2011 Jun 6

Cash vs Cash Flow: Translate that to Greek

Years ago, my children attended a private Jewish school in New York. As it was a community Jewish school, the school had support programs for children whose parents could not afford the $20k+ tuition. In a conversation with the school director about the structure of the scholarship program, she explained to me that they distinguish between "cash" problems and "cash flow" problems, or what those of us in the business world would call "

2011 Jun 3

Other Sectors: Unleash the Tech Entrepreneurs!

Apparently, Jon Kaplan, the founder of the (sold to Cisco and now shuttered) Flip camera, is going into the grilled cheese business. He is starting a chain of fast grilled cheese sandwich businesses, with $20MM+ from Sequoia to boot. I have seen a lot of reporters and bloggers surprised, asking what a guy like Kaplan, a tech founder, is doing in the food business, and what Sequoia is doing funding it.

2011 Jun 3

Apple' Retail - The Internal Politics

As a follow-on to yesterday's post, something struck me about Apple's 10K. Apple says that it manages its business by geography. Its operating reports reflect it: Americas, Europe, etc. Yet its Retail business - across all geographies - is a separate segment. That makes a lot of sense from a business sense, and is probably a critical reason for its success. However, what is more impressive is that they managed to get it done.

2011 Jun 1

To Boldly Go Where Everyone Fails Before - Apple's Retail Success

I had the opportunity to visit Apple's retail store in Tysons Corner, VA, twice yesterday - unfortunately, it was for repairs, not for fun - and will return again today. I was struck by how busy the store was, and, in general, how Apple has succeeded in its retail stores. Just about every company that tries to get into direct retail from wholesale, or from ecommerce to bricks and mortar, flounders.

2011 May 25

Square and the missed PayPal opportunity

Square just announced a new app, Card Case, to make payment easier to merchants that you know. Essentially, you keep records of your cards with Square, and then pay participating merchants by sending them payment through your mobile. The merchant, of course, does not have nor need to have a copy of your card. That sounds suspiciously like another "killer app" that was going to "change the world of finance"

2011 May 24

Real customer service is about when it breaks

Back in the 90s, a Sun engineer, if I recall correctly, wrote a paper arguing that the true test of a system is how it behaves during failure, not during success. The paper's primary focus was tech systems, of course. If there is an error, a user-friendly error message is far more useful than the infamous Microsoft Blue Screen if Death (BSOD), filled with unintelligible hex characters. Last night, I stayed at the Tarrytown House Estate hotel.

2011 May 20

Cisco Finally Focuses

Well, in addition to big layoffs, it looks like John Chambers is finally getting rid off Linksys and WebEx, in addition to his recent shuttering of Flip. While I disagreed with the closing of Flip - it should have been sold or spun off - I agree with the mindset: Cisco is an enterprise communications products company. For years, Cisco did almost no consulting, allowing it to focus on the best products, and building up a solid partnership network which engendered fierce loyalty from the same consultants.

2011 May 19

Sheryl Sandberg and a Generation's "Failure"

Yesterday, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg spoke at Barnard's commencement ceremony. The video of the speech is on Barnard's Website, and someone transcribed it here. Besides being an interesting speaker and an executive at one of the key tech companies in the world today, I have a particular interest in this speech. I graduated Columbia shortly after Sandberg graduated One of Sandberg's key points is that her generation, the one that graduated Harvard, and my wife graduated Barnard shortly thereafter.

2011 May 18

Starting with "good enough"

Yesterday, Google release pivot tables for Google Apps spreadsheets. Any power user of Excel knows about pivot tables, and has used them for years, if not longer. I have seen a large number of articles in the last day mocking Google's making a big deal of pivot tables; after all, Excel has had them for so long, there is nothing innovative about them. I beg to differ. True, there is nothing innovative in the concept, but implementation, especially on a Web scale, is not simple either.

2011 May 16

No such thing as a free lunch, even from Google

About a week ago, I received an email from Google, which, I imagine, sent the same email to many customers. The Google Apps for Your Domain service used to be free for unlimited accounts in a domain, unless you wanted premium features: better account control, no targeted advertising, etc. As of the near future, unless you are grandfathered in, free Apps accounts will be limited to 10 users, above which you must buy the paid service, $50/year/user.