I 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, […]
Earlier this year I wrote a 
The Mel Brooks movie, then Broadway musical, then a movie of a Broadway musical The Producers are the only such dramatic works I know of that were based primarily on a business model. The plot is a simple scam in three acts: 1) most Broadway musicals fail; 2) greedy investors in Broadway shows want a lot of equity for a little money, and; 3) since the show is likely to fail anyway, why not produce a deliberate turkey but make money (strictly for the producers) by selling 500 percent of the stock? Nobody will know they’ve been scammed because a deliberate failure will never pay any royalties. Except, of course, Springtime for Hitler was an unlikely […]
Headed this week to the Grand Canyon in our old Winnebago RV (now minus mice, we think) Mary Alyce, the boys and I stopped outside Kingman, Arizona at this place, 
