on discovery path

"In 1996 I was covering spot news from a closet in The Wall Street Journal’s San Francisco bureau..."

Tue, 06 Sep 2011 17:58:06 -0700

“

In 1996 I was covering spot news from a closet in The Wall Street Journal’s San Francisco bureau when the phone rang. It was Jobs, offering to comment on Pixar’s earnings. It seems crazy in hindsight, but this was near the end of Jobs’ long season away from Apple. Pixar had the previous November released its first big hit, Toy Story, and in the same month had an IPO that beat Netscape as the year’s biggest. That heat had cooled, Woody and Buzz weren’t out on video yet, and with no second film in sight there wasn’t much news in the earnings. The paper had scheduled the story as a brief. Jobs picked up the phone himself, pointed things out, offering quotes, selling me, getting Pixar a bigger story in a so-so quarter.

It was kind of surreal, having a legend work to get his one-inch story made into three inches. If it bothered him, he didn’t show it. Jobs was already a billionaire from the Pixar IPO (the Disney purchase of Pixar, which tripled that, was years away), but at that moment he was a guy striving to get his company a little more attention, a little better position. He wasn’t dogged, he wasn’t irritated, he was focused on the thing he could do in that moment that would push his company forward. And, of course, it worked.

It’s not much of an anecdote, but it shows a couple of things. Jobs is someone who never gives up on details, never stops making that next call, pushing one more thing a little harder. It is a habit of his greatness.

One time he talked about how his habit of email exchanges with strangers who write him. It was a whim, he said: He was up one Thursday at 1 AM working on a presentation for the following Monday, and this kid’s note popped in, so… The real point is, Here is a guy who’s up late working on his material days ahead of time. Most chief executives look at a speech somebody else wrote about 20 minutes before they give it.

”

- Another Steve Jobs anecdote from Quentin Hardy of Forbes.

Not bad for an online bookseller...

Wed, 17 Aug 2011 23:54:01 -0700

I’m sharing with you two great posts (see links below).

Will IT-aaS result in a better IT service and Cloud Architects?

The authors make completely different points but there was one common context: the threat of Amazon Web Services. Surely AWS has played their part in motivating IT shops and incumbent IT vendors to push toward the so-called private/hybrid cloud.

Great infographic on hottest tech companies in the current...

Tue, 02 Aug 2011 00:46:11 -0700

Great infographic on hottest tech companies in the current “bubble”. Click the picture to see a larger full version.

Why Netflix Wants You to ‘Just Say No’ to DVDs

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 07:45:38 -0700

Why Netflix Wants You to ‘Just Say No’ to DVDs:

This Wired article talks about why Netflix is raising its prices… for example, the 1 DVD + unlimited streaming plan will get 60% price hike.

"…We often make product decisions based on strategic alignment, partner requests or even legal..."

Sat, 02 Jul 2011 09:50:00 -0700

“

…We often make product decisions based on strategic alignment, partner requests or even legal advice — the end user doesn’t care. We simply have to admit that Apple is nailing this and it is one of the reasons they have people lining up overnight at stores around the world, and products sold out for months. These people aren’t hypnotized zombies, they simply love beautifully designed products that are user centric and work how they are supposed to work.

…25 million iPad users don’t care that it doesn’t have Flash or true multitasking, so why make that a focus in our campaigns? I’ll answer that for you: it’s because that’s all that differentiates our products and its lazy marketing. I’ve never seen someone buy product B because it has something product A doesn’t have. People buy product B because they want and lust after product B.

… BlackBerry smartphone apps suck. Even PlayBook, with all its glorious power, looks like a Fisher Price toy with its Adobe AIR/Flash apps.

Developing for BlackBerry is painful, and despite what you’ve been told, things haven’t really changed that much since Jamie Murai’s letter. Our SDK / development platform is like a rundown 1990′s Ford Explorer. Then there’s Apple, which has a shiny new BMW M3… just such a pleasure to drive. Developers want and need quality tools.

If we create great tools, we will see great work. Offer sh*t tools and we shouldn’t be surprised when we see sh*t apps.

”

- Select excerpts from RIM’s own anonymous version of peanut butter manifesto.

Are we in a tech bubble? The Economist just concluded an online...

Sun, 26 Jun 2011 13:57:05 -0700

Are we in a tech bubble? The Economist just concluded an online debate on the topic pitting two of my favorite and well-respected Silicon Valley men: Steve Blank vs. Ben Horowitz. My take: I believe a second Internet-driven boom is imminent, if not already underway, but it certainly doesn’t feel as bubbly as the last…

"For Microsoft, this is about more than just responding to the iPad. It’s the company’s..."

Sat, 18 Jun 2011 00:02:18 -0700

“

For Microsoft, this is about more than just responding to the iPad. It’s the company’s next computing paradigm, a change as fundamental as the transition from DOS to Windows. The thing that made the Windows transition work was that Microsoft protected the customers’ investment in old applications and data. You could keep using your old DOS applications while you gradually got used to Windows.

So users will have an interesting choice. Apple, with iOS, is making a clean break with the past. So are Chrome and Web OS. Microsoft is trying to cherry-pick the best of iOS and WebOS and Chrome, and wrap that into a product that’s also backward-compatible. Let’s see, cleaner design versus backward compatible…where have I seen that before? Oh yeah, Mac vs. Windows, 1990.

…Old Windows apps running inside Windows 8 do look awful. But so did DOS inside Windows 3.0, and that didn’t stop people from buying it.

”

- Said Michael Mace from Mobile Opportunity blog

The Contrast between Adobe and Salesforce.com's Product Line Expansion Strategy

Thu, 16 Jun 2011 05:51:48 -0700

James Governor wrote a nice post that I paraphrased below:

Geoff Moore said that while the last 30 years of business automation have been about creating Systems Of Record, the next years will be about creating Systems of Engagement: getting closer to employees, customers and partners, encouraging greater participation in company ecosystems… The key buyer for Systems of Engagement will likely be the Office of the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO).

He described how Adobe is positioning themselves as the “ERP for Marketing”, having grown from the creative/design side of the house to web analytics and now social media analytics.

If you look at their proposed offerings, they will all be marketed to the Marketing Department.

Contrast that to Salesforce.com, which started from selling sales force automation ~~software~~ SaaS marketed to Sales department. Rather than expanding their share of wallet within Sales, they moved into other departments, selling Service Cloud to Customer Support dept. and Chatter to typically Marketing or HR.

Interestingly, from my observation Sales typically has the the easier time justifying the purchase - especially compared to Marketing - since they can more easily track business impact of such investments. Different departments to sell into also require new account relationships to cultivate.

Will they build new offerings for Sales recruiting, training, compensation management, performance management etc. that revolve around salespeople, and perhaps even eCommerce to enable customer’s multi-channel sales strategy? We shall see…

"Blockbuster lost because its leaders couldn’t see beyond their retail rental business. ..."

Sun, 05 Jun 2011 00:46:00 -0700

“Blockbuster lost because its leaders couldn’t see beyond their retail rental business. Netflix defined its business as convenient content delivery, and recognized the need to evolve to remain competitive in a changing market. They saw the future and embraced it.”

- Quoted from a Stonebridge newsletter by Larry Gorkin. What business are you in?

Groupon filed for IPO today. This company is a rocket ship!!...

Thu, 02 Jun 2011 20:05:17 -0700

Groupon filed for IPO today. This company is a rocket ship!! Revenue grew from $30M to $713M within one year; their run rate must be over a billion dollars now.

While the idea of group buying service isn’t new - we first heard that in China as early as 2007 - Groupon’s true addressable market is the huge local advertising markets. Local businesses get real customer traffic from Groupon that they could never get before through other advertising means. With this line of thinking, Groupon’s valuation may not look too outrageous.

Scale is obviously key to this game, so Groupon is clearly focusing on acquiring as much subscribers ASAP, before more (and likely stronger, think Facebook, Amazon, Google) competitors gain foothold. That’s why cost of marketing was 37% of revenue in 2010, and salespeople make up half the workforce. Early snafus like the botched flower deal will be forgotten and forgiven. We’re in the “land grab” phase, simple as that.

Click on the graphic to see a waterfall of Groupon’s 2010 income statement.

On this day 16 years ago...Bill Gates predicted the future.

Thu, 26 May 2011 07:41:38 -0700

On this day 16 years ago...Bill Gates predicted the future. :

In his Internet Tidal Wave Memo.

Video

Sun, 02 Jan 2011 15:55:00 -0800

JWT: 100 Things to Watch in 2011

View more presentations from JWTIntelligence

"Free streaming services are clearly not net positive for the industry… and as far as Warner..."

Thu, 30 Dec 2010 22:29:42 -0800

““Free streaming services are clearly not net positive for the industry… and as far as Warner Music is concerned, it will not be licensed. So, this sort of ‘get all the music you want for free and then maybe we can—with a few bells and whistles—move you to a premium price’ strategy is not the kind of approach to business that we will be supporting in the future.””

- Said a skeptic Warner Music CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr. when asked about a deal with Spotify, a popular European freemium music-as-a-service that ironically may help solve piracy and save the industry. His model needs updating to account for: 1) new sales resulting from new music discoveries that inevitably occur in such large-scale free sharing, and 2) positive impact of reduced piracy as the service makes doing torrents not worth the inconvenience or risk.

"At a certain point in the process, no credit will be given for predicting rain. The only credit will..."

Tue, 28 Sep 2010 19:59:59 -0700

“At a certain point in the process, no credit will be given for predicting rain. The only credit will be for helping to build an ark.”

- Ben Horowitz

"You either grab the bull by the horns and get better at doing the stuff you want or you get better..."

Thu, 23 Sep 2010 20:57:32 -0700

“

You either grab the bull by the horns and get better at doing the stuff you want or you get better at putting stuff off and justifying why you suck.

But you’re always getting better at something.

”

- Jeremy Schoemaker

"Not many people remember now, but there was a time when even the idea of Xbox LIVE was extremely..."

Thu, 16 Sep 2010 19:31:49 -0700

“Not many people remember now, but there was a time when even the idea of Xbox LIVE was extremely controversial. We got… robust, shall we say, feedback on a variety of subjects. I remember folks insisting that voice would never be desired from the console audience, or that this whole crazy digital content download Marketplace thing would never take off. And of course, quite a few folks struggled to believe that Xbox LIVE would be a service that people would be willing to pay for. 25 million+ members later I think that debate has finally been put to rest.”

- Andre Vrignaud’s experience in trying to build and evangelize something new to a skeptical status quo community resonates with me very much today.

As quoted by the Economist: “China and India were the...

Mon, 23 Aug 2010 21:57:57 -0700

As quoted by the Economist: “China and India were the biggest economies in the world for almost all of the past 2000 years. Why they fell so far behind may be more of a mystery than why they are currently flourishing.”

Check out this cool animated video from Dan Pink. The gist:...

Tue, 01 Jun 2010 18:17:00 -0700

Check out this cool animated video from Dan Pink. The gist: “First take the money issue off the table, then motivate by giving autonomy, purpose, and pursuit of mastery. Stop treating people like horses (or rabbits).” If you haven’t seen Dan Pink’s Ted Talk, watch it here.

"If you think of management as a systems problem where your task is to design and maintain a system..."

Mon, 31 May 2010 14:22:24 -0700

“

If you think of management as a systems problem where your task is to design and maintain a system where it’s a) easy to get meaningful work done and b) is fun to work in and c) you will be recognized for your good work, then the relevant experiences for management are to a) work in a company and find out why it’s hard to get things done or b) run a company and carefully observe how you are screwing it up.

If you think that you know what you are doing without these experiences, you are likely delusional and would have been better off just drinking beer rather than getting an MBA and drinking beer.

”

- From Ben Horotwitz’s blog, an old post about whether getting an MBA makes someone a better entrepreneur.

Enterprise Apps User Interface – the wrong discussion

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 22:29:17 -0800

Enterprise Apps User Interface – the wrong discussion:

Can we learn from game UX design? How come gamers can intuitively figure out how to play?