Advice Archives - Page 21 of 35

Jesus Was a Blackbelt: A Lesson in Moving Forward

January 12, 2021 Bonnie Comments 0 Comment

Last week, Twitter removed US President Donald Trump from the platform, tweeting that “After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence.” Never mind that Twitter Allows ‘Hang Mike Pence’ To Trend. Violent groups and terrorists have been using the platform for years to coordinate their activities, but we cover technology, not politics, and are more focused on the implications of Twitter’s move – as well as those of tech cabal members Google, who removed Parler from their app store, as did Apple, and Amazon, which eliminated Parler app from its servers.

As actress Emily Ratajkowski warned: If Mark Zuckerberg Can Shut the President Off Facebook, He Can Shut Any of Us Off. History will remind us that no one is truly immune.

There’s no doubt that censorship is alive and well and spreading – unchecked – and it’s not simply to do with politics but also having opinions that are not in lockstep with those of the cabal or the prescribed talking points. Example: Big Tech censors COVID-19 video featuring doctors, YouTube REMOVES viral video of two California doctors questioning stay-at-home orders and Facebook declares war on anti-vaxxers as it pledges to remove conspiracy theories, never mind that Hundreds (were) Sent to Emergency Room After Getting COVID-19 Vaccines, and “Thousands of people self-reported being unable to work or perform daily activities, or required care from a health care professional, after getting one of the doses from the first tranche,” as the Epoch Times reported. Read More...

The 2021 Then & Now List

January 5, 2021 Bonnie Comments 0 Comment

2020 was a year that changed almost everything. Brick and mortars’ footprint got a lot smaller as we embraced online shopping. Not necessarily by choice: the former were shut down and/or driven out of business, especially SMBs.

The CDC admitted that deaths from seasonal flu, pneumonia and even heart attacks were included in the Covid numbers, thus inflating the actual deadliness of this flu, yet Big Media ignored these reports, which more or less made fear porn arguably the real superspreader – of click rates and note to self: according to the National Review, Stats Hold a Surprise: Lockdowns May Have Had Little Effect on COVID-19 Spread.

Working remotely became de rigueur, but with K-12 being ‘taught’ remotely, this definitely created problems in River City. On many levels, what with parents working from home, too – or attempting to. Can young children truly learn this way? There is a difference between ‘teaching’ and ‘learning.’ If remote education is going to be the so-called new normal, the basic tenets of effective remote learning need to be seriously re-examined, or the teacher is simply another talking head. Read More...

Antitrust in the Tech Industrial Age

December 15, 2020 Bonnie Comments 0 Comment

Facebook is being sued for antitrust violations and AGs in most of the states have signed on. According to the Chicago Tribune, “Lawmakers of both major parties are also calling for stronger oversight of Facebook and other tech industry giants. They argue that the companies’ massive market power is out of control, crushing smaller competitors and endangering consumer privacy and choice. Facebook insists that its services provide useful benefits for users and that complaints about its power are misguided… The FTC and the Justice Department reportedly have been investigating Amazon and Apple, respectively…and Justice Department prosecutors are pursuing a separate antitrust case against Google, one that mirrors its case against Microsoft 20 years ago. Microsoft lost that one, although it escaped a breakup when an appellate court disagreed with the trial judge’s order.”

Om Malik published this piece (My advice to the attorney generals: It’s not about Zuck) and we agree. His point: the Microsoft case didn’t help much in reining in the company. “I would argue that they are doing what they have always done – using their market size as a moat and expanding into new markets. We don’t realize it just yet. Today, they control two major professional networks that will have as big, if not more, significant impact on society in the future — GitHub and LinkedIn…

“My view is that it is okay for these companies to continue and buy younger companies, but they should be restricted to only buying companies that enhance their core and not allowed to buy into new markets. For example, Facebook should not have been allowed to buy Instagram or WhatsApp… In a previous article for The New Yorker, I pointed out, “This loop of algorithms, infrastructure, and data is potent. Add what are called network effects to the mix, and you start to see virtual monopolies emerge almost overnight…”When it comes to Facebook, I wrote, “The more we use it, the more data we give the company, and the more it is able to control where we turn our attention.” Facebook, as a result, “thanks to this loop of algorithms, infrastructure, money, and data, is a winner-takes-all company. Read More...

Fresh Eyes on the New Normal

December 8, 2020 Bonnie Comments 0 Comment

To hear the Wall Street Journal tell it, you’d think that the stay at home economy is here to stay.

Frankly, we’re not convinced that the votes are all in yet.

While amusement parks, movie theatres, gyms and many restaurants, et al have closed or have been permanently shuttered, are those verticals truly gone forever? Movie theatre sales had been down for quite some time, thanks streaming services, what to speak of the fact that many A list actors found it incumbent upon themselves to take political stances and lost a good part of their fanbase prior to this flu. The common folk expressed their opinions in box office receipts. Read More...

Where Founder Pitches Go Wrong

November 17, 2020 Bonnie Comments 0 Comment

Heads up! This is a great time to start a company. According to NPR, there’s an Unexpected Boom In Startups. “Most of these new businesses are seizing opportunities created by the weird coronavirus economy — an economy where people don’t really want to do stuff face-to-face anymore… Economists have a term for this…”creative destruction.”… Harvard University economist Joseph Schumpeter… described it as a process of “industrial mutation … that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one.” He placed it at the center of capitalism, arguing that it was a force that made capitalism much more innovative than socialism.”

We know that many of you are working on newcos. We hear this from you all the time and our online investor breakfasts are certainly proof of it: everyone briefly pitches and everyone has a newco. We receive your decks and executive summaries and, since we do investor breakfasts semi-monthly, we must know all of the investors (we do know literally hundreds of them), so we’re often asked can we please send out your enclosed deck to the investors for whom we feel it might be appropriate? Happy to! But we get paid for our time. Read More...

Technology’s Latest Overreach

November 10, 2020 Bonnie Comments 0 Comment

In late October, MailChimp updated their terms of service. Fair enough, and its Acceptable Use is pretty standard: “Please don’t use Mailchimp to distribute anything offensive, to promote anything illegal, or to harass anyone.” All well and good. They spell out a few other businesses that offer services, products, or content that may be considered questionable, and the list is there, although it’s pretty much the usual offending suspects. Again, fair enough and we certain fall far outside of any of those categories and practices, so all good.

But wait! There’s more! Read More...

The Broken VC Model: Suggestions for a Hollywood Ending

November 3, 2020 Bonnie Comments 0 Comment

This just in: Twitter Co-Founder Ev Williams Believes All Startup Advice Is Wrong (Yet it is valuable anyway).

“Why is it wrong?…Deep down we know we can’t possibly apply everything we read and often even if we could, we shouldn’t.”

Ditto to investors. We often hear that investors look for newcos focused on big markets (fair enough – everyone wants a unicorn/substantial ROI); were founded by successful serial entrepreneurs (again, fair enough: less handholding; potentially lower risk/known entity). Still, again, they can’t possibly apply everything they hear or read and even if they could, they shouldn’t. Which may contribute to why the VC model is broken. Read More...

Net Non-Neutrality in the Age of Social

October 20, 2020 Bonnie Comments 1 comment

Esther Dyson used to hold a high level, invitation-only conference each year in Scottsdale, AZ called PC Forum. The dates were always carved in stone on our calendar. The conference was acquired, but one of the last ones under Dyson’s auspices was at the dawn of the Age of Social, and the theme was Users in Charge. That was over a decade ago, and truth be told, Dyson is and always has been something of an optimist.

This past week, both Twitter and Facebook came under fire for censoring a NY Post article that they (baselessly) claimed was based on ‘hacked material.’

Once again, Senate to Subpoena Twitter CEO Over Blocking of Disputed Biden Articles, the Wall Street Journal (et al) reported. Read More...