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The Perks of Being a Founder

The Perks of Being a Founder

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 Every now and then we like to focus on the founders’ journey, and we’ve included this graphic for comic relief. The process is not an easy one. In fact, there’s no shortage of lists that go into the top reasons as to why startups fail. May be time to flip the focus: when the authors of this CNBC article interviewed 18 Harvard startup founders, they found that “Here’s the No. 1 trait that made them successful.”

Resilience.

It’s a well-known fact that 20% of startups fail within their first year, no matter how carefully the founder/team plans. ‘Uncontrollables’ always crop up and derail the best laid plans, and this includes acts of God. Example: we know of a founder who launched an app that allowed users to make us of any gym, any time, anywhere in the world. It was an immediate hit – with no freemium version available – so much so, they didn’t even need investment money. Fantastic! Read More...

LLMs and the Way Back Machine*

LLMs and the Way Back Machine*

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Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay

First, a bit of history. At the dawn of the Web 1.0 era, everyone felt the need to have a presence on this new information superhighway.  Something. Anything. Businesses/corporations started putting up websites, which by today’s standards were placeholders, for which they paid millions to early web-focused ad agencies/web dev shops. But consultants to whom they paid thousands/hour advised them that this was what they needed to do, or their businesses/corporations would become irrelevant in this new tech age. For context, HTML coders were commanding salaries well into six figures. A lot of money was being thrown at a lot of youth and inexperience – web shops where the founders knew nothing about business, luckily, working with clients who knew nothing about the web. If the young founders walked into a client meeting with a palm pilot, they were clearly members of the digerati and you needed to go along with anything they said.

These young companies were renting way more office space than they needed, hiring way more employees than they needed, and were running out of money, so they’d throw a party, get some press, and get acquired by a large company/corporation. Who’d learn too late that they’d acquired little more than smoke and mirrors. But what they really bought was the hype.

Which is a large part of the reason why the Web 1.0 bubble burst. Read More...

LLMs and the Way Back Machine*

LLMs and the Way Back Machine*

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Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay

First, a bit of history. At the dawn of the Web 1.0 era, everyone felt the need to have a presence on this new information superhighway.  Something. Anything. Businesses/corporations started putting up websites, which by today’s standards were placeholders, for which they paid millions to early web-focused ad agencies/web dev shops. But consultants to whom they paid thousands/hour advised them that this was what they needed to do, or their businesses/corporations would become irrelevant in this new tech age. For context, HTML coders were commanding salaries well into six figures. A lot of money was being thrown at a lot of youth and inexperience – web shops where the founders knew nothing about business, luckily, working with clients who knew nothing about the web. If the young founders walked into a client meeting with a palm pilot, they were clearly members of the digerati and you needed to go along with anything they said.

These young companies were renting way more office space than they needed, hiring way more employees than they needed, and were running out of money, so they’d throw a party, get some press, and get acquired by a large company/corporation. Who’d learn too late that they’d acquired little more than smoke and mirrors. But what they really bought was the hype.

Which is a large part of the reason why the Web 1.0 bubble burst. Read More...

X Marked the Spot

X Marked the Spot

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Before you get your backs up, this is not about politics, and sung to the tune of ‘Let’s Talk About Sex:’ It’s about tech, baby, it’s about you and me, it’s about all the good things and the bad things that can be, It’s about tech. Let’s talk about tech.

At the dawn of the Age of Social, it was widely proclaimed that we, the users, were the product. Is a shift underway at a tectonic level?

Two men engaged in a conversation on X’s Spaces last week and the audience numbers were off the charts. Live, watched later, or simulcast over various sites, it was reported that between a quarter billion to a billion people tuned in. Read More...

The Science Unintended Consequences

The Science Unintended Consequences

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Image by nugroho dwi hartawan from Pixabay

There’s an old German proverb that says that all things have an end, except for a sausage, which has two. Well, all things have a beginning, too,  including environmental issues. Especially since it seems everyone’s concerned with solving the problems, but that perhaps we’re quickly offered solutions that aren’t.

PFAs

Example: plastic straws were outlawed/removed from many fast-food establishments as they tended to end up in the oceans, endangering marine life. Enter paper straws, but as xatakaon  reported, “Paper Straws Are Often Touted as a Great Alternative to Plastic, But There’s a Small Problem: They’re Toxic… After analyzing 39 brands of straws made of various materials such as plastic, paper, glass, stainless steel, and bamboo, a team (of scientists) found that paper straws contain the most perfluoroalkylated and polyfluoroalkylated substances, also known as PFAS. These synthetic substances are considered harmful to humans, animals, and the environment.”

PFAs are ‘forever chemicals’ that “can lead to health problems such as liver damage, thyroid disease, obesity, fertility issues and cancer,” according to the European Environmental Agency, and they’re also found in packaged foods, fabrics, paints, electronics, and pizza boxes, to name just a very few. Read More...

The Importance of Transparency

The Importance of Transparency

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Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay

We’ve found that in tech, founders/the tech press, etc, in many cases, have a bad habit of stretching the truth, let’s call it, or at least of altering a narrative to suit their purposes. It’s top-down and the members of the tech cabal do it constantly – often with the willing assistance of the tech media, who let’s say tend to shy away from presenting the full picture.

Last week, “Microsoft and Apple (gave) up their OpenAI board seats,” MSN reported. “Microsoft reportedly told OpenAI that it’s confident in the direction the company is taking, so its seat on the board is no longer necessary.”

That’s the snapshot, which is often as far as many readers get, and let’s not forget that MSN, or Microsoft News, is a Microsoft property. Read More...

The Power of AI: Who Is Truly Hallucinating?

The Power of AI: Who Is Truly Hallucinating?

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Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay

It’s a tough funding environment right now and although we’ve often reminded founders that some of the most successful companies launched during the toughest times in funding, that fact often gets lost in the tough-times funding headlines.

The current exception seems to be if/when founders have ‘AI’ someone front and center in their pitches. As we all know at this point because the hype machine/tech press impresses it upon us every two or three headlines, AI is going to change the world, replace most jobs, eliminate entire professions.

Including coding itself, if Devin is any indication. Devin is “An AI startup that’s not even 6 months old says it’s worth $2 billion Cognition Labs is building an AI tool for writing code — and seeking a valuation six times its current level,” said Quartz. Read More...

Apple Antitrust Suit: Let the Games Begin – Again.

Apple Antitrust Suit: Let the Games Begin – Again.

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Let’s face it: the good people at Apple believe that they’re just smarter than the rest of us. When Epic Games sued the company over their monopolistic practices – taking such a huge vig from products in the app store, Apple did win most of the civil suit, but had to make concessions to comply with California law.

Apple attempted to block Epic from starting a competing app store. Until Apple Reverse(d) Course and Allow(ed) Epic Games to Start (One), said the New York Times. “Days after Epic Games, the maker of Fortnite, complained publicly that Apple had blocked it from starting a competing app store in Europe, the technology companies said Apple had reversed course and would allow Epic to go ahead with its plan.” But only did so to comply with a new European tech competition law.

Think Different might not always be such a good idea after all and damn those pesky laws! What’s a mother – or monopoly – to do? Read More...

Zombie VCs: the Era of the Walking Dead Funds

Zombie VCs: the Era of the Walking Dead Funds

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Image by Izzy Loney from Pixabay

VCs ask founders a lot of questions. It’s a big part of their job. They’re deploying other people’s money and just as founders have an obligation to make money for their investors, venture firms have an obligation to bring preferably significant returns to theirs.

Founders need to ask investors questions, too. The most important one (or two): are you still deploying funds/when was the last time you made an investment?

PitchBook recently reported that the number of VCs in US deals peaked at 18,504 in 2021 and fell to 9,966 last year. Read More...

The Report from the Trenches

The Report from the Trenches

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 Before we moved into tech, we worked in the music business, for one of the major labels. One year, we were invited to attend the Music Hall of Fame Awards.

Once there, we were escorted to the wrong table. We made it clear to the usher that we worked at BMG, not BMI, but what do we know? So, we were seated among total strangers, all of whom ignored us. We introduced ourself to the little old man and his wife seated next to us, who were also being ignored.

His name was Hy Zaret, one of the evening’s inductees, who was being honored for a song he’d written. One single song. Must have been some song, we figured, so we asked him what the title was. Read More...