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Platform Giants and Venture-Backed Startups
Since 2015, first VC financings have declined by up to 25% to 40% annually for startups operating in sectors exposed to the core activities of Google, Facebook, and Amazon. Why are companies that follow these big companies not attracting big money anymore? A friend recently pointed me to a July study by Oliver Wyman titled Assessing […]
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AI Continues To Move Into Mainstream
Here are some of the AI related topics we are tracking: Facebook is buying UK’s Bloomsbury AI to ramp up natural language tech in London Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook is trying hard to become transparent after the Cambridge Analytica data breach scandal. It took another step in that direction by deciding to buy London-based natural language processing […]
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In the Battle of the Brands, Google Beats Apple
Google, Twitter, Amazon, IBM, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft. Just because they’re all tech companies does not mean they look the same, act the same, or attract the same users. Google sells ads, while Apple sells iProducts, while Amazon sells everything else. But one universal feature of these companies is the value of their brands – and […]
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Facebook Bets on Virtual Reality: Purchases VR firm Oculus
Tuesday, Facebook announced its plans to acquire Oculus VR for $2 billion. If you haven’t heard of it, Oculus VR is a virtual reality startup out of Irvine, CA. Its mission? – to produce “immersive virtual reality technology that’s wearable and affordable.” Starting on Kickstarter in June 2012, Oculus quickly raised millions from backers and […]
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MegaTrend Update: Dramatic and broad shifts in models due to software ("software eats the world")
We have been tracking this since Marc Andreessen called the trend out in 2011 (see “Why Software is Eating the World“) and are especially interested in how the trend will impact the world of the enterprise. We think this trend will continue, since it is being fed by growing proliferation of smart phones with increasingly […]
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The Mobile Internet: You won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is
Every year Mary Meeker does the tech and business community a great service by researching, analyzing and reporting on the State of the Internet. Her latest presentation is embedded below in slideshare format and is also available at this link. KPCB Internet Trends 2013 from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers This is well worth […]
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Social Media and Extremism: Sideshow or Center Stage?
On Twitter, Mike Olson of Cloudera asked me and Alex Olesker what we thought about the use of social media in the latest dustup between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. He linked me to an article taking a broader look at the role of social media in terrorism and extremism. The following is some thoughts […]
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What Does It Mean to Disconnect?
Are we too connected to our gadgets? Many journalists and social thinkers seem to think so. Are we all too fixated on emailing, tweeting, just plain staring at our screens to participate in the world around us? The answer may be more complex than that, but you won’t find it in posts like this recent […]
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Building a Network
In my last post I clarified that a personal network is what is being discussed in my blogs. However, there are many similarities between a functioning of a human network and a computer network. In this post we’ll discuss how to build your own strategic network. To build an effective network, you should have a […]
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Bug Bounty Programs : Encourage Responsible Disclosure
The idea that you might pay someone else to keep quiet a vulnerability while you fix it may seem a bit backward to some in computer security. It would also seem to invite attacks on infrastructure. It’s no surprise, then, that many companies with technological products don’t have bug bounties. A bug bounty is a […]