This idea now feels so obvious to me that I almost didn’t bother to write it down. But I keep having conversations with entrepreneurs who aren’t yet using the pattern and their eyes always light up when they see a way to apply it to their own business, so if this post turns on the continue…
I’m not yet sure what to make of the iPad, and have been asking my journalist, developer, marketer and investor friends what they think of the device to try to get my head wrapped around it. The thesis that keeps popping into my head looks something like this: The iPad is designed to be the continue…
I picked up an interesting factoid this week from AppStoreHQ – a Founder’s Co-op portfolio company that offers iPhone app search, discovery and social recommendations. In addition to their consumer-facing site, the company also owns and operates iPhoneDevSDK, the leading independent community site for iPhone developers. iPhoneDevSDK has over 20,000 registered members, but also picks continue…
Twitter is a mind-blowingly huge platform for sharing personal opinion. John Borthwick recently shared some stats about the Twitter ecosystem that give a rough sense for the sheer velocity: Twitter: Jan 11th was the highest usage day ever (source: @ev via techcrunch) Tweetdeck: did 4,143,687 updates on Jan 8, yep 4m. Or, 48 per second continue…
Earlier this week, AppStoreHQ released Hottest Apps on Twitter, a ranking of iPhone apps based on the volume and quality of tweets about each app (if you’re curious, you can read more about the ranking methodology here). The project was a fun one for several reasons, but the biggest eye-opener was the sheer volume of continue…
Today we’re proud to announce a new member of the Founders Co-op family: Nearlyweds! In business since 2007, Nearlyweds! provides personal wedding websites for design-conscious couples. In a market littered with generic free offerings, Nearlyweds! has built a great premium business by focusing on the user experience, partnering with top invitation designers in the industry continue…
Andy and I spend a good amount of time talking about startup ideas we’d like to see at Founders Co-op. Sometimes we get so excited about an idea we start it ourselves, but that’s not something we can do every day. So I was inspired the other day to hear that Y Combinator had initiated continue…
I’ve spent more time on planes than usual lately, which means I’ve actually had time to read something more than my inbox, feed reader and streaming-sources-of-distraction. Two recent reads worth mentioning for this audience are: Small Giants: Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big (Bo Burlingham) This book did nice job of articulating continue…
Back in April I wrote up some parallels I was seeing between the current iPhone app explosion and the first big wave of mass adoption of the Web. One of the patterns I predicted at the time was a building rush of incumbent companies coming into the space: “Brands Rush In. In the late ’90s continue…
One of the most accurate business cliches I know of is this one: “success is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.” Most good entrepreneurs come up with new business ideas constantly, but also know from experience that those ideas have no value if they aren’t backed up with commitment, sustained effort and constant adaptation to market continue…