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Tag: #FounderAdvice

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...

THIMK!

THIMK!

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 That’s not a typo. It was a Mad magazine cover – Mad having been the Onion or Babylon Bee of its day – and according to dpgreatlife, “Thimk” was a poke at Thomas J. Watson, Sr., who was once at NCR and later IBM. Watson’s simple mantra was “Think.”

The Atlantic recently ran a piece entitled THE RISE OF TECHNO-AUTHORITARIANISM Silicon Valley has its own ascendant political ideology. It’s past time we call it what it is.

In the relatively early days of Web 2, we wrote an editorial warning that the age of social was creating companies with greater populations than have most countries on the planet. In fact, we called them as nation-states, and warned back then that they could  become more powerful than any government on the planet. It might have taken them 10+ years, but it seems at least the Atlantic seems to be catching on. Read More...

Investor Winter: Lessons from Nature

Investor Winter: Lessons from Nature

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Ten months ago, a feral cat showed up in our backyard. He’s a young cat: Harry can’t be more than a few years old, doesn’t meow like felines who are raised by humans. A veterinarian member of the family told us it’s a sign that he’s been feral since birth.

We have no idea where Harry calls home. When we first spotted him in Spring, we started leaving him food. Despite the fact that he’s shown up almost daily since, he hasn’t warmed up to us at all. He shows up for food at least twice a day – very early morning and evening – but always keeps his distance.

And won’t eat any processed food, mind you: he knows better. And hisses at us if – heaven forfend! – we don’t bugger off and give him his space while he’s dining. Read More...

Aileen Lee’s Look at the Unicorn Club, Ten Years After She Coined the Term

Aileen Lee’s Look at the Unicorn Club, Ten Years After She Coined the Term

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Image by Gordon Johnson from Pixabay

It was Aileen Lee of Cowboy Ventures who coined the term ‘unicorn.’ Now she has taken a fresh look: Welcome Back to the Unicorn Club, 10 Years Later. A lot changes in ten years, especially in tech.

As Lee observed, ten years ago, the majority of unicorns were consumer focused. Now, the pendulum has swung hard to enterprise, and the herd is about to be thinned – for now -, as many a so-called unicorn is a ‘papercorn.’ Capital efficiency has dropped precipitously, Silicon Valley is no longer the unicorn hub (“The Bay Area is still the largest unicorn pasture, but lost a lot of ground”). She also predicts that AI will be a superunicorn.

Facebook was the standout beast in 2013, but our question is, how good is a unicorn’s eyesight? One would think or at least hope that unicorns are visionaries in some way (preferably in a good way), but the two terms are hardly interchangeable. Apple co-founder Steve Jobs certainly was that square peg in the round hole who was crazy enough to think that he could change the world – in a good way – and he did. The iPod, the iPhone. The NeXt cube, that changed computers forever. Jobs was no doubt a visionary, and a design genius. Read More...

And the 2023 Word of the Year Is…

And the 2023 Word of the Year Is…

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Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay

We’re under the weather this week. This is not a reference to the cold spell sweeping across the US: we’re literally down with a stomach flu, and the perfect opportunity to report American Dialect’s 2023 Word of the Year – “Enshittification,” as we feel like, well, need we spell it out?

The word “became popular in 2023 after it was used in a blog post by author Cory Doctorow, who used it to describe how digital platforms can become worse and worse. “Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. I call this enshittification,” Doctorow wrote on his Pluralistic blog.”

The good news is, re this stomach bug, we will recover. What about those platforms?  “Gen Z is crazy about a handful of online platforms including Twitch, Reddit, TikTok, Imgur, Unfold, Brat, NTWRK, and Lomotif,” according to Business Insider, while Later reports that YouTube is their online entertainment channel of choice, “and TikTok (68%) and Snapchat (67%) aren’t too far behind. Interestingly, the platform that has really skyrocketed in this group is BeReal, as according to zdnet, “On BeReal you cannot have followers. Similar to the earliest forms of social networking sites (remember AIM), on the app you have friends instead of followers and only these select groups of people can see your posts. This takes away the pressure of wanting to curate a perfect public image and brings back the fun of sharing content only with your friends.” Read More...

Is It Time to Pivot?

Is It Time to Pivot?

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Image by Marcin from Pixabay

Almost all startups pivot at some point. This we know. Since many people consider a new year a new/clean slate as well and a good time to reflect on where you’ve been/where you’re going, we decided it’s a good time to talk about the pivot.

We recently hosted an investor at one of our Online Insights who mentioned a unicorn exit from one of their portfolio companies. We  knew the founder. Very sharp guy who had majorly pivoted not long after said investor’s fund had invested in them. One of the partners had spoken at our Insights not long after the pivot and was livid: this was not what he had invested in.

Well, how often do investors mention that the ‘team’ is one of their top considerations when it comes to deciding to whom to write the check? Just a few short years following the pivot, the company had a serious unicorn exit. The founder also happened to be something of a subject matter expert, rethought the approach, did a major change of direction – and did we mention the company had a serious unicorn exit? Apologies, but we have learned from experience that one of the major always unnamed problems when it comes to why startups fail is that founders don’t listen. Read More...

23 Memorable People and Peccadillos of Tech in ’23 – Part Two

23 Memorable People and Peccadillos of Tech in ’23 – Part Two

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Photo by alexandru vicol on Unsplash

As we were saying last week, with the year drawing to a close, here are our final dozen picks for the people and peccadillos in a very odd year.

While not everything mentioned in these points might not necessarily have started this year, it was a year when they’ve certainly been ramped up and time to take a closer look. In no particular order:

Climate change. Fact: the climate has been changing since long before mankind came along and started exploiting fossil fuels, but never underestimate hubris. Or (dare we say it?) possible manipulation. Read More...