STP stands for Straight Through Processing and is a term that comes from the financial services industry. Wikipedia provides a simple definition[STP] enables the entire trade process for capital markets and payment transactions to be conducted electronically without the need for re-keying or manual intervention (…)We need more STP for the web so that we have fewer stove pipe services and can move to a seamless web instead. The obstacle is no longer a lack of APIs – lots of services have APIs ...

STP stands for Straight Through Processing and is a term that comes from the financial services industry. Wikipedia provides a simple definition[STP] enables the entire trade process for capital markets and payment transactions to be conducted electronically without the need for re-keying or manual intervention (…)We need more STP for the web so that we have fewer stove pipe services and can move to a seamless web instead. The obstacle is no longer a lack of APIs – lots of services have APIs ...

Tech’s history is somewhat reminiscent of the city of Troy, which when it was discovered was found to have many layers with newer ones built on top of the old ones. In tech as new layers get built the old layers are abstracted away which results in those old layers becoming commoditized. Because once something is abstracted (hidden behind APIs) it doesn’t matter what brand it is, as long as it does its job. This has happened to components, such as disk drives. It has happened to entire comput...

Tech’s history is somewhat reminiscent of the city of Troy, which when it was discovered was found to have many layers with newer ones built on top of the old ones. In tech as new layers get built the old layers are abstracted away which results in those old layers becoming commoditized. Because once something is abstracted (hidden behind APIs) it doesn’t matter what brand it is, as long as it does its job. This has happened to components, such as disk drives. It has happened to entire comput...

In case you missed it, email services provider Epsilon had a massive security breach and a large number of email lists were exposed, including those of several large banks such as JP Morgan Chase and Citi. This is likely to result in more targeted phishing campaigns as it is now in the open who is an actual customer. As a quick aside, it is somewhat shocking how many sites leak this kind of information in due course of operation – most password resets work on the basis of entering an email ad...

In case you missed it, email services provider Epsilon had a massive security breach and a large number of email lists were exposed, including those of several large banks such as JP Morgan Chase and Citi. This is likely to result in more targeted phishing campaigns as it is now in the open who is an actual customer. As a quick aside, it is somewhat shocking how many sites leak this kind of information in due course of operation – most password resets work on the basis of entering an email ad...

Google +1 constitutes a crucial departure for the kind of data that Google will use in its rankings and that comes with an important challenge. To date (almost) all of the data Google uses is from implicit signals. Someone links to another site and thus bestows some authority on that site. Or someone clicks on a search result and makes that result ever so slightly more important than it was before. Or someone has Google’s search bar installed or uses Chrome and contributes time on site signal...

Google +1 constitutes a crucial departure for the kind of data that Google will use in its rankings and that comes with an important challenge. To date (almost) all of the data Google uses is from implicit signals. Someone links to another site and thus bestows some authority on that site. Or someone clicks on a search result and makes that result ever so slightly more important than it was before. Or someone has Google’s search bar installed or uses Chrome and contributes time on site signal...

I have had the same minimal design on this blog for quite some time. But as I am committed to keeping Continuations goind and writing more, I think the time has come for a complete overhaul of the design. I am looking for input from readers as to what changes (if any) you would like to see. All suggestions for style, features, layout are welcome! Also, I have a budget for this, so if anyone is interested in working on it please let me know in the comments and via email together with a couple ...

I have had the same minimal design on this blog for quite some time. But as I am committed to keeping Continuations goind and writing more, I think the time has come for a complete overhaul of the design. I am looking for input from readers as to what changes (if any) you would like to see. All suggestions for style, features, layout are welcome! Also, I have a budget for this, so if anyone is interested in working on it please let me know in the comments and via email together with a couple ...

One of the things that’s particularly difficult in being a startup board member is striking the right balance between supporting a founder CEO and listening to other people from the organization. It is possible to err on either side – undermining a CEO’s leadership by giving too much weight to complaints; or ignoring/not knowing about complaints for too long so that actual problems become very hard to fix. I have personally made both mistakes as a director! The first step in trying to get thi...

One of the things that’s particularly difficult in being a startup board member is striking the right balance between supporting a founder CEO and listening to other people from the organization. It is possible to err on either side – undermining a CEO’s leadership by giving too much weight to complaints; or ignoring/not knowing about complaints for too long so that actual problems become very hard to fix. I have personally made both mistakes as a director! The first step in trying to get thi...

There is something frequently missed in thinking about the value of common shares in startups. These shares are actually options! The Theory A common share in a startup has the same payout structure as a call option. There is a range of outcomes in terms of total enterprise value at exit for which common shares are worth exactly zero. This range is from no enterprise value (shutdown) to the aggregate value of preference (including, if applicable, participation multiples and dividends) plus an...

There is something frequently missed in thinking about the value of common shares in startups. These shares are actually options! The Theory A common share in a startup has the same payout structure as a call option. There is a range of outcomes in terms of total enterprise value at exit for which common shares are worth exactly zero. This range is from no enterprise value (shutdown) to the aggregate value of preference (including, if applicable, participation multiples and dividends) plus an...

I believe I have discovered an important reason why the government has a hard time making good use of the Internet: people who design systems for the government abhor messy data. They are used to setups in which every record is complete because the people populating the records are forced by law or regulation to fill them out entirely. As we are learning on the web though, the best systems arise from rather messy data. Let’s say you are a marketplace site. Should you have a listing process th...

I believe I have discovered an important reason why the government has a hard time making good use of the Internet: people who design systems for the government abhor messy data. They are used to setups in which every record is complete because the people populating the records are forced by law or regulation to fill them out entirely. As we are learning on the web though, the best systems arise from rather messy data. Let’s say you are a marketplace site. Should you have a listing process th...

I wrote about innovation on Android yesterday and today there is already more reason to write about innovation in mobile. This time the news is decidedly mixed. On the plus side, Amazon has opened their Android App Store (despite Apple suing them over the use of the words App Store). On the minus side, AT&T customers can’t (yet) participate because their Android phones don’t let them install apps outside of Google’s Android Marketplace. AT&T has created a website (no joke) where people can si...

I wrote about innovation on Android yesterday and today there is already more reason to write about innovation in mobile. This time the news is decidedly mixed. On the plus side, Amazon has opened their Android App Store (despite Apple suing them over the use of the words App Store). On the minus side, AT&T customers can’t (yet) participate because their Android phones don’t let them install apps outside of Google’s Android Marketplace. AT&T has created a website (no joke) where people can si...

Much as I admire the well rounded user experience on an iPhone (leaving notifications aside), there are some kinds of innovation that simply aren’t possible on the iPhone today, as it doesn’t let developers hook in deeply enough. One example is the games discovery app recently released by our portfolio company Heyzap. Once you install the Heyzap app, it notices when you launch game apps and gives you an opportunity to “check in." Checking in broadcasts your gameplay to the Heyzap network and ...

Much as I admire the well rounded user experience on an iPhone (leaving notifications aside), there are some kinds of innovation that simply aren’t possible on the iPhone today, as it doesn’t let developers hook in deeply enough. One example is the games discovery app recently released by our portfolio company Heyzap. Once you install the Heyzap app, it notices when you launch game apps and gives you an opportunity to “check in." Checking in broadcasts your gameplay to the Heyzap network and ...