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No Is an Acronym

No Is an Acronym

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Image by Gordon Johnson from Pixabay

We’ve covered this subject before, and here’s a reminder – with other points added, and updates, since certain of the investors mentioned did change funds. Or started new ones. So, once more with feeling…

When you were a kid how many times did your parents say No! N-O, NO! More than once, we’d wager. How many times did they say, Yes, Y-E-S, YES!’ Bet I can count the number of times on one hand – zero. Never happened.

We did notice this at a fairly young age – long before we knew that there was such a word – that NO is an acronym. It was parent-code for ‘keep trying’ or ‘change the talking points.’ In some cases, we found that if we changed our approach or arguments, we could get a yes. Persistence pays. And the same can be said of investors. Investors hate to miss opportunities, so they don’t really like to say No. Investors like to hedge their bets and keep their options open. Sometimes they will give you a hard and fast No and mean it. Still, that said, things change, so one never knows if it truly is a hard No. Read More...

140 Characters Who Helped Shape the Tech World

140 Characters Who Helped Shape the Tech World

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It was Peter Thiel who said, “We were promised flying cars. Instead we got 140 characters.” It looks like flying cars may be slowly rolling out, with Singapore’s flying taxi trial set to begin in the second half of 2019, but who the hell are those 140 characters to whom Theil might have been referring? As a co-founder of PayPal and an early investor in Facebook, LinkedIn, Yelp and Quora, he certainly knows what sorts of characters tech can breed.

We’ve been involved in the tech world since the nascent days of Web 1.0 in New York City – with monthly trips to Silicon Valley at the time, as well – and over the years, have encountered many of those characters, upfront and personal, for better or for worse. Of course we have stories to tell, but that’s for a later date and a much longer opus.

Some were true innovators who created platforms and software and devices that forged an entirely new industry. You may not be familiar with their names, but their contributions should never be forgotten. Some forgot their original drivers, whether it was to not be evil or to connect the world, tracked the world’s population in ways and to an extent to which it had never been tracked before, storing it and parsing out that information to the highest and/or any and all bidders, and paying no heed to the concept that we might have the right to be forgotten. Read More...

The First Annual Connie Awards®

The First Annual Connie Awards®

From Silicon Valley to Silicon Alley and everything in between and near and far, including Silicon Prairie, Silicon Roundabout, Silicon Desert, Silicon Wadi, Silicon Slopes, Silicon Hills, et al, the world has seen some amazing tech – and some moments in tech that were somewhat less than shining. Or at least, equally memorable, but not in a good way.

It was a year that the tech industry proved that it does have its fair share of visionaries, as well as hipsters and outsters, heroes and zeroes, goodniks and bad players. While the industry is heavily peopled with brash young men and bad boys, it was a year that gave the latter a whole new meaning. Read More...