The Two Most Desirable Features of a Platform as a Service
Big Data? Multitenancy? Uber DB scaling? Mad Hadoopishness? Faster app development? Universal Social Connectivity? Not so much. Some platform or other claims all of those things, but the two most desirable features of a PaaS appear to be revenue generation and commodity pricing, not necessarily in that order. Let me first say that I’ve come [...]
Square: It’s All About the Momentum, Baby!
Reading about Square’s latest $100 million in capital raised at a $1 billion valuation, it’s tempting to write another Bubble Story. While it’s undeniable that it would be hard to do that financing in the wake of the recent Sequoia RIP Good Times era, there’s something more interesting to think about here. First, let [...]
There’s a New Sheriff in Town and His Name is “Content”
Just read a great top-level overview of Google’s Panda on SEOMoz. If you haven’t been following Panda, or you’re not involved with marketing much, it is Google’s latest algorithmic attempt to minimize the ability to game search results. This article is at a good level for CEO’s, Board Members, Investors, and other Interested Parties to [...]
Quality is Part of the UX Too
Just had a back and forth with @dahowlett on Twitter about Dropbox’s recent breach of security. For about 4 hours passwords didn’t matter to Dropbox–you could type in whatever you wanted and access anyone’s data. Dennis went on a pretty good rampage about it, and I have a hard time blaming him. Yes, accidents happen, [...]
When Will Your Job Be Consumerized?
It’s become all the rage to talk about the Consumerization of IT in the last few years. There are a lot of definitions of what the term means. Those who are looking to downplay it somewhat will toss out the idea that it’s copying consumer web technology into business software. One gets the idea that [...]
Founders: The Bubble Clock is Ticking
The incredible valuation of the LinkedIn IPO can only be interpreted as one signal: the Bubble Clock has started ticking. So long as it continues to run, we will live in a reality distortion where valuations are insanely high, capital is cheap, and smart businesses can leverage that to hyper growth. When it stops, we’re [...]
Fred Wilson is Still Wrong About Streaming Music and Amazon’s Locker Will Rock
Fred and I have tangled before over the issue of owning your music versus streaming it. Fred continues undaunted in his latest post, a reaction to Amazon’s Music Locker announcements: I don’t get the idea of music locker services like the one Amazon just announced. If I’m going to stream music from the cloud, why should [...]
The Art of Riding the Bubble
People are increasingly asking whether there is a Bubble underway in the tech business. The answer is that by the time you know there is a Bubble it’s probably too late to do anything about it. But if all you’re doing is asking whether there is a Bubble, the Bubble is probably not here, yet. [...]
Efficient Marketing Means Doing Something Different
Startups have to solve three problems to succeed: 1. They need a great product. 2. They need a business model that results in profitable growing revenue. 3. They need an efficient marketing model that results in a profitable growing customer base. As Om Malik’s great post on business models and Twitter points out, too many [...]
Does the Internet Mean There Can Only Be One?
I read with interest today Hubspot’s coverage of their new monster VC round. They’ve raised a $32M Series D monster round from Sequoia, Google, and Salesforce–certainly an all-start cast. There’s a lot of interesting data in these announcements, such as Hubspot’s view of what market shares look like for the Marketing Automation category: If true, [...]
