2013 Oct 16

Snap...ACK!

SnapChat was supposed to be a safe way to share pictures or text for a short (and controlled) time. You take a picture or send a text with your smartphone, set an expiry on it, and only the recipient can see it only for the time you set. After that, it is gone, lost forever. A few months back, some smart engineers proved that snapchat doesn't actually delete the pictures, and you can retrieve them.

2013 Oct 15

Open-Source Tensions

I am a big advocate of open-source software. I believe that, along with Amazon Web Services, open-source has been the single greatest enabler of startups in the last decade or more. Amazon made it possible to launch an online startup for pennies on the dollar of what it cost in the 90s; I still remember startups that raised millions just to buy and run their Web servers. Nowadays, you do it for a few hundred dollars per month.

2013 Oct 14

Sacrificial Lambs

To paraphrase Johnny Carson as the Great Karnak: writing a good blog; growing your business; sacrificial lambs. What do they have in common? Other than sometimes feeling like you need to give blood to get somewhere, they all require consistency. Writing a Blog People write blogs for many reasons. Some feel the need to write; others do it to market a product or service; some to get a message out.

2013 Oct 11

Crowdfunding and Crowding Out

So private companies can, finally, solicit equity investors from the public, in a process known as "general solicitation." Until now, you either had to register as a public company, or do a "private" solicitation only. In some ways, this is the biggest and first real positive change to private capital raising in almost a century, since the major securities laws were enacted in the 1930s. My friend Jon Medved, CEO of OurCrowd, wrote a good summary in his OpEd in yesterday's WSJ, although, for reasons unknown, he credits the SEC with changing the rule, rather than Congress with its JOBS Act, which the SEC fought tooth and nail.

2013 Oct 10

From Garbage to Gold

One of my favourite types of successes is when a business finds value in its garbage. One of the most famous cases - taught in almost every business school - is Kingsford Charcoal. Kingsford, the largest charcoal manufacturers in the United States, was founded by Henry Ford an E.G. Kingsford to sell off the waste wood scrap from the Ford Motor Company's plants. Ford noticed that there were a lot of wood scraps being thrown away as post-manufacturing waste.

2013 Oct 9

The Clothes Make the Man... or the Entrepreneur

A colleague of mine forwarded me this fascinating interview with Brian O'Kelley, founding CEO of AppNexus. There are several good gems in there, and as Brian is a fairly outgoing person, the read is enjoyable as well. During one particularly difficult period of raising investment, after 40 rejections, he became depressed from the rejections - common among entrepreneurs - and got fed up with all of the effort in order not to receive a term sheet.

2013 Oct 8

R2D2 is NOT at the Supermarket

Automation and robotics, in theory, are a wonderful thing. They allow us to replace expensive humans with limited time to spend on the job with machines that can do the same work over and over again, without becoming tired, demanding raises or quitting for greener pastures, all while saving money and time. One of the earliest places we have seen consumer-facing "automation" is the supermarket. I was reminded of this by the article, more of a rant, by Farhad Manjoo on the WSJ on self-checkout.

2013 Oct 7

Why Is China Cheaper?

For several decades now, company after company has outsourced manufacturing to China. Even "patriotic" items, like flags, are often stamped "Made in China." Why do companies send their manufacturing overseas? The main driver, obviously, is labour cost. If the wages of an American manufacturing worker are at least $10-15 per hour, while the Chinese worker costs $1 per hour (minimum wage in expensive Guangzhou Province is ~$1.25/hr), then you can, at first blush, save 90% (!

2013 Oct 4

Joseph Deitcher 2012. In Memoriam.

I normally write about business. Today, the first anniversary on the Hebrew calendar of my father's passing, I would like to write about business lessons from my father, from whom I learned the most valuable lessons of all. I cannot give a true insight into his life, his soul, his joy and happiness in life - even and perhaps especially during difficult times - in a short post. I can share, as I did with my family yesterday evening, some of the key life lessons about how a person should conduct himself.

2013 Oct 3

Ignorance is the Beginning of Knowledge

Two events occurred in the last week that reminded me of the value of ignorance... or, to paraphrase the first step of Alcoholics Anonymous' Twelve-Step Program, admitting you don't know is the first step towards true wisdom. The first was an excellent TED Talk given by Stuart Firestein, Columbia University Professor of Biology (full disclosure: I attended Columbia as an undergraduate), on how answering questions in science actually creates even more questions and unknowns - sort of like chopping the head off of a Hydra, where two more grow in its place - and in many ways true science is the pursuit of ignorance, discovering what we just don't know.