2014 Dec 11

A Great Product Manager

In yesterday's article, we discussed what product management is, and why it matters so much to companies. It also is important to early stage companies, who, at least in theory, cannot afford either the extra head count or the founder's time. Actually, seeing how crucial product management is to getting product-market fit - as Steve Blank would say, that is the very essence of a startup - it probably is more important for early stage firms, since they have little to no wiggle room.

2014 Dec 10

Products vs. Yo-Yos

This article is not a list of companies that have great products or product management, enlightening as it might be. It also is not a list of companies with terrible product management, although I could compose a very long such list, and the stories would be very entertaining! Instead, this is a discussion of why product management matters, and how you get great product managers. The genesis of this article is a number of conversations and interactions I have had with companies over the last year or so, several of which have had great product management, while others have been sorely lacking in the field.

2014 Dec 9

Movies on Mobile

A few months back, I looked at the growing tide of making movies on mobile phones. I was referring not only to the typical home videos that we used to capture on a large home video camera, now on our portable phones, but semi-professional and even professional films on your iPhone or Android. Specifically, I was concerned with what this trend means for high-end camera makers. This week, I saw a short - all of 1:22 - fantasy film called DragonBorne, which was done entirely on an iPhone 6.

2014 Dec 8

The Future of Productivity Apps

The productive actions we take as humans in society have not changed in many thousands of years, among them: Communicate Write Draw Calculate How we do these actions has changed, from stone tablets and steles to papyrus to parchment to paper to notepads to computers to smartphones. In the computer era, the write/draw/calculate - which often form the basis for many other activities - have been dominated by what has been called "

2014 Dec 4

QE, USD and the Price of Gas

Barely a decade ago, I lived in New York and would cross the George Washington Bridge to buy gas at prices below $1 / gallon. Then it crossed $2 / gallon and it seemed absurd! Before long, gas prices around or even above $4/gallon became the new normal. Nowadays, prices have dropped well below that - in many states it is below $3 / gallon - and the question of "

2014 Dec 3

Help Vampires

No, today's article is not an appeal to raise funds via GoFundMe for poor vampires. It is about the natural but detrimental users of your service. StackOverflow - and its parent network, StackExchange - have been wildly successful in encouraging people to ask and answer questions about everything. The original site, StackOverflow, is about software engineering. This shouldn't be too surprising since it was founded by Jeff Atwood, of "

2014 Dec 1

Hiring Rockstars

Is a superstar technologist worth 10-100x a regular engineer? Today, one of my favourite bloggers and technology strategists, Simon Wardley, discussed this issue. Ironically, today, Michael Eisenberg of Aleph VC discussed what those engineers should focus on (hint: avoid adtech). Simon's main thrust was about knowing the right thing to do; after all, that is his specialty. He focused on his time at Fotango and then Canonical (company behind Ubuntu), how they hired every superstar Perl developer they could get their hands on.

2014 Nov 25

Fibre cables, exchanges and perceptions

Financial trading houses are always looking for a market advantage, no matter how small. It shouldn't surprise us; when you are dealing in markets that move billions of dollars in short time frames, a few milliseconds of advantage can make all of the difference. Because trading firms are incredibly sensitive to any advantage - or more correctly to feeling left behind (it is all about the feeling, isn't it?), many trading centres and exchanges have very strict rules about what they will provide.

2014 Nov 24

Does Technology "Suck"?

Last week, I was having lunch with an old friend. We worked together many years ago building some pretty cool technology at a very large financial services firm. Each of us has over 20 years in the technology industry. He has continued to manage infrastructure, and is doing some pretty impressive advanced infrastructure management. Both of us have seen the big company and the startup, and both of us have experience a broad range of technologies - consumer and business and enterprise; infrastructure and applications; hardware and software - and we both truly love technology and the changes it brings to society.

2014 Nov 19

The Death of the iPod

A short while ago, I was looking at buying an iPod for one of my kids. It was a pretty straightforward transaction. My kid likes music, while an iPod is great for carrying lots of music around and listening to it, especially on road trips. As parents, we encourage our kids to listen to music, preferably a broad and diverse selection. But I didn't. And the reason is smartphones.