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Tag: #Traction

The Age of the Soonicorn

The Age of the Soonicorn

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Image by Susan Cipriano from Pixabay

In case you haven’t been following it, the stock market has been taking a huge hit, especially in the tech sector. Truth be told, tech stocks have long been overvalued, and although no one wants to mention the word, let’s go there: the bubble is finally bursting. It’s overdue. Waaay overdue.

 

Consider: Facebook revenue slows but user gains boost stock. Strange math, what, eh?  “The company shares had fallen by about 44 percent in addition to recording a $400 billion loss in market value,” TechStory reported. But the stock was up! But not for long. Of course, Zuckerberg has assured us that his metaverse will be hugely profitable by 2030, no matter that it lost $3B this past year. The hype machine, it seems, is alive and well. Read More...

Fake It Til You Make It – To the Witness Stand.

Fake It Til You Make It – To the Witness Stand.

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We are all aware that fake it til you make it is one of the premier mantras of the tech industry. At this point, we should also keep in mind that you can fake it for just so long – Adam Neumann’s WeWork being a notable case in point – and careful what you fake: in the case of Theranos and the company’s founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes, it led to 11 counts of fraud that are being litigated as we speak.

As the Mercury News reported, “Holmes is charged with allegedly bilking investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars, and defrauding patients with false claims that the company’s machines could conduct a full range of tests using just a few drops of blood.”

Here’s a cautionary tale for you: despite the fact that Holmes followed the Silicon Valley playbook – attend an Ivy League school (Stanford dropout); be mediagenic (the tech might have been flawed, but in every photo of Holmes that the media proffered, she looked perfect); get a LOT of press (aka due diligence for clueless investors). Bonus points: dress in a manner that recalls a tech icon – in this case, Steve Jobs (easy one: black turtlenecks. Done!). Read More...

Entrepreneurship and Natural Instinct

Entrepreneurship and Natural Instinct

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Our cat died late last week. Her name was Paris. She was 17 – a long life, in cat years. Although technically, she wasn’t our cat. Technically, she belonged to the super in the building next door when we’d had our ground floor Manhattan office, but as a tiny kitten living with three grown cats and a dog, all of whom would not let her get near the food, she had other ideas about staying put. And acted on them. Without hesitation. A true entrepreneur/go-getter so take heed, entrepreneurs and budding entrepreneurs: when you see a gaping need and find a solution/opportunity, go for it.

Our ground floor office had a huge walled in backyard. Little did we know that ground floor spaces in NYC tend to be overrun with mice and rats. Especially ones with large outdoor spaces. No matter how many accesses we plugged up and traps we set, they seemed to proliferate. We needed a cat – a mouser – but we didn’t live at the office, so getting a cat was a non-starter. Exterminators didn’t help much in our situation, either. Read More...