water.’

With all due respect, it’s more or less the same with many first-time entrepreneurs when it comes to constructing their investor pitch decks and/or pitching. So, we’re going to spell it out for you.

We know you know the information that needs to be included, in no particular order: problem, solution, differentiators, market size – total addressable market (TAM), sample addressable market (SAM), sample obtainable market (SOM), go to market strategy, traction/partnerships, competitors, financials, team et al. 12-15 slides. Done. Read More...

What Hath Tech Wrought…This Time

What Hath Tech Wrought…This Time

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Photo by TheDigitalArtist @Pixabay

The world was up in arms when Russia says it’s blocking Facebook in alarming new censorship push. Meta president of global affairs Nick Clegg then tweeted in response to the move, saying “Soon millions of ordinary Russians will find themselves cut off from reliable information…and silenced from speaking out,” The Verge reported. Yet, how long has the tech cabal been censoring people and posts that are not in lockstep with what they deem appropriate, or do not conform to their agendas?

 

Meanwhile, we’re witnessing The creeping authoritarianism of facial recognition that’s being adopted more and more. “The same technology that Russia uses to keep its people in line has come to America,” Spectator World reported. Of course, it’s all in the name of  lowering crime rates, but note to self, More States Than Ever Passing Laws For No Cash Bail and Pretrial Detention, including New York, where the NYPD provide(d) hard proof that no-bail law is causing a crime spike. Said the New York Post, “Since Jan. 1, 482 suspects busted for serious felonies were released without bail only to commit another 846 new crimes. Over a third were arrested for one of the seven most serious crimes: murder, rape, robbery, felony assault, burglary, grand larceny and grand larceny auto.” Read More...