When Did the Sun Set?
The story of Sun Microsystems is a great one. It has great characters (McNealy), great battles (open vs. proprietary, David vs. Goliath), incredible vision (the dawn of the dot.com), drama (the bust of the dot.com), and tragedy (the Oracle acquisition). Oh yeah, one of the best of tech logos. Well, the drama continues. Oracle reports [...]
Stock Market Drops. Then It Rallies. What Happens Next for Funding?
Venture Capitalists typically have partners’ meetings on Mondays. Why is that? Who knows. But probably because as a group we travel a lot. So the industry formed around a day of the week when all partners could avoid having company board meetings or traveling. Yesterday was a Monday. And not a pleasant one. Rewind. When [...]
Come On Silicon Valley, We Can Provide a Better Rx for Jobs!
Fortune magazine has an article running that Techmemed about some advice Barrack Obama is getting about jobs from Silicon Valley Heavyweights like Kleiner VC John Doerr and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. They’re all about Education and Immigration Visa Reform as the path to creating jobs, along with plugs along the way for their own ventures. Here [...]
US Economic Risks (Sept 2010): Impact on Investors & Entrepreneurs
This post was originally published in a shorter (more sensible) format in the Wall Street Journal online. If you’re short on time click on the WSJ link and read the 990 word version there. Otherwise, grab a cup ‘o coffee … Clicking on any graph below will take you to that article. One year ago [...]
The Sponge Bob Economy
If you’ve been reading along with the defrag blog for any period of time, you’ve probably figured out that I like to have a macro-economic view inform how I approach things. For over a year now, I’ve been pounding on the theme of a “productivity boom” as an economic meta-theme — one that was driven [...]
E2.0, Productivity and Joblessness
In the months leading up to last year’s Defrag, I began to blog about what I called “the productivity boom .” By that I meant this broad phase that we’re in, whereby we’ll see productivity in the enterprise make better than normal gains. The boom has a couple of pieces: 1. the advent of cloud [...]
Use Social Networking to find your next job and love it
“Your job security no longer lies in having a job; it lies in knowing how to work the job market”. – @susanireland The attached file is Using social networking to find your next job and love it is meant to help people find their next job. This PDF is all about using Linkedin and other [...]
Wrapping up Defrag by looking ahead
Inspired by recent theories around the nature of the time-space continuum, specifically that the past crystallizes out of the future, I thought I’d “wrap-up” Defrag by trying to look ahead to 2010 — and the in process of doing so offer up some “what I learned” thoughts. I’d be remiss if I didn’t begin by [...]
Accenture Survey Identifies Companies’ Innovation Improvement Opportunities
Accenture released a survey of 630 executives at large U.S. and U.K. companies, Innovation: a Priority for Growth in the Aftermath of the Downturn. The report discusses enterprises’ view toward innovation during the Great Recession. This information in general is useful for anyone following the field. Just as interesting are the nuances that come out [...]
U, V, W and Informational Dark Matter
Nouriel Roubini, affectionately nick-named “Dr. Doom” for his predictions regarding our recent financial meltdown, has a new op-ed piece out that spells out the risk of a “double dip” recession. It’s worth the read, whether you’re into macro-economics or not, as it very quickly spells out the risks of what has been a pretty rosy [...]
What’s the Influence of the Current Economic Crisis on American Culture
Image by Lone_f via Flickr Andy Sack who is one of the more interesting VC people in Seattle got asked the question “What has been the influence/impact of the current economic crisis on American Culture”. In all this is a very good question to ask just about anyone as we have seen our friends and [...]
Webinar – How to Use Cloud Computing to Weather an Economic Storm
I took part recently in a webinar hosted by DataStay looking at (as the title would suggest) how cloud computing can help businesses to survive the difficult financial times we’re experiencing. Most of what was said was pitched for an audience that is new to the concept of, and benefits to be derived from, cloud [...]
Some Small Players Beating the Odds
Most readers will be aware that I live on a small(ish) lump of rock in the South Pacific. This remoteness from all things Valley-ish (and this remoteness, it must be said, from all things) gives me a somewhat one-eyed perspective. I’m always careful to not over push the New Zealand thing – my personal blog [...]
Recession Is Good For Cloud Computing – Microsoft Agrees
Image by Getty Images via Daylife When the whole world was gloomy with onset of current recession, we (the members of cloud computing community) are happy about it in a way. Every single cloud computing evangelist will tell you that recession is good for cloud computing. The reason is obvious CapEx is converted into OpEX [...]
