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Arcade Fire meets HTML5
Insights from Googlers into our products, technology, and the Google culture
How a startup should leverage a personal assistant
People are shocked when they hear I've been able to pull off the use of virtual assistants in startups, and excited at the thought that they might be able to do the same. The conversation almost always turns to questions about where to find virtual assistants and how a startup can use one.
What A CEO Does
I am posting this as a MBA Mondays post. But I did not learn this little lesson at business school. I learned it from a very experienced venture capitalist early in my post-MBA career. I was working on a CEO search for one of our struggling portfolio comapnies. We had a bunch of them. I […]
The Tragic Death of Practically Everything
Wired Editor in Chief Chris Anderson is catching flak for the magazine's current cover story, which declares that the Web is dead. I'm not sure what the controversy is. For years, once-vibrant technologies, products, and companies have been dropping like teenagers in a Freddy Krueger movie. Thank he
Backblaze online backup almost acquired
Get all of the latest cloud storage news and insights from Backblaze - the leading independent cloud storage provider.
Call phones from Gmail
Insights from Googlers into our products, technology, and the Google culture
What non-technical users don’t understand about your software
If you are writing consumer software you have to understand that you and your average user have a very different level of understanding of computers. When you first start doing support it can be a …
How Authors Really Make Money: The Rebirth of Seth Godin
What do the economics of publishing look like… really? (Photo: thinkpanama) (Special thanks to my agent, Steve Hanselman, and my anonymous sources within the world’s biggest publishing houses) Print is dead! This has become a popular headline, and a great way to get quoted, as Nicholas Negroponte has shown. Iconic…
How to Minimize Politics in Your Company
Ben Horowitz is a cofounder and general partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. He is the author of the New York Times bestsellers, The
Apple seeking to patent spyware
It looks like Apple, Inc., is exploring a new business opportunity: spyware and what we're calling "traitorware." While users were celebrating the new jailbreaking and unlocking exemptions, Apple was quietly preparing to apply for a patent on technology that, among other things, would allow Apple...
Homeless Experiment
On Thursday June 4 th of 2009 I left the comforts of my home in Austin, TX. with no food, no money and no place to stay for 5 days and 4 nights. I did this voluntarily as a small experiment to see what it was like to live on the streets of Austin, TX.
No, You can't retire rich at 30 if you sell your startup
I personally find the people who are in the software startup game just for the money to often be nearly delusional about their chances of success and the likely magnitude of it when it happens. Before I get into the details for founders, let me talk about options-hungry employees. If you are in it for the money and…
The right way to position against competition
Most startup founders either claim there is no competition (because they're soooo unique) or define themselves as a combination of the best traits of their competitors. Neither is a good strategy; here's what to do instead.
The Stock Market Is Still for Suckers
I wrote a whole series of articles warning people about the stock market over the years. You can see them here . It’s gotten worse. So I thought i would write some more about why you should probably avoid putting any new money into the stock market…
The Bowling Pin strategy
programming, philosophy, history, internet, startups
Daring Fireball: Creep Executive Officer
More and more, I get the feeling that if there’s a rift between the old “Don’t be evil” Google and the new “Let’s do whatever we want” Google, that it’s a rift between Schmidt and Larry/Sergey.
Why Free Plans Don’t Work
The following is a guest article by Ruben Gamez of Bidsketch . Not too long ago it seemed like every product I knew was offering some sort of free plan. The strategy was brilliant: get loads of people using your product and eventually turn them into paying customers. Everywhere I looked the