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An Archive of the SOS Email Lists.

Summer: The Midway Point, Part 1

Summer: The Midway Point, Part 1

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Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Things have certainly changed in the startup landscape. Investors haven’t completely unplugged for the summer, as they had previously. Their offices might have moved to non-sanctuary cities or they may no longer have offices at all. And investment into female founded companies is down.

Okay, so not everything changes, fair enough.

While none of us have any control over investor behavior, and as someone who is hired to ‘fix’ pitch decks all the time and make introductions to investors where and when appropriate, we can tell you that founders can control their own behavior, and give themselves a leg up, by presenting their offering clearly and concisely and grabbing the attention of investors, provided that they’re truly on to something – some of whom might actually write a check. Read More...

Hanging by a Thread: A Double Entendre?

Hanging by a Thread: A Double Entendre?

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 Unless you’ve been under a rock – or unplugged due to an extended Independence Day holiday – you do know that Meta has released ‘Twitter killer’ Threads. Thirty million people signed on Day One, and it’s easy to join. No special invite required. No early adopter wait list. All you need is an Instagram account and click on the icon. You’re in!

Ah, but can you just as easily get out?

Long answer: no.  Not without deleting your Instagram account and even then, who knows what data capture threads Meta has left behind. Read More...

The Birds and the Bs and the Importance of the Pivot

The Birds and the Bs and the Importance of the Pivot

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We spend time at our place outside of the city, come the warmer weather. Two years ago, when Spring came, we noticed a small bird building her nest, tucked into a seemingly protected nook above our front door. Most people use our side door, so it was apparently out of harm’s way, and she also seemed to enjoy perching herself on the fence in front of the house, to keep an eye on her nest, and an eye out for predators and to forage.

One day, we noticed that the nest had somehow been dislodged and had fallen onto the concrete tiles. All the eggs had been destroyed. The little bird continued to perch herself on the fence in front of the door, but guess she only had one shot at that season’s eggs.

The following year, she made her nest in the same spot, and, well, history does have a way of repeating itself. Again, the nest had somehow been dislodged and had fallen, and all her eggs destroyed. Read More...

The Internet of Things Not to be Trusted

The Internet of Things Not to be Trusted

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Image by Mohamed_hassan @Pixabay

While LLMs such as ChatGPT are still very new and people do seem to forgive them for some of the  ‘hallucinations’ qua fabricated information they may deliver, Amazon’s Echo and Alexa have been around for quite some time now and in case you missed it, Amazon Shuts Down Smart Home for a Week Over Racist Slur Claim.

Which begs the question: where does tech end and what belongs to you begin?

“If you bought a toaster, at the end of the day, you own the toaster. It’s your toaster…Alexa is not a subscription service. You buy the devices, and that’s supposed to be it,” said the Microsoft engineer who was shut out of all things in his connected home connected by Amazon-controlled devices, such as Echo and Alexa. Read More...

Technology’s Marks of Evil?

Technology’s Marks of Evil?

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Image by Alexa from Pixabay

What is it with that name and the need to control? Or manipulate. We refer to the Mar(c)(k)s Andreessen and Zuckerberg, respectively.

Although the spellings may be different to deceive the clueless.

Marc Andreessen, who a while back explained Why Software Is Eating the World, is now instructing us on Why AI Will Save The World. Mind you, in his earlier a16Z blog post, while he was right about how technology would take over, he didn’t bother to mention what we’d have to surrender for the privilege: our privacy and all our personal information. Read More...

Barreling Towards The Terminator Trifecta

Barreling Towards The Terminator Trifecta

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 With summer just a few weeks away, the lists of summer movies are starting to appear. Entertainment talk lately has turned to whether or not James Cameron (The Terminator, Avatar, Titanic et al) will make yet another Terminator movie and what does this have to do with tech? Read on.

The movie, if you will recall, is about a future where sentient robots have taken over the world. Their goal: eradicate humanity. It was science fiction, but how often do these films turn out to be prescient? (How a movie predicted Ohio’s toxic derailment)

We can also tell you on fairly good authority that another Terminator movie is in the serious discussion stages, especially since we seem to be at least close to Skynet going live – the last part of The Terminator tech trifecta. Read More...

Unicorns Rethought

Unicorns Rethought

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Image by Classically Printed from Pixabay

Heads up! Yet another tech billionaire now owns a media empire, and a notable one at that.

“Austin Russell became the youngest self-made billionaire in 2021; now he owns Forbes,” TechCrunch reported.

The problem is, no matter that tech wunderkinds might have made a fortune in their chosen fields and become vaunted in the media: that doesn’t translate into the ability to run a media property being in one’s wheelhouse.  It’s terra incognita and always a good idea to stay in one’s lane, from what we can tell as a result of tech billionaire devouring media stalwarts so far. Read More...

The Return of the Dark Lords of Social

The Return of the Dark Lords of Social

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Photo by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash

From what we’ve witnessed about the tech space to date, tech is all about invention and reinvention.

Example: it’s a communications tool. How long has the telephone been around, meaning landlines? Instead of calling, we ping or email or Zoom. Nothing new, really: only the words and devices and delivery mechanisms have changed to deceive the clueless.

Tech is also about glorification and vilification – and sometimes both, in the same person. Everyone’s (former) hero Elon Musk bought Twitter and the tech media banded against him – no matter that Twitter had been a platform for propaganda and surveillance under Jack Dorsey’s tenure. Yet, no matter what, Dorsey, for some reason, can seemingly do no wrong. Read More...

Note to the Surveillance State: We’re Watching, Too.

Note to the Surveillance State: We’re Watching, Too.

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Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay

It seems that Congress is worried about China spying on American citizens – particularly via the vastly popular TikTok – so they’re moving to pass the RESTRICT Act (“Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology Act,” or Senate Bill 686), which would “authorize the Secretary of Commerce (which is not an elected position) to review and prohibit certain transactions between persons in the United States and foreign adversaries, and for other purposes.”

Pretty broad, eh?

Critics are (rightfully) calling it the Patriot Act for the Digital Age. FYI, the Patriot Act was enacted after 9/11/2001 to ‘protect’ Americans, but it was basically a ploy to grant the federal government wide-reaching surveillance powers to spy on US citizens and not long afterwards, enter the Age of Social, which made it oh, so much easier for the government to spy – and censor. And even propagandize. Read More...

Fake It Till You… Meh – Scratch That

Fake It Till You… Meh – Scratch That

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Image by Elisa from Pixabay

Fake it till you make it has been the credo of the tech industry since the very earliest days of the industry. Make big promises and bold statements and no matter that the product may end up as shovelware of vaporware, founders were inventing the future and no matter that investors who bought into the hype were expecting big payoffs that often didn’t happen. You pay your money, you take your chances. So it goes.

Erin Griffin wrote an excellent piece in The New York Times recently entitled The End of Faking It in Silicon Valley and it’s must-read. “Faking it is over. That’s the feeling in Silicon Valley…Not only has funding dried up for cash-burning startups over the past year, but now, fraud is also in the air, as investors scrutinize startup claims more closely and a tech downturn reveals who has been taking the industry’s “fake it till you make it” ethos too far… the chorus of charges, convictions and sentences have created a feeling that the startup world’s fast and loose fakery actually has consequences.”

Gee, who’d have thought? Considering that California was basically founded on the Gold Rush, and the tech space was essentially the state’s second Gold Rush, didn’t investors realize that during that first Gold Rush, many were taken in by Fool’s Gold? History does have a way of repeating itself, and if it worked the first time… Read More...