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Category: Advice

Charge!

Charge!

Image by mohamed_hassan from Pixabay

We recall back in the day when Facebook hit the zeitgeist in a huge way, it was suggested that the company charge a nominal fee for the service, and we believe it was a dollar a month. Easily affordable in most countries, and why not to bring family and friends closer. Of course, there are countries where a dollar a month is quite steep, and the company opted for eyeballs uber payment and they’d make their money via tracking you and offering up adverts.

As a note to self and a cautionary tale to founders: best to bake in the revenue model/premium services early in the game, as did, say, LinkedIn, who, when they hit a tipping point long ago – a year or two after funding – the company did maintain a free version, but also introduced a premium model and people were willing to ante up. It seems to have worked. We do believe that the company is still around. And with multiple revenue spokes. Also a good idea.

Re Facebook. Well, times change, as has Apple’s advertising policies: the company’s anti-tracking protections cost Facebook, now Meta, some $10B in ad revenue last year. Read More...

The Product Point that Every Single Founder Overlooks

The Product Point that Every Single Founder Overlooks

Image by Silvia from Pixabay

Every two weeks, we host an online breakfast with a single investor, and a small, self-selecting group of entrepreneurs. Other investors – angels and VCs – sometimes attend as well. We keep them small to make sure everyone has a chance to participate, ask questions, and learn. You’d be amazed at how many founders have found investment – just by showing up and participating.

And hearing first-hand, precisely what investors are looking for – and we don’t simply mean the verticals in which they invest – but what they look for in a pitch deck, and how they read it.

We know you’ve heard it all before. As we’ve said over and over, in our opinion, the #1 reason why startups fail is that founders don’t listen. Read More...

Web 2 Oh, It’s Not Over Yet: The Era of the Fakes

Web 2 Oh, It’s Not Over Yet: The Era of the Fakes

Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay

Despite all of the discussion about Web 3, it has been eclipsed of late by Generative AIs such as ChatGPT, which, according to many an article we’ve seen, is going to make a lot of white-collar workers redundant, as the Brits say. Artificial Intelligence Passes MBA Exam (given by a Wharton professor, FYI) and New ‘Robot’ Lawyer to Represent Defendant in US Court. ChatGPT even passed the US Medical Licensing exam. As we know, it’s also being used to write news articles, tweets and who know what else in startup land, giving new meaning to the term, ‘fake it till you make it.’

When we first got wind of the Generative AI, knowing that it was scraping the internet and well aware of the rampant censorship that has been and is being practiced by the social networks, all of whom have had a stranglehold on the conversation for quite some time, including the pre-Musk Twitter, YouTube and Facebook, we knew this would be a problem. And lest we forget, the programs tend to be written by programmers who have a certain bias, or whose C-Level has a certain bias, and in case you missed it:  The damage done to the credibility of AI by ChatGPT engineers building in political bias is irreparable. The AIs will always have human biases, because it’s humans who are creating it.

Generative AI isn’t the only thing that’s faking it. Getting more sophisticated and no doubt soon to hit that same tipping point are the Deepfakes, both visual and audio. For how many years has Big Tech been capturing your face and voice?  “With no barriers to creating AI-synthesized text, audio and video, the potential for misuse in identity theft, financial fraud and tarnish reputations has sparked global alarm,” the Japan Times reported. Read More...

AI’s Achilles Heel You Hadn’t Considered

AI’s Achilles Heel You Hadn’t Considered

Image by Peggy und Marco Lachmann-Anke from Pixabay

Those of us who work in technology – which is most of us here – can’t help but glom onto or at least test the shiny new thing that comes along. It’s in our DNA. The problem is that tech tends to jump in feet first without realizing the possible consequences, dystopian side, or even fully examining the product.

Apologies if we sound a bit repetitive here, but read on. We do have a point to make, that no one else seems to be considering.

BuzzFeed To Use ChatGPT’s AI For Content Creation, Stock Up 200%+ (forbes.com). Okay, it’s ‘BuzzFeed’ which is ‘clickbait’ by any other name.  As Forbes further reported, “Investigative reports on The Byte shared that media website CNET was using AI technology, under articles penned by the anonymous “CNET Money Staff”. The AI was created by CNET resources, and only used for a very small number of posts before human oversight detected significant misstatements of factserrors and plagiarized content, according to multiple news sources.” The result: CNET pauses publishing AI-written stories after disclosure controversy. Read More...

The Silver Lining(s) in the Tech Layoff Cloud

The Silver Lining(s) in the Tech Layoff Cloud

Photo by Jonny Clow on Unsplash

Tech has been experiencing ‘massive layoffs’ lately, but always good to look at the why, before you jump to the ‘Oh NOOOO!’

“When people hear layoffs, that is a highly charged word… But you have to understand this in the broader context, which is there was explosive growth during the pandemic, and all that growth was unexpected,” said Russell Hancock, chief executive of Joint Venture Silicon Valley, to MarketWatch.

The ‘broader context’ is that tech is going through a period of adjustment and ‘right sizing.’ Said MarketWatch, “The largest number announced by a Big Tech company so far is the 18,000 projected layoffs at Amazon.com Inc— but Amazon hired hundreds of thousands of workers during the pandemic to grow into the second-largest employer in the U.S. (From) fewer than 800,000 employees at the end of 2019… to more than 1.6 million at times last year…Microsoft grew its workforce more than 50% … hiring roughly 77,000 workers; it recently announced 10,000 layoffs. Meta Platforms Inc. nearly doubled its head count from roughly 45,000… to more than 87,000…then decided to cut about 11,000 workers.” Read More...

Are We Truly Prepared for Generative AI?

Are We Truly Prepared for Generative AI?

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

We’ve been postponing covering ChatGPT as it is still relatively early days, although elements of it – re AI – have been there for quite some time. OpenAI’s ChatGPT is a definite disruptor, even more than Facebook was in its day, when it heralded the Age of Social, but this time, sans Mark Zuckerberg’s ego and/or iron-fisted control. Yet, or as far as we know. But when was the last time we stopped and considered the dystopian side of the shiny new thing before we realized that, say, our privacy and personal data would be gone, perhaps forever, or worse, thanks to, say, a communications assist?

 

As a writer, we will tell you that, while AI may correct our typos, since we key so quickly, great. As for its grammatical suggestions or recommendations for completing a sentence or thought? AI is clearly not an original thinker and is wrong 90+% of the time – without exaggeration. Read More...

The New Year’s Resolutions List for Founders

The New Year’s Resolutions List for Founders

Image by h kama from Pixabay

We’re not a big fan of best of/worst of lists. Nor are we big on New Year’s resolutions, but not always easy to buck every trend that comes down the pike, so without further ado, nine resolutions founders might want to consider. We didn’t go for 10 as we do understand that even nine is pushing it…

  1. I will listen. It never makes a Top 10 list of why startups fail, but trust us, founders don’t listen. Not that they should listen to every piece of advice that they receive, but nor should they ignore it all. Helpful hint: if you hear the same advice again and again, you know that adage, ‘It’s not you, it’s me?’ In this case, it’s probably you
  2. I will understand that my investor pitch deck is a work in progress. It’s not finished until the round closes. You will change it many times, and may even have to scrap it and start over. No one ever said that this startup thing was easy.
  3. I will compensate all my developers. You’re no doubt compensating your coders somehow. But they’re not the only developers on your team. You need someone to help develop your market – they’re called marketers. Someone to help develop business leads – aka biz dev. People to help you develop the relationships you need to get your business to the next level. These are skills, too – and those developers must also be somehow compensated.
  4. I will do my investor due diligence. Especially in the current climate. Times – and term sheets – have changed. Investors are still writing checks – but there are those who seek to give founders less control and themselves more protection, of course, now that money is tighter. Beware of predatory terms. You may want and need the money, but at what price?
  5. I will get out of my own way. Here are The Most Common Limiting Beliefs of Entrepreneurs and How to Overcome Them
  6. I won’t be seduced by startup porn. You know, those influencers who post on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and give you rosy visions of how easy it is to start a company, work for yourself, you’re in charge. How many of them are running companies or anything besides their mouths? Building a company takes time. Even investors don’t expect an instant ROI. You know the adage: those who can, do. Those who can’t, post.
  7. I will think big. Investors – and successful founders – like big markets. But keep in mind that big rewards start with big risks, and there are going to be a lot of big headaches along the way, too.
  8. I will lose that excess weight this year. Meaning dead weight. Startups need to be lean – even after that initial funding comes in – and if there are those people who don’t seem to be pulling their weight, you need to find out why – were there promises made that weren’t kept, or are they not as committed to the project as you thought they were, or were at the beginning?  And once the funding comes in, don’t over hire. Another big mistake founders make. It’s not the time to put that weight back on.
  9. I will listen We know that we already said this. We’re repeating it – in case you weren’t listening…

And a very happy and productive 2023 to one and all, as we go onward and forward.

And Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year Is…

And Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year Is…

 Said Merriam-Webster, “In this age of misinformation—of “fake news,” conspiracy theories, Twitter trolls, and deepfakes—gaslighting has emerged as a word for our time.

“…gaslighting is “the act or practice of grossly misleading someone especially for one’s own advantage.” 2022 saw a 1740% increase in lookups for gaslighting, with high interest throughout the year…Its origins are colorful: the term comes from the title of a 1938 play and the movie based on that play, the plot of which involves a man attempting to make his wife believe that she is going insane. His mysterious activities in the attic cause the house’s gas lights to dim, but he insists to his wife that the lights are not dimming and that she can’t trust her own perceptions.”

In the earlier days of tech and home computing, Apple was the underdog and Microsoft the Evil Empire, and note those were the days of MSFT with founder Bill Gates at the helm. Google took over the ‘evil’ designation, with Apple fanboys still blindly committed to their tech god. Now it seems that Apple Is Tracking You Even When Its Own Privacy Settings Say It’s Not, New Research Says, Gizmodo reported. Read More...

What Founders Can Learn from Drug Dealers

What Founders Can Learn from Drug Dealers

Disclaimer: we are in no way intimating or outright suggesting that you become purveyors of drugs, legal or otherwise.

We’ve long known that tech can be addictive. When was the last time you left home without your cellphone? Or voluntarily spent a day or more without checking email et al? Read More...

Web 2.5: A Dangerous Crossroads

Web 2.5: A Dangerous Crossroads

Image by Lisa Johnson from Pixabay

Web 3 is not about to take over any time soon, especially given the damage that FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried have done to reinforced the public’s view that crypto (an element of Web 3) is rife with fraud and no, we have idea why Bankman-Freed isn’t in prison (‘Why aren’t you in jail already?’ Internet erupts after Sam Bankman-Fried confirms participating in New York Times’ DealBook). Yet according to MSN, We’re Witnessing the End of Social Media, and while the Age of Social was supposedly about ‘connecting,’ it has mostly been responsible for the disconnections that have been going on between people and groups.

So, we seem to be in a strange tech stasis: a no man’s land between the last and the next phase of tech.

Even FAANG – Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google stocks – isn’t FAANG anymore

Now it’s MAMAA – Meta Platforms FB, Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon and Apple – although we propose MAMMAA, and although not stock related, Musk definitely belongs in the cabal mix and make no mistake about it: The Web 2 cabal is still alive and kicking – and not about to surrender their lead positions to the so-called next iteration of tech and yet a new crop of tech wunderkinds any time soon. Read More...