Having been in the workforce now for a while, I can tell you that this is excellent advice. Famous physicist Freeman Dyson has it down: Advice to people at the beginning of their careers: do not imagine that you have to know everything before you can do anything. My own best work was done when [...]
The Devil’s in the Details – Frictionless Checkout
Recently I’ve become a fan of Lot18, a flash sale site for wine lovers, which works much like Gilt Groupe for wine. Like Gilt, they offer quality products at a discount to standard retail, and their site features rich descriptions and photos. They’ve also taken advantage of some best practices in flash sales, including: Daily [...]
Uber Bummed
The good, hard working folks over at Uber just sent out an email to some of their best and earliest users to inform them that the 15% FoundersCard discount select customers have been enjoying is being phased out. For those unfamiliar with FoundersCard, it offers founder-types and entrepreneurs select deals on everything from travel to [...]
Less is More
The most recent SF Beta this week was very popular. In fact, it was so popular that the venue was packed to the gills and made it quite difficult to move around or talk to anyone. Apparently, lots of people complained to Christian Perry, the organizer, and he sent a very nice email apologizing for [...]
Clipper Card Website and Autoload Fail
Leave it to the government to take an otherwise brilliant idea and disfigure it so badly that it makes you want to just put it out of its misery. If it’s true that a camel is a horse designed by committee, then the Clipper Card is the three-legged, syphilitic camel of public transportation payment systems. Clipper Card [...]
The Holy Grail of Mobile Payments
Long before Foursquare or even Dodgeball was a gleam in Dennis Crowley’s eye, there existed a number of real-time, location-based networks that dwarfed Foursquare in size. They continue to thrive today. Who are they, you ask? Why none other than
Tell Me Where You Spend Your Time, And I’ll Predict Your Next Purchase
Om Malik wrote an interesting piece yesterday on where he sees the future of social commerce moving. In a nutshell, he says that the first phase of e-commerce was fairly utilitarian and started with staples (Diapers.com, Amazon.com, etc.). E-commerce then moved to recreational shopping (Gilt Groupe, Groupon, etc.), which made it more fun and social. [...]
Paying Real Money for Branded Virtual Goods
I was having an interesting conversation the other day with a friend who’s creating a platform for game developers to add brands to a game. They’re building some really cool tech around the idea, not unlike AdWords/AdSense for virtual goods or in-game achievements, both for social and more traditional console games. I think it’s quite [...]
Tethered Thunderbolt Faster Than My Office DSL
I love my new Thunderbolt Android phone on Verizon’s network. It’s a battery hog, but I’ve managed to tease out almost a full day’s usage with judicious battery management. The best thing, though, is Verizon’s 4G LTE network, which kicks ass. I just moved into new office space in downtown SF, and we have AT&T’s [...]
Freemium vs. Paid Models – How to know which one makes sense
Very good article about a formula that actually lets you determine whether a freemium or paid model is right for your business. With this in mind, Mullany’s equation for freemium businesses looks like this: Price Paid by Premium User – Cost of Proving the Service to the Premium User – [ (1/Ratio of Premium:Free Users) [...]
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