2013 Jan 9

Everything depreciates, but textbooks are not like cars

I saw - and retweeted - the following by Sean Daly: https://twitter.com/seaneveryday/status/288698071871811584 Which said: @seaneveryday: Textbooks are like cars - they immediately start losing value as soon as you buy them. #edchat This is, of course, true. But everything you buy loses value, or depreciates, the moment you buy it. Sure, some things can be returned within 14 or 30 days, but for all intents and purposes, the moment you buy it and use it, it loses value.

2013 Jan 7

The right executive for the job

Succession planning is a difficult job, for the CEO as much as the Board, especially if it is a public company. The CEO, by definition, is the generalist of the crowd. S/he is brought in because his skills match the top leadership needs of the company at the time. But a really successful CEO is usually defined by his bringing the best specialists with some general knowledge in as his direct reports.

2013 Jan 3

Ways to the Waze - A Sticky Buy

TechCrunch reports that Apple may be interested in buying social navigation (and Israeli startup) Waze. None of this is surprising; if I were advising Waze (which I am not), I would have looked to Apple as a prime suitor. There area few key reasons for this: Apple needs a mapping win. After the debacle of iOS Maps, followed by the wild success of Google Maps for iOS, has their executives fuming, it desperately needs a win in the mobile Maps space.

2013 Jan 1

Whither "Freemium" - Where Is Google Going?

There are lots of ways to make money, especially on the Web. One of my favourite bloggers, Fred Wilson, recently did a section in his MBA Mondays series on revenue models, and Steve Blank gives a pretty good treatment in his opus, "Startup Owner's Manual." Two of them, in particular, are relevant to Google: Multi-Sided Markets: I like to call this the "three-way model." I give something away for free to you, which draws you to my service, which convinces someone else to pay for access to you.

2012 Dec 16

The Dark Side of charge-through models

Wireless carriers have recognized for some time that mobile content consumption is an important additional revenue stream. This predates mobile Internet, as content owners would provide content via SMS, but it has become larger with the advent of mobile data over the last decade. Content providers particularly like the business model. Sure, they use the carriers as distribution channels, but the part they really like is using the carriers as billing mechanisms.

2012 Dec 6

How Not to Run a Business - Ignore Your Market

Every now and then, I am amazed by the dumb things companies do. Inevitably, they stem from someone in a headquarters going, "I know what customers need!" They then come up with a great plan to market some new service or offer that is so completely detached from actual customer requirements, that it is bound for failure. Not 5 minutes ago, in my inbox, I received an advertisement from El Al Airlines.

2012 Dec 4

Mary Meeker is Back

Mary Meeker is one of the great Internet analysts out there. She was at Morgan Stanley while I worked there (and she probably added a lot more value to the firm than I ever did), so I had the pleasure of hearing her speak a few times. A few years back, she joined Kleiner Perkins as an Investment Partner, where she puts out a once or twice a year report on Internet trends.

2012 Nov 19

SaaS, Financials and the "Curse" of Growth

A client and friend recently refreshed my knowledge by pointing me back at Joel York's brilliant Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) business financial analysis posts, chaotic-flow.com. Joel comes up with his ten rules for a SaaS business. Although Joel targets SaaS companies, and in general all subscription-based revenue companies, in truth it applies to all companies dealing with growth that comes from extending revenue streams. Several years ago, I had a client (I believe they are highlighted in "

2012 Nov 8

Using business sense with the federal deficit

Now that the US elections are over, I am hoping that it is safe to deal with an issue that, to me, is an economics and business one, even if it remains political: the budget deficit. I will avoid the Republican vs. Democrat, where to tax/cut issue, and instead deal with it from a pure numbers perspective. My question is simple: how much money is there to tax if we want to eliminate (or otherwise) attack the deficit.

2012 Nov 7

Rewarding Decisions vs Outcomes

I had a very interesting discussion with Cam MacRae on AVC about how we incentivize staff, especially executives. One of the key - if not the key - lesson I learned in decision sciences, and apply regularly in business life, is that there is a distinction between good decisions and good outcomes. Good decision: a decision you make, given limited information at the time of the decision, that has the best expectation (defined mathematically or any other way you like) of outcome.