Advice | Startup One Stop

And the 2023 Word of the Year Is…

January 16, 2024 Bonnie Comments 0 Comment

We’re under the weather this week. This is not a reference to the cold spell sweeping across the US: we’re literally down with a stomach flu, and the perfect opportunity to report American Dialect’s 2023 Word of the Year – “Enshittification,” as we feel like, well, need we spell it out?

The word “became popular in 2023 after it was used in a blog post by author Cory Doctorow, who used it to describe how digital platforms can become worse and worse. “Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. I call this enshittification,” Doctorow wrote on his Pluralistic blog.”

The good news is, re this stomach bug, we will recover. What about those platforms? “Gen Z is crazy about a handful of online platforms including Twitch, Reddit, TikTok, Imgur, Unfold, Brat, NTWRK, and Lomotif,” according to Business Insider, while Later reports that YouTube is their online entertainment channel of choice, “and TikTok (68%) and Snapchat (67%) aren’t too far behind. Interestingly, the platform that has really skyrocketed in this group is BeReal, as according to zdnet, “On BeReal you cannot have followers. Similar to the earliest forms of social networking sites (remember AIM), on the app you have friends instead of followers and only these select groups of people can see your posts. This takes away the pressure of wanting to curate a perfect public image and brings back the fun of sharing content only with your friends.” Read More...

Is It Time to Pivot?

January 9, 2024 Bonnie Comments 0 Comment

Almost all startups pivot at some point. This we know. Since many people consider a new year a new/clean slate as well and a good time to reflect on where you’ve been/where you’re going, we decided it’s a good time to talk about the pivot.

We recently hosted an investor at one of our Online Insights who mentioned a unicorn exit from one of their portfolio companies. We knew the founder. Very sharp guy who had majorly pivoted not long after said investor’s fund had invested in them. One of the partners had spoken at our Insights not long after the pivot and was livid: this was not what he had invested in.

Well, how often do investors mention that the ‘team’ is one of their top considerations when it comes to deciding to whom to write the check? Just a few short years following the pivot, the company had a serious unicorn exit. The founder also happened to be something of a subject matter expert, rethought the approach, did a major change of direction – and did we mention the company had a serious unicorn exit? Apologies, but we have learned from experience that one of the major always unnamed problems when it comes to why startups fail is that founders don’t listen. Read More...

The 23 Memorable People & ‘Peccadillos’ of ’23 – Part One

December 19, 2023 Bonnie Comments 1 comment

Image by Rosy / Bad Homburg / Germany from Pixabay

Remember all the dumb things you did when you were 23 and thought you knew everything? No, the year wasn’t all bad. Then again, when you were 23, you had your moments, too…

We’ve made our list and checked it twice, so without further ado, the people and peccadillos of the year that’s coming to an end, but the real question is, in many cases, when – and where – does it stop?

Sam Bankman-Fried. He held our attention for quite a spell, as tales of his exploits were revealed: defrauding investors left and right and spending money like it grew on trees. Which it did for him: shake the tree and there were even more funds in the FTX coffers. The one-time crypto king believed that his true strength was in his hair and that those carefully unkempt locks made all the difference in his meteoric rise. Maybe they did for a spell, but speaking of locks, fraud is fraud and the former wunderkind is heading to prison for an even longer spell.
The new cryminal class. SBF tops long list of crypto hot shots facing legal reckoning. “His case was far from the first — or last — time that crypto founders and executives found themselves in legal hot water related to their digital-asset activities,” the Toronto Sun pointed out. There was also Terraform Labs co-founder Do Kwon; Alex Mashinsky, the former chief executive of Celsius Network; Su Zhu, co-founder of the bankrupt Three Arrows Capital hedge fund and Thomas Smith, Kyle Nagy, and Braden Karony — the people behind the crypto token SafeMoon, who were accused by federal prosecutors of using millions in investors’ funds to buy luxury homes and McClaren sports cars. When you can live that large is so short an amount of time, chances are there’s a small cell in your future.

Biometrics collection is certainly growing. Read More...

Venture Winter & Other Storm Warnings

December 5, 2023 Bonnie Comments 0 Comment

It’s that time of year. Holiday season and no matter how many tree lightings there are to see or gift lists to address, before we break out the eggnog, time for a reality check.

We know that ‘get funded’ is on every founder’s holiday wish list. It’s not impossible, but having worked in retail advertising, we will tell you that the holiday catalogs are compiled and put to bed in August.

Which is when you should have started, if you wanted to at least have had a shot at Santa checking that one off his list. Read More...

The Bad Boys of Tech, Part 2

November 21, 2023 Bonnie Comments 0 Comment

Unless you’ve been cut off from all worldly communications, you’ve heard that co-founder and CEO Sam Altman was very unceremoniously booted from OpenAI – and was informed in a Google Meet, despite Microsoft being a major OpenAI investor and partner.

No one seems to know the precise reason why he was terminated. Malfeasance? Was it his reported lack of transparency with the board, which now consists of three independent directors holding no equity, and its Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever? A coup?

Or something quite different transpiring behind the curtain… Read More...

Tech’s Bad Hair Day

November 14, 2023 Bonnie Comments 0 Comment

No one wants to say it out loud, but is the latest tech bubble bursting? While the Web 1.0 demise was a result of too much money chasing too much youth and inexperience, this time around it’s different: It’s a result of a different kind of huckster class which has woven itself into the fabric of tech.

And many investors were complicit.

WeWorked It

Yes, he did, ‘he’ being Adam Neumann, the company’s charismatic founder/showman who somehow convinced investors that WeWork was a tech company, and not just another real estate play. Tech startups were drawn to the space, but being able to rent office space using an online system doesn’t make you a tech company. There was WeWork Labs, but it was something of an accelerator by any other name and which other accelerator considers itself a tech company? WeWork’s rapid expansion into new spaces and more cities did grab attention, as they’d almost instantly be 90+% full, it would be announced. Although the play was to rent ten floors, build out three, fill them, and as for the floors that hadn’t been converted? Details! Kick the can down the road and stick to the plan to show hockey stick growth. Read More...

CHARGE!

November 6, 2023 Bonnie Comments 0 Comment

We recently hosted a very successful serial founder and sometime investor at our online Investor Insights, who just launched yet another company – his third. It was fascinating to listen to both his advice – and his history. His first company was quickly acquired by Google, which was ‘clearly’ a win, but careful there, founders: great to be ‘adopted,’ but not all ‘parent’ companies are the same. He served his time, celebrated the day the golden handcuffs came off, and quickly launched his next company, which pivoted a few times, as all companies do, but did find its footing and a sustainable revenue stream. Acquisition offers were proffered and rejected, perhaps since the entrepreneur had been there, done that.

The company is still alive and well and turning a profit to the tune of hundreds of millions a year.

Nice revenue stream. Read More...

Scary Tales of Tech

October 31, 2023 Bonnie Comments 0 Comment

According to the Farmer’s Almanac, “The origin of Halloween … can be traced to Samhain, an ancient pagan Celtic festival that is Gaelic for “summer’s end,” a day to bid good-bye to warmth and light. It marks the end of the harvest season and the start of winter (the darker “half” of the year).

“The ancient Celts believed that the veil between the living and the dead was at its thinnest during Samhain, making it the ideal time to communicate with the deceased and divine the future.”

When the Romans arrived, they combined the old traditions with their own, and Samhain evolved into All Hallows’ Day, “hallow” meaning “to sanctify.” Read More...

What If Elected Officials Were Scrutinized the Way Startups Are?

October 17, 2023 Bonnie Comments 0 Comment

Given recent world events, we decided that wouldn’t it be interesting to examine what the results would be if elected officials and their policies were put under the same scrutiny as are startups – using an investor lens.

We use the following simply as an example.

There have been several mandates/regulations coming from the current administration and state and local governments that are pushing the population to reduce the amount of fossil fuels burned for residential purposes and pushing us increasingly onto the power grid. Read More...

Speaking of Terrorism, Let’s Talk About Tech

October 10, 2023 Bonnie Comments 0 Comment

Given the present situation in the Middle East, it’s not easy to write about something like, say, the FEMA emergency broadcasting system test alert that we all experienced October 4, like it or not, and attention does need to be paid there – coming!

The invasion by Hamas into Israel and the attacks and wholesale murder and/or kidnappings of innocent civilians was amoral, to put it mildly. The world is gobsmacked, no matter which side you’re on, and since we opine on tech rather than politics, there is very much a lesson here for us all in tech overreach.

Huh? Read More...