Since last fall’s economic downturn, dozens of pundits of various stripes have announced the death of venture capital as an asset class. And it’s true (as Paul Kedrosky and the Kauffman Foundation have convincingly argued) that the class is grossly overcapitalized and will have to shrink radically to produce the kinds of returns investors rightfully continue…
Last week Ian reminded me about Joel Spolsky’s famous blog post on “Fire and Motion” – here’s a key excerpt: “When I was an Israeli paratrooper a general stopped by to give us a little speech about strategy. In infantry battles, he told us, there is only one strategy: Fire and Motion. You move towards continue…
A few years back I proposed (and only partly in jest) a “Hippocratic oath for business.” This morning I read in the New York Times that a group of students at Harvard Business School had publicly made a similar pledge. I don’t really expect this to sweep the business world by storm, but I applaud continue…
A while back I made a prediction that 2009 would be a breakout year for Google’s Android project. With the mid-year mark approaching and no new devices shipped that bet was looking a little shaky, but today’s announcements from the Google I/O conference put a little more weight behind my bullish view (phew). There’s been continue…
“In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.” – Anonymous We just shipped a major upgrade to our search and browse functions at AppStoreHQ. It sounds crazy to say it, but as far as we can tell we now offer hands-down the most useful iPhone app discovery experience on the Web (not continue…
The guys at Madrona invited me to present the results of our iPhone developer survey on app marketing at a lunch today (thanks again, guys). Lots of great commentary & feedback in the session, and I promised to put the whole thing online… If you’re reading this in a feed reader and can’t see the continue…
Ian and I have been having a ton of fun with AppStoreHQ – our mobile web app + developer discovery engine. We haven’t been at it all that long, and at the moment it’s just the two of us. But the other day we were reviewing our roadmap and backlog (which we track on two continue…
Find iPhone apps at AppStoreHQTwo-thirds of the Urbanspoon team dropped by Founders Co-op for our weekly all-hands lunch this week, fresh on the heels of their acquisition by IAC. They shared the story of their journey from struggling Facebook app developer to iPhone app superstars, including some of the best (and worst) decisions they made continue…
As a die-hard music fan, I love The Hype Machine. For those that don’t know it, The Hype Machine indexes the most influential music bloggers to identify which artists and songs are currently being discussed the most, and it’s an amazing way to discover new music by tapping into the zeitgeist of some of the continue…
My kids were restless last night, which means I spent a decent chunk of the night half-awake. As I was falling back asleep for the fourth time an idea popped into my head for an iPhone app that I have no intention of building, but that I think might actually sell. Here’s how it came continue…