Last week I wrote about a small investment Founders Co-op had made in Array Health Solutions, a Seattle company that helps small employers control the spiraling cost of health benefits. This morning I unfolded my New York Times to find a front-page article on the very problem Array was created to solve. The story, titled continue…
At 15%+ of U.S. GDP, it’s impossible to ignore health care as a vector for investment. By all accounts the system is badly broken, which should create myriad opportunities for nimble startups to find and exploit inefficiencies. But the sheer size and complexity of the system, not to mention the thicket of state and federal continue…
Longtime readers will remember Askablogr, a blog Q&A widget I created with my friend Craig as an experiment in late 2007. I just realized that Wednesday was the product’s 1-year birthday, so here’s a brief update for anyone who’s been wondering what happened since I stopped paying attention. Members: 701Questions: 1,220PageRank: 4Alexa Rank: 785,941Visits: 12,382Page continue…
I’ve been looking for a good holiday read and today Om Malik offered a book suggestion that’s right up my alley: “Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-By-Numbers is the New Way to be Smart“. In the post, he also cites a handful of what he calls “data-centric” companies – including Summize, Glassdoor and Panjiva – as examples continue…
There’s not much to go on, but early reports about the new EMC spinoff Decho offer an exciting glimpse into one possible future for personal data mining. Formed by the combination of cloud-based backup provider Mozy and another EMC acquisition called Pi, the new firm plans to offer API-based access to your cloud-based store of continue…
One of the first things we look for in an investment opportunity is a unique insight about how to secure low-cost distribution for the idea. Absent that insight, even the most compelling software execution can languish in obscurity; if it’s present, the resulting momentum can turn a good idea into a category killer by giving continue…
Om Malik has a great post up today titled “Why Windows Mobile is in Trouble.” In it, he cites a recent Gartner study on smartphone market share that helps put the iPhone phenomenon in perspective, and also shines a light on prospects for Blackberry’s much anticipated Storm model. As the table below indicates, worldwide iPhone continue…
Last week I came across (via Mashable) an interesting new entrant in the emerging category of Personal Relationship Management software: SocialMinder. They describe themselves as “an online assistant that helps you maintain relationships with your LinkedIn network,” and at the moment it’s a reasonably accurate description, but I think it understates the real potential of continue…
I’ve been messing around with email/communications ideas for a little while now, and one of the threads I’ve been tugging on lately is the concept of “ambient” social interactions, exchanges that take place in the context of other online activities (as opposed to in the inbox / IM window). There are lots of interesting ideas continue…
No matter what business they’re in, the first and hardest problem for any early-stage Web company is distribution. Everything else about doing business online gets cheaper and easier every day, but with an ever-accelerating proliferation of new sites and services, it only becomes more difficult for each new offering to acquire an audience of loyal continue…