Archives / June, 2007

Peripheral vision

One of the great challenges of business in general and smaller, fast growing businesses in particular is figuring out the balance between near term focus and long term vision.  While all companies become slaves to the calendar (striving for quarterly sales targets, specific product release dates, etc.) too many never look up to see where they are really headed.  I’m not talking about making sure you have the latest IDC report on your industry on your bedstand, I’m talking about having a meaningful understanding of your business, you competitors and spending real time focusing on how and where you are going to take your company. The typical paradigm for this is wrong, in my estimation – and most companies that…

Random ramblings

A few things that individually aren’t a full post but that I wanted to point out. First – there are a lot of idiots on the internet – at least 409 of them (the fact that this number matches the most annoying accounting/tax regulation is pure coincidence, I’m sure…). Second – My dad’s take on my assessment of the patent situation (including where he disagrees with me – thanks for reading dad!). Third – A post from Rich McIver on VC presentations which underscores many of the points I’ve made in post on the same subject (here and here) Finally, a few tidbits from a report from The Nomura Research Institute on worldwide voice vs. data mobile usage (sorry –…

The start-up office revisited

A little while back I wrote a post on how much I love start-up office space.  It’s messy, it’s small, it might not have a window and it might smell a little bit funny, but it’s the best office space you’ll ever have.  I received a bunch of emails, comments and pictures from people with whom the post resonated. I really liked the following picture sent to me by Darrin Husmann who has a start-up company making intelligent irrigation systems with offices in both Oklahoma City and Baghdad ("Strange how war can bring two people from across the world together to work on sprinklers, eh?").  Here’s the note from Darrin that describes the pic:  Here is what the inside of…

Patent sanity

Brad has a nice series running on patents which I’ve enjoyed a lot (I think the existing patent system is completely hosed, totally ineffective and open to blatant abuses of power – see this post from Jason for the perfect example). Well today, there’s a glimmer of hope that change may be on the way as the administration and it’s head patent policeman Jon Dudas announced the intent (note the gap between intent and action, but at least it’s a first step) to reform the patent system. While I generally like the idea of requiring patent filers to include more information on why their invention is ‘novel’ the gem for me in today’s announcement is the idea of opening up…