Board Observers Weekly - June 3rd, 2014. Misunderstanding Apple. We’ve come to expect analysts and pundits to misunderstand Apple. More puzzling is when Apple misunderstands itself. My three-week Road Trip of a Lifetime, driving all the way from Key West, FL to Palo Alto, was interrupted by a bout of pneumonia, low blood oxygen, paroxysmal cough and, most alarming, a loss of appetite. Thankfully, all indicators are looking good and I’m back walking Palo Alto’s leafy streets.
The succession of wheel time and downtime gave me an opportunity to contemplate two recent controversies: Fred Wilson’s prediction of Apple’s imminent fall, and rumors of Apple’s purchase of Beat Electronics. These are both manifestations of what I’ll call, for lack of a better term, Misunderstanding Apple. I’d be surprised by Wilson’s facile, insight-free truisms, except this isn’t the first time he’s shown a blind spot when considering Apple.
Calling Apple “too rooted in hardware” misunderstands the company. Horace is right; Fred Wilson clearly hasn’t done the numbers. Fink warns of emerging market 'black swans' Speaking at the National Association of Pension Funds’ annual investment conference on Wednesday, Fink (pictured) said: “I meet with companies all over the world, and I am seeing the massive effect of new technology on the creation of jobs. And one thing I have learnt is that technology is now cutting jobs more rapidly in the developing world than it is in the developed world.” He said: “These are countries that still have millions of people who need good, 21st-century jobs. I just don’t know if we have enough global GDP to create those jobs. That’s my worry. It’s my black swan of the moment.” Fink added that he expected the term “emerging markets” would cease to have much relevance for investors.
He said: “We talk about emerging markets as if they are one compatible, cohesive market – but within emerging markets we have some very good examples of well-run countries, and we have some real garbage. “When China was growing at 10% to 12% a year, it hid the garbage. Software is Eating Hardware - Lessons for Building Magical Devices. Wannabe entrepreneur symptoms and cures. I was once a wannabe entrepreneur. Fresh out of college and a summer internship at a VC firm, I thought I knew what I was doing. Though this was 2000, and all startup & VC blogs we've grown to love didn't exist yet, I did have mentors available. I should have leaned on them a lot more, but I didn't, or at least not in the right ways. But all the ways I've failed, and there are certainly many, is not the point.
I just want to let you know that I've been there, and that I hope the rest of this post doesn't come off as annoyingly condescending. Since 2000, I've been doing and thinking about startups constantly. What follows are some symptoms I've seen over and over that usually (though not always) indicate a wannabe entrepreneur. There are cures. Symptom: a year has gone by and you have nothing to show for it. Cure: get stuff done. Symptom: you haven't really talked to any real customers/users. Symptom: you're going around calling yourself a CEO. Cure: you're a founder. Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas. March 2012 One of the more surprising things I've noticed while working on Y Combinator is how frightening the most ambitious startup ideas are. In this essay I'm going to demonstrate this phenomenon by describing some. Any one of them could make you a billionaire.
That might sound like an attractive prospect, and yet when I describe these ideas you may notice you find yourself shrinking away from them. Don't worry, it's not a sign of weakness. Arguably it's a sign of sanity. The biggest startup ideas are terrifying. There's a scene in Being John Malkovich where the nerdy hero encounters a very attractive, sophisticated woman.
Here's the thing: If you ever got me, you wouldn't have a clue what to do with me. That's what these ideas say to us. This phenomenon is one of the most important things you can understand about startups. [1] You'd expect big startup ideas to be attractive, but actually they tend to repel you. 1. The best ideas are just on the right side of impossible. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Agency problems. “Agency problems” are what economists call situations where a person’s interests diverge from his or her firm’s interests. Large companies are in a constant state of agency crisis. A primary role of senior management is to counter agency problems through organizational structures and incentive systems.
For example, most big companies divide themselves into de facto smaller companies by creating business units with their own P&L or similar metric upon which they are judged. (Apple is a striking counterexample: I once pitched Apple on a technology that could increase the number of iTunes downloads. If you are selling technology to large companies, you need to understand the incentives of the decision makers. Agency problems also exist in startups, although they tend to be far less dramatic than at big companies.