COVID-19 will Kill a Ton of Startups (or So it Will Seem)

Yes, I’m still predicting-away, though the pandemic is having some impact on the direction in which this narrative is going. Today’s column on startups and venture capital, for example, wasn’t even on my original list of predictions. Just as the financial markets will use this catastrophe for a reset, so, too, will Sand Hill Road, which has pretty much stopped investing and is now deciding, instead, who to kill?

The psychology of venture capital doesn’t work the way most people think. That’s because it is an industry based on failure: most startups — the vast majority — fail. That means most VC investment decisions are wrong. There is simply no way of […]

By |March 25th, 2020|2020, Predictions, Startups, strategy, Venture Capital|29 Comments
Read More

Apple knows 5G is about infrastructure, NOT mobile phones

With Apple shares down more than 20 percent from their all-time highs of only a few weeks ago, writers are piling-on about what’s wrong in Cupertino. But sometimes writers looking for a story don’t fully understand what they are talking about. And that seems to me to be the case with complaints that Apple is too far behind in adopting 5G networking technology in future iPhones. For all the legitimate stories about how Apple should have done this or that, 5G doesn’t belong on the list. And that’s because 5G isn’t really about mobile phones at all.

Just to get this out of the way, I see Apple […]

By |November 21st, 2018|2018, competition, mobile technology, strategy, Technology, Television|148 Comments
Read More

Red Hat takes over IBM

So IBM is buying Red Hat (home of the largest Enterprise Linux distribution) for $34 billion and readers want to know what I think of the deal. Well, if I made a list of acquisitions and things to do to save IBM, buying Red Hat would have been very close to the top of that list.  They should have bought Red Hat 10 years ago when the stock market was in the gutter. 

Jumping the gun a bit, I have to say the bigger question is really which company’s culture will ultimately dominate? I’m hoping it’s Red Hat.

The deal is a good fit for many reasons explained below. And […]

By |October 29th, 2018|2018, Business, Companies, strategy|130 Comments
Read More

IT is urbanizing, McDonald’s gets it, but Woonsocket doesn’t (yet)

My favorite UK TV producer once had to sell his house in Wimbledon and move to an apartment in Central London just to get his two adult sons to finally leave home. Now something similar seems to be happening in American IT. Some people are calling it age discrimination. I’m not sure I’d go that far, but the strategy is clear: IT is urbanizing — moving to city centers where the labor force is perceived as being younger and more agile.

The poster child for this tactic is McDonald’s, based for 47 years in Oak Brook, Illinois, but just this summer moved to a new Intergalactic HQ downtown in […]

By |August 8th, 2018|2018, cloud computing, Industry, Product Development, strategy, Uncategorized|59 Comments
Read More

Amazon is Becoming the New Microsoft

Sorry for again having taken too long to return to work. Or in this case the better term might be to recover.  Eye surgery on November 2nd did not go well so I am still blind. In fact blinder than ever. We’ll try again on November 27th after I’m fully recovered from a drug side effect that nearly killed me. But I’m not dead yet!

My last column was about the recent tipping point signifying that cloud computing is guaranteed to replace personal computing over the next three years. This column is about the slugfest to determine what company’s public cloud is most likely to prevail. I reckon it […]

By |November 17th, 2017|2017, cloud computing, Companies, strategy, Uncategorized|53 Comments
Read More