Category: Big Picture
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2014 — The Year of Technology Backlash?
This past year, we learned that just about every device we own can be, or already has been rooted by others, and just about anything we do on-line is being recorded and kept around for years. Our movements are recorded, and our (intentional or accidential) fellow travelers. And something as simple as visiting a website…
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Personal data is difficult even when baking Christmas cookies
When talking about personal data, usually it all sounds very noble and sophisticated. The use cases are advanced and complex. But the problem definitely is real and difficult to solve for even the most mundane situations. Case in point: baking Christmas cookies. We have a new recipe we found on-line for Lemon Cookies. Let’s say…
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There are only Three Base Business Models
[Updated 2014-01-05: for completeness reasons, here are two more categories: 4) robbing people, and 5) taking advantage of people. In my book, they don’t qualify as “business” models because they are borderline or actually criminal, but they do exist.] If you put all business models into the following three buckets, suddenly all sorts of things…
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The “we-pretend-its-free-and-sell-you-out-behind-your-back-Web2.0-business model”
Silicon Valley goes through those phases. They are long enough that somehow, everybody seems to have forgotten that they are just the flavor du jour and will pass just like platform shoes and Milli Vanilli. For the past ten years, all that anybody can conceive of doing in startup land is this: we build a…
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Peak cloud
Yesterday, Bill Gurley tweeted: It is clear that US tech companies are about to suffer from NSA activity. Politics aside, this is really, really bad for Silicon Valley. He’s of course correct. It’s been a wonderful surprise for lots of non-US companies who suddenly have a rather compelling argument to make against their US-based competitors.…