• Home
  • Blog
  • About
  • Contact
CloudAve
Software in Business. The Business of Software.
  • Business
    • Analysis
    • Entrepreneurship
    • Marketing
    • Strategy
    • Small business
  • Technology
    • Application Software
    • Infrastructure
    • Open Source
    • Mobile
    • Platforms
    • Product reviews
    • Security
  • Misc
    • Design
    • Just for fun
    • Trends & Concepts
  • Your POV
  • Sponsors
Browse: Home / Chris Yeh

Chris Yeh

Chris Yeh

LinkedIn Twitter Facebook
VP Enterprise Marketing for PBworks,  first investor in and previously interim CEO of Ustream.TV.  Chris is an active angel investor and the founder and Chairman of the Harvard Business School Technology Alumni Association (HBSTECH). Chris earned two degrees from Stanford University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. His personal blogs are Adventures in Capitalism and Ask the Harvard MBA.

The $2,000 Customer Service Call

The $2,000 Customer Service Call

By Chris Yeh on March 18, 2014

This morning, I had the misfortune of having my car’s transmission conk out while I was on the freeway.  Fortunately, I was able to exit the freeway and park on the street, where I could safely call GEICO for roadside assistance. But this post isn’t about the $2,000+ I’m going to have to spend on […]

Posted in Business | Tagged customerservice, GEICO, sales

What Entrepreneurs Should Learn From WhatsApp

What Entrepreneurs Should Learn From WhatsApp

By Chris Yeh on February 21, 2014

Facebook’s acquisition of WhatsApp for $19 billion has dominated all news in Silicon Valley for the past 48 hours.  Yesterday, I was at a urinal, and a group of people asked me what I thought.  Most of the discussion seems to be around whether Mark Zuckerberg was crazy to pay so much for a relatively […]

Posted in Business, Featured Posts, Strategy | Tagged businessmodel, facebook, google, m&a, valuation, whatsapp | 2 Responses

So You're Shutting Down Your Startup And You're Scared...

So You’re Shutting Down Your Startup And You’re Scared…

By Chris Yeh on February 10, 2014

I ran across Startups Anonymous, and a post entitled, “We’re Shutting Down and I’m Scared” caught my eye. For better or worse, I’ve either been through or participated in shutting many companies down, so I thought it would be fun and potentially useful to provide my blow-by-blow advice: *** After over two years, backing from […]

Posted in Entrepreneurship, Featured Posts | Tagged failure | 1 Response

You can be a dick and be right

You can be a dick and be right

By Chris Yeh on January 29, 2014

Venture Capital legend Tom Perkins stirred up quite a bit of outrage with his letter to the editor in the Wall Street Journal: http://on.wsj.com/1aGMGJy In this editorial (which Perkins presumably dashed off without showing it to any competent public relations professional), he criticizes what he perceives as a rise in unfair criticism of the wealthy.  […]

Posted in Trends & Concepts | Tagged inequality, sanfrancisco, siliconvalley, tomperkins, wealth

Should entrepreneurs blog?

Should entrepreneurs blog?

By Chris Yeh on November 5, 2013

Keith Rabois touched off a mini-Twitter firestorm the other day when he posted a tweet saying, “I don’t know of a single successful CEO or entrepreneur who blogs regularly.”http://bit.ly/1b0gv4VSadly, as I often note, 140 characters isn’t enough for a …

Posted in Entrepreneurship | Tagged blogging, hubspot, siliconvalley, twitter

Will Success Ruin Silicon Valley?

Will Success Ruin Silicon Valley?

By Chris Yeh on October 28, 2013

Everywhere one looks, Silicon Valley seems ascendant.  Tech companies like Apple and Google are among the world’s most valuable and admired, while tech titans like Larry and Sergey, and Mark and Sheryl are given the first-name-only treatment of offline celebrities. Silicon Valley has even stuck its nose into broader society, helped by the fact that […]

Posted in Business, Featured Posts | Tagged Apple, diversity, google, siliconvalley, wealth

Stop Shooting The Messenger, Silicon Valley

Stop Shooting The Messenger, Silicon Valley

By Chris Yeh on October 11, 2013

On Sunday, I weighed in on the Twitter board controversy: My argument then was that there is a dangerous tendency on the part of Silicon Valley’s power players to think that those who have achieved less than they (read: everyone) don’t have the right to criticize them. Then I read an editorial by Pando Daily […]

Posted in Featured Posts, Trends & Concepts | Tagged argument, sarah lacy, sexism, siliconvalley, twitter, vivekwadhwa

Finance Should Be a First-Class Discipline for Startups

Finance Should Be a First-Class Discipline for Startups

By Chris Yeh on October 10, 2013

Tim O’Reilly, the founder of the O’Reilly media empire, published a great longform essay recently titled, “How I Failed“. It’s a phenomenal read which covers a wide variety of topics, including how O’Reilly sold GNN to AOL for $15 million in stock, sold that stock as soon as the lockup expired for $30 million, and […]

Posted in Entrepreneurship | Tagged finance, frugality

Image credit: Inkcinct cartoons

The Hidden Assumptions That Neuter Criticism in Silicon Valley

By Chris Yeh on October 7, 2013

The contretemps of the day comes courtesy of TechCrunch, where Professor Vivek Wadhwa has published a guest post addressing a Twitter debate he had with Twitter CEO Dick Costolo (now how’s that for meta?):http://tcrn.ch/GD0570The controversy began with…

Posted in Business, Featured Posts | Tagged criticism, dickcostolo, sexism, siliconvalley, SocialMedia, twitter, vivekwadhwa | 1 Response

What job are people hiring your product to do?

What job are people hiring your product to do?

By Chris Yeh on October 3, 2013

I am a product guy, dating back to my days as a design student at Stanford. I’ve been a fan of Clay Christensen ever since “The Innovator’s Dilemma,” and even interviewed him for the student newspaper when I was a Harvard Business School student. Which is why I’m shocked that I hadn’t heard of Clay’s […]

Posted in Design, Marketing | Tagged product, psychology

The Internet is a Rage Virus

The Internet is a Rage Virus

By Chris Yeh on September 30, 2013

James Hong penned a thoughtful essay on an important topic: “Why there are so many assholes on the Internet.” “There are hard ways to get attention, and there are easy ways. The hard ways are more meaningful, but almost by definition they are more scarce and harder to generate. The easy stuff on the other […]

Posted in Trends & Concepts | Tagged emotion, facebook, Internet, outrage, rage, Shock jock, virus | 2 Responses

Carte Blanche and the Creativity of Constraint

Carte Blanche and the Creativity of Constraint

By Chris Yeh on September 26, 2013

As Los Angeles native, I can’t help but see parallels between my home town’s industry (movies) and my adopted home’s (startups).  Today’s parallel concerns the problem with having too much money. In Hollywood, studios love to work with successful directors.  When a director produces a critical and commercial smash, a studio or production company is […]

Posted in Entrepreneurship, Featured Posts | Tagged Creativity, movies, siliconvalley

Why Businesspeople Should Learn To Code (But Not Write Software)

Why Businesspeople Should Learn To Code (But Not Write Software)

By Chris Yeh on September 5, 2013

The “everyone should learn how to code” meme has probably reached the point of absurdity.  My favorite (humorous) example is the “Dear Miss Disruption” advice column, in which every question, no matter what the topic, concludes with the answer, “learn to code.” But my old professor Tom Eisenmann of HBS did something that few others […]

Posted in Trends & Concepts | Tagged mbas, programming | 1 Response

The Troll Economy

The Troll Economy

By Chris Yeh on August 30, 2013

Q: What do you get when journalists get paid by the number of pageviews their stories generate? A: The Troll economy. Not to sound like a grumpy old man (though I am) but what passes for journalism has sunk to a new low.  As far as I can tell, headlines are now chosen based on […]

Posted in Trends & Concepts | Tagged businessinsider, businessmodel, Elon Musk, outrage, Quora, SocialMedia, steve jobs, Troll

It's Cheaper In The Long Run To Pay For A Professional

It’s Cheaper In The Long Run To Pay For A Professional

By Chris Yeh on August 20, 2013

I firmly believe in the truth of the old saying, “It’s cheaper in the long run to pay for a professional.”  It’s an axiom that applies in nearly any situation, from decide whether or not to attempt to fix your own plumbing problems, to dealing with groupies if you’re a young All-Star. Yet while most […]

Posted in Business | Tagged businessmodel, feedly, free, freemium, google, google reader, news aggregator, pricing, rss

Next »
feed mail facebook twitter linkedin

Popular Posts

  • Home
  • SaaS Startup Strategy – Three SaaS Sales Models
  • Amazon, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, and Oracle Org Chart
  • Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies 2011: Idea Management Enlightenment
  • The Feature Adoption Framework for Social Collaboration
  • 10 Critical Requirements for Cloud Applications
  • IBM PureApplication Systems: It Is Not PaaS. Period. But
  • The Documentation Maturity Model (infographic)

Archives

Authors

  • Adron Hall
  • Chirag Mehta
  • Christian Reilly
  • Dan Morrill
  • Derek Pilling
  • Hutch Carpenter
  • Jarret Pazahanick
  • Jason M. Lemkin
  • Joel York
  • John Taschek
  • Krishnan Subramanian
  • Mark Suster
  • Michael Krigsman
  • Ofir Nachmani
  • Paul Miller
  • Quinton Wall
  • Randy Bias
  • Robert Duffner
  • Sadagopan
  • wprss
  • Zoli Erdos
Sponsored by: