The KickStarter Paradox

Among the great business innovations of the Internet era are KickStarter and the many similar crowdfunding sites like IndieGoGo. You know how these work: someone wants to introduce a new gizmo or make a film but can only do so if you and I pay in advance with our only rewards being a possible discount on the gizmo or DVD. Oh, and a t-shirt. Never before was there a way to get people — sometimes thousands of people — to pay for stuff not only before it was built but often before the inventors even knew how to build it. From the Pebble smart watch to Veronica Mars, crowdfunding […]

By |May 13th, 2015|2015, Entrepreneurship, Family, Industry, Internet, Media, Startups, Television|61 Comments
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Remembering Y2K

Tonight marks the 10th anniversary of Y2K, so I’m using it as an excuse to look back at lessons learned and not learned from that experience. The greatest lessons had to do with psychology, not technology.

Y2K was no surprise to me. I wrote a chapter on it in my book Accidental Empires back in 1991 — fully nine years before the actual deadline. To my knowledge that was the first in-depth explanation of Y2K in the mass media. I explained how the problem came to be, how it could be solved, and predicted that doing so would cost a lot of money and force a transition on […]

By |December 31st, 2009|2009|152 Comments
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