Last Tech Tuesday I wrote about how engineering led companies sometimes underrate the importance of marketing and sales. One of the comments on Twitter pointed out that the converse is also often true and I replied that I will write a post about that, so here it goes. Many companies founded by a pure business team tend to struggle with technology and fail to deliver the products or services they envision. There are at least three distinct failure modes that I have seen here over time. The fir...

Last Tech Tuesday I wrote about how engineering led companies sometimes underrate the importance of marketing and sales. One of the comments on Twitter pointed out that the converse is also often true and I replied that I will write a post about that, so here it goes. Many companies founded by a pure business team tend to struggle with technology and fail to deliver the products or services they envision. There are at least three distinct failure modes that I have seen here over time. The fir...

Today’s Tech Tuesday is a relatively short note on the “Bleeding Edge” – technologies that are even beyond the cutting edge. Every technology tends to start life at the bleeding edge with early releases that are unstable and poorly tested, many different ways of doing something (instead of an agreed upon best way) and with upgrades that are not backward compatible. It is tempting for startups to embrace bleeding edge technology for several reasons: first, you are starting from scratch, so why...

Today’s Tech Tuesday is a relatively short note on the “Bleeding Edge” – technologies that are even beyond the cutting edge. Every technology tends to start life at the bleeding edge with early releases that are unstable and poorly tested, many different ways of doing something (instead of an agreed upon best way) and with upgrades that are not backward compatible. It is tempting for startups to embrace bleeding edge technology for several reasons: first, you are starting from scratch, so why...

Last week I posted a draft outline for my planned book on “The Coming Information Age” with a proposed chapter on the “Unbundling of the Job.” This is an idea that first occurred to me when I attended a workshop at MIT on Work and Value in the Digital Economy at MIT in late 2012. At the time here is what I wrote:Do people need jobs or can we deliver what jobs provide some other way and in a potentially unbundled fashion? The “jobs of a job” include income, structure, social connections, meani...

Last week I posted a draft outline for my planned book on “The Coming Information Age” with a proposed chapter on the “Unbundling of the Job.” This is an idea that first occurred to me when I attended a workshop at MIT on Work and Value in the Digital Economy at MIT in late 2012. At the time here is what I wrote:Do people need jobs or can we deliver what jobs provide some other way and in a potentially unbundled fashion? The “jobs of a job” include income, structure, social connections, meani...

Just as a quick recap. I have argued in Computers and the Return on Capital that having cheaper information flows will in the long run drive the risk free rate of return to the time preference. I then examined how technology is likely reducing time preference for individuals through a variety of different mechanisms. In reply to that post Marc tweeted And yet tech companies keep raising giant rounds of funding and spitting off huge gushers of cash :-).That would suggest tech companies need mo...

Just as a quick recap. I have argued in Computers and the Return on Capital that having cheaper information flows will in the long run drive the risk free rate of return to the time preference. I then examined how technology is likely reducing time preference for individuals through a variety of different mechanisms. In reply to that post Marc tweeted And yet tech companies keep raising giant rounds of funding and spitting off huge gushers of cash :-).That would suggest tech companies need mo...

At DLD earlier this week I gave a talk that’s an illustrated and expanded version of my recent blog post about Entering the Information Age. And here are the slides, including a final slide with image credits (most images come form flickr are CC licensed): Looking forward to comments and suggestions. I am planning to expand this material over the coming weeks and months.

At DLD earlier this week I gave a talk that’s an illustrated and expanded version of my recent blog post about Entering the Information Age. And here are the slides, including a final slide with image credits (most images come form flickr are CC licensed): Looking forward to comments and suggestions. I am planning to expand this material over the coming weeks and months.

One of the questions asked by a Tech Tuesday reader was about using multiple different programming languages for different parts of a site. Back in the early days of the web that wasn’t really an issue because you would write the page generation in something like Perl or TCL and that was all there was. Well, not really because even then you had to know HTML but of course early HTML was so minimal that it didn’t really matter much. Well along came more HTML, CSS and most importantly Javascript...

One of the questions asked by a Tech Tuesday reader was about using multiple different programming languages for different parts of a site. Back in the early days of the web that wasn’t really an issue because you would write the page generation in something like Perl or TCL and that was all there was. Well, not really because even then you had to know HTML but of course early HTML was so minimal that it didn’t really matter much. Well along came more HTML, CSS and most importantly Javascript...

The topic fo today’s Tech Tuesday is one that every startup I have ever seen struggles with: what to do about technical debt. First off, what is technical debt? The Wikipedia page explains it as “the eventual consequences of poor or evolving software architecture and software development” which result in more effort for subsequent work.This is actually quite good because it makes clear that technical debt doesn’t just result from mistakes (the “poor” part) but also from “evolving.” And as you...

The topic fo today’s Tech Tuesday is one that every startup I have ever seen struggles with: what to do about technical debt. First off, what is technical debt? The Wikipedia page explains it as “the eventual consequences of poor or evolving software architecture and software development” which result in more effort for subsequent work.This is actually quite good because it makes clear that technical debt doesn’t just result from mistakes (the “poor” part) but also from “evolving.” And as you...

Since our trip to Africa was a family vacation and I really didn’t want business to intrude I wound up not spending time with startups in Nairobi. But I did talk to a lot of people we encountered about their use of technology. Mobile communication is almost everywhere. Only when we went into more remote Samburu territory did we not have a cell signal. Many people are still using feature phones but Android is making rapid headway. An iPhone is considered to be a real luxury item and very few p...

Since our trip to Africa was a family vacation and I really didn’t want business to intrude I wound up not spending time with startups in Nairobi. But I did talk to a lot of people we encountered about their use of technology. Mobile communication is almost everywhere. Only when we went into more remote Samburu territory did we not have a cell signal. Many people are still using feature phones but Android is making rapid headway. An iPhone is considered to be a real luxury item and very few p...

In my post on Computers and the Return on Capital I made the point that cheaper and more ubiquitous flows of information will drive the risk free return on capital towards the time preference (assuming that capital can also flow freely). But I didn’t really explain what that meant or how it was determined. Let’s start with an extreme case to illustrate the basic idea. Suppose that everyone everywhere was happy with how much they can spend out of their current income (that includes individuals...

In my post on Computers and the Return on Capital I made the point that cheaper and more ubiquitous flows of information will drive the risk free return on capital towards the time preference (assuming that capital can also flow freely). But I didn’t really explain what that meant or how it was determined. Let’s start with an extreme case to illustrate the basic idea. Suppose that everyone everywhere was happy with how much they can spend out of their current income (that includes individuals...

I still have quite a few great topics suggested by readers to work off for my Tech Tuesday series on technology in startups. But today I want to take on a different issue because it has been on my mind. I have now been programming computers in one way or another for over thirty years (yikes) and have seen a lot of technologies come and go during that period. So when something new comes along I tend to think of the great French saying: “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” (the more thing...

I still have quite a few great topics suggested by readers to work off for my Tech Tuesday series on technology in startups. But today I want to take on a different issue because it has been on my mind. I have now been programming computers in one way or another for over thirty years (yikes) and have seen a lot of technologies come and go during that period. So when something new comes along I tend to think of the great French saying: “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” (the more thing...