We all know the statistics: most startups fail for various reasons, primarily because they run out of money, or didn’t raise enough – or any. There is another factor to consider: do you have what it takes to be a founder of a company? There’s a lot of advice out there on the slides you need in your deck and why startups fail, but what about some basic skills you need to be a founder? We do know that many founders of very successful companies are psychopaths – do try to avoid going that route – and that aside, here are some things you need to consider:Read More...
The Metaverse and the Peloton Saga: A Cautionary Tale
Technologies change with time and circumstances. The lockdowns brought the rise of Zoom, Peloton and Hopin, to name a few. But times change, as do needs and fortunes.
David Bowie said that tomorrow belongs to those who can hear it coming, and as TechCrunch noted, Hopin “merely 11 months prior…closed a $400 million raise at a $5.65 billion valuation. Then (founder Johnny) Boufarhat told TechCrunch that “his company intends on being operationally IPO-ready next year.”Read More...
The line is a reference to a comedic variety show hosted by Drew Carey, Whose Line Is It, Anyway?, which was basically an homage to the absurd.
Enter Meta, the Company Formerly Known as Facebook, which some wags have referred to as Mark Zuckerberg’s attempt to escape his many problems in the physical world. Not the least of which is his loss of a younger audience, and every advertiser knows that it’s best to get them when they’re young. Even Instagram can’t seem to hold on to those younger eyeballs. In Meta, kids can strap on their headsets (and CFKAF is betting that they will) and enter their own virtual worlds – with friends too, if they choose. Although it won’t be the Oculus headset, since FB is killing off the brand, which means, btw, as Techcrunch pointed out, that it took Zuck roughly 15 seconds to tell his first lie: “Our mission remains the same — it’s still about bringing people together. Our apps and our brands — they’re not changing either.”
“Mr. Zuckerberg painted a picture of the metaverse as a clean, well-lit virtual world, entered with virtual and augmented reality hardware at first and more advanced body sensors (or neural implants?) later on, in which people can play virtual games, attend virtual concerts, go shopping for virtual goods, collect virtual art, hang out with each other’s virtual avatars and attend virtual work meetings,” wrote The New York Times.Read More...
Tech has long operated under the mistaken belief that you can barrel ahead, damn all laws and regulations, what to speak of the basic rules of business, ask forgiveness instead of permission and it would all work out in the end. That one might have flown – for a time – when tech was a nascent industry attempting to elbow its way to a seat at the table: the problem is that the waiter always comes around with the check.
There have been a spate of IPOs and non-starters, and IPOs that more or less turned out to be non-starters: Uber and Lyft have not exactly been great rides for investors; stationery so-called connected exercycle Peloton has been spinning its proverbial wheels. The We Company pulled its IPO because it turned out to be not about We after all, but rather I, I, me, me.Read More...
