The Exit Trap

exitI was with a friend recently who has a pretty exciting Internet startup company. He has raised some money and might raise more, his product is in beta and it’s good. It solves a difficult technical problem many companies are struggling with. We argued a little over the name of the product. Of course I thought my suggested name was better or certainly cleverer, but then he said, “It doesn’t matter because we’ll probably sell the company before the product ever ships. It may never appear at all.”

His company will exit almost before it enters. This is happening a lot lately and we generally think it is a good thing but it’s not.

If, like me, […]

By |May 7th, 2013|2013, Companies, Entrepreneurship, Industry, Startups, Venture Capital|52 Comments
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Amazon.com isn’t killing Best Buy: blame Best Buy IT

BBclosingBest Buy is in trouble you know. It’s in the news all the time. I wrote a big column about it myself last year. Same store sales have suffered, corporate employees are being laid off, the big U.S. electronics retailer is pulling out of Europe. Best Buy management is in turmoil. The founder leaves in a huff, then tries and fails to take the company private, and is now making nice-nice with the same management he previously reviled. There’s a new head of stores (I wish him well) who thinks the answer is price matching, better sales training and paying workers to sell more stuff, which sounds like commissions […]

By |May 2nd, 2013|2013, Companies, Cringely's Rules, Outsourcing|62 Comments
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Things are looking up for Google Glass

GoogleGlassRemember when Bluetooth phone headsets came along and suddenly there were all these people loudly talking to themselves in public? Schizoid behavior became, if not cool, at least somewhat tolerable. Well expect the same experience now that Google Glass is hitting the street, because contrary to nearly any picture you can find of the thing, when you actually use it most of your time is spent looking up and to the right, where the data is. I call it the Google Gaze.

Only time will tell how traffic courts will come to view Google Glass, but having finally tried one I suspect it may end up on that list of things we’re supposed to drive without.

Another suspicion […]

By |April 30th, 2013|2013, Breaking News, Gadgets, Internet, Media, Phones|36 Comments
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How American Airlines lost its computer

invertedAAlogoThis is not a big story, but I find it interesting. Last week American Airlines had its reservations computer system — called SABRE — go offline for most of a day leading to the cancellation of more than 700 flights. Details are still sketchy (here’s American’s video apology) but this is beginning to look like a classic example of a system that became too integrated and a company that was too dependent on a single technology.

To be clear, according to American the SABRE system did not itself fail, what failed was the airline’s access to its own system — a networking problem. And for further clarification, American no longer owns SABRE, […]

By |April 29th, 2013|2013, Companies, Computing|23 Comments
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Two H-1B’s walk into a bar: more on the visa scam

$10000There’s an old joke in which a man asks a woman if she’ll spend the night with him for $1 million? She will. Then he asks if she’ll spend the night with him for $10?

“Do you think I’m a prostitute?” she asks.

“We’ve already established that,” he replied. “This is just a price negotiation.”

Not a great joke, but it came to mind recently when a reader pointed me to a panel discussion last September at the Brookings Institution ironically about STEM education and the shortage of qualified IT workers. Watch the video if you can, especially the part where Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith offers to pay the government $10,000 each for up to […]

By |April 25th, 2013|2013, Business, Economy, Industry, Outsourcing, Politics|73 Comments
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