“Aggregators show how much better you can do than the channel. The New York Times front page is a list of articles written by people who work for the New York Times. Delicious is a list of articles that are interesting. And it’s only now that you can see the two side by side that you notice how little overlap there is.”Paul Graham on what business can learn from open source.
“Another acquaintance told me this story. He has a son about 8 years old. They were talking about the old days, and the fact that when my friend was growing up they did not have computers. This fact was perplexing news to his son. His son asks, “But how did you get onto the internet before computers?”KK on being Born Digital.
Being legen - wait for it - dary.
“Data trades inversely to liquidity.Beyond the empirical sciences of revenue optimization, behavioral targeting, customer segmentation and the discovery of on-line arbitrage there lies a need for basic research that develops fundamental models for understanding the environment in which a firm operates and how to question the unknown.
This type of science is closer to applied sociology or experimental physics than the tradition of ponderous economics in that it is driven by and dependant on the immense mass of data that new businesses are generating.
”
In swedish, but so good it might be worth learning the language. Or use Google Translate magic. Whatevva.
“The Media is the Message” är en av reklambranschens mest slitna klyschor. Den myntades av en författare och tänkare som hette Marshall McLuhan. Han är död nu. Men redan under hans livstid började mediamänniskor som ville vara slagkraftiga slarva runt rätt friskt med hans teorier, som ofta var…
A great example of the camera’s potential to push mainstream interaction even further, beyond touch. Will be really interesting to see what combinations of tracking eye, facial expressions, head movements, hand gestures and touch that we’ll end up find intuitive.
Naturally, being a big proponent of direct observation as opposed to surveys and focus group, my mind completely explodes when considering about the advertising analytical potential of this data set :)
A good day according to Benjamin Franklin
Pepsi vs Coca-Cola
Brief history of title design
(Source: hampshiremedia, via driftingfocus)
Seed and early stage fundraising on the fringes
So I was interviewed by a newspaper the other day (waiting for the article to see how misquoted I get) on seed and early stage fundraising in the Nordics, but it might as well have been “anywhere except for the US”.
There’s a misconception that fundraising is a simple binary issue, in the sense that either you get funded or you don’t. And that in markets (such as the Nordics) where there is little access to capital, the consequence is that many great ideas don’t get any money.
However, the challenge in the Nordics and similar markets isn’t that you don’t get funded (you’re any good you will, eventually) but that it takes way longer, making it hard to execute at the speed required to compete in certain product categories or customer segments, where competition has quicker access to capital (for instance, by being based in downtown Palo Alto).
This is sometimes interpreted that investors in these markets lack vision, are too risk averse or plain ignorant. Not true, at least if Nordic investors are anything to go by. All things equal, they’re just smart (or in some cases, not smart) as their US counter parts.
What they lack isn’t brains or balls, but competition. In a hyper competitive market as NYC or SV you have to act fast to get the deal. Whereas in the Nordics, where an ambitious startup only has a handful of firms to choose from (and angel investing is pretty much non-existing), you can take your time.
Anyone that has raised money will tell you that competition for the deal is what makes deals happen. And when there is none, pretty much nothing happens (unless you run out of money and are forced to accept a shitty deal haha).
Again, this is perfectly rational behavior. If you’re an investor, looking at a company that is 10 months old, stalling the investment by a couple of months gives you double digit increases in data that allows you to reduce risk.
So while it’s tempting to whine on the few players that actually do invest in these markets, what we should do is to figure out how we can get more players to join the game.
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