What’s strategic for Google?

2009-12-30

Google seems to be releasing or acquiring new products almost daily. It’s one thing for a couple of programmers to hack together a side…

What’s the right amount of seed money to raise?

2009-12-28

Short answer:  enough to get your startup to an accretive milestone plus some fudge factor. “Accretive milestone” is a fancy way of saying…

Are people more willing to pay for digital goods on mobile devices?

2009-12-27

Mary Meeker’s [ ](images/screen-shot-2009-12-27-at-11-51-18-am.png) The assertion seems to be that there is something special about the…

Why the web economy will continue growing rapidly

2009-12-26

Here’s the really good news for the web economy over the next decade.  Consumers are spending more and more time online, yet only about 1…

Google should open source what actually matters: their search ranking algorithm

2009-12-22

Websites live or die based on how a small group of programmers at Google decide their sites should rank in Google’s main search results.  As…

Anatomy of a bad search result

2009-12-19

In a post last week, Paul Kedrosky noted his frustration when looking for a new dishwasher using Google.  I thought it might be interesting…

Google’s feature creep

2009-12-17

Microsoft used to be considered the king of feature creep.  Here was Microsoft Word when it was most cluttered: I don’t use any of…

Search and the social graph

2009-12-14

Google has created a multibillion-dollar economy based on keywords.  We use keywords to find things and advertisers use keywords to find…

Why did Skype succeed and Joost fail?

2009-12-08

Skype and Joost are interesting companies to compare – they are about as close as you can get to one of those sociological studies that…

Does a VC’s brand matter?

2009-12-05

Suppose you are in the enviable position of choosing between offers from multiple VC firms.  How much should you weigh the brand of the VCs…