Should I Sell for $50m … Or Push On And Try to Build a Unicorn?
BusinessInsider had a great story this week on Datto’s $1b exit to Vista Private Equity (more on the new role of PE in SaaS here). So much of it resonated with me, especially the story of the CEO’s 10 year journey, and turning down a $100m offer to sell. A decent offer to buy your […]
Data science: Feeding the all-seeing beast
Pervasive data science is becoming a core enabler of business innovation and competition. Given this importance, it’s worth examining the context of data science to consider its trajectory and future value. In my view, primary challenges around data science for business leaders comes from three sources: Business people do not always understand the power and […]
One Small Change I Made That Improved My Daily Mental State
We all have a pretty good idea about things that drag down our productivity or suck up time that would be better spent on more fulfilling activities. Two years ago I made a commitment to stop bringing my mobile phone into my bedroom and with like a 95% compliance rate this made a big improvement. […]
Want to Really Understand What all the Hype of Cryptocurrency is About?
If you read the headlines you may well think cryptocurrencies are a either a radically new way of paying that is our savior from ossified, corrupt governments or on the other side that they are speculative Ponzi schemes. The reality of course is that cryptocurrencies can be both and can be liberating and corrupting at […]
When to Stop Doing It All Yourself
Perhaps the biggest difference between most first-time founders and most second-time founders is how long they try to do it all themselves. This isn’t a criticism first time you usually sort of have to. You have less capital to hire a team, and less experience building teams. But then after that there are at least […]
IT heroes: Use customer service to build business relationships
Image from iStockphoto The importance of building bridges between IT and business stakeholders is obvious, but getting there is hard. In his book, Driving Digital, veteran CIO Isaac Sacolick describes the need to build these relationships from the bottom up: The solutions and transformational practices that I helped implement across these organizations had more similarities […]
Equifax : Disturbing Developments
Credit-rating company Equifax’s data breach, which involves an estimated 143 million people, may not be the largest that we have seen, after all Yahoo lost billions of emails in a series of data breaches, most of them brought out to the public much later. Given the nature of data at play here, this is clearly […]
What Do Boards Actually Do?
There’s a lot of mystique about what happens at board meetings and a lot of imagined board-room drama. I read commentary or Twitter or blogs and realize that there are also strongly held convictions that there are these evil VCs who do terrible things to mostly altruistic founders. The image of boards and of investors […]
AI on the high seas: Royal Caribbean sets a course for “frictionless and immersive” vacations
Royal Caribbean, the world’s second largest cruise line, operates in 47 different countries with over 50 ships, each of which is a floating city transporting and entertaining between 2,500 to 7,000 guests at a time. Running a cruise line at this scale presents massive logistical challenges. I caught up with Royal Caribbean’s Chief Information Officer […]
Details of Upfront Ventures New $400 Million Fund
I am so proud and humbled to be able to formally announce that Upfront Ventures has raised its 6th venture capital fund in the past 21 years. Upfront VI is our latest core fund and is $400 million to invest in early stage entrepreneurs. This brings our combined funds under management to nearly $2 billion. […]
Artificial intelligence and privacy engineering: Why it matters NOW
As artificial intelligence proliferates, companies and governments are aggregating enormous data sets to feed their AI initiatives. Although privacy is not a new concept in computing, the growth of aggregated data magnifies privacy challenges and leads to extreme ethical risks such as unintentionally building biased AI systems, among many others. Privacy and artificial intelligence are […]
What is the Right Burn Rate for your Startup?
One of the hardest decisions entrepreneurs make when they start a company and raise outside capital is figuring out what an acceptable “burn rate” is. That is, how much should your company be willing to lose in cash every month as you make investments in staff and equipment that funds technology, sales, marketing and management. […]
Should Startups Care About Profitability?
There are certain topics that even some of the smartest people I talk with who aren’t startup oriented can’t fully grok. One of them is whether profitability matters. It’s common cocktail party chatter to hear people confidently pronounce that some well known startup is sure to blow up because, “How could they succeed when they’re […]
Augmented reality: Field service proof points in the enterprise
A demonstration at Oracle’s Modern Customer Experience conference shows why augmented reality is here to stay in the enterprise. Watch AR help repair a slot machine in Las Vegas.
The Two Things to Do. When You Don’t Know What to Do.
There may come a time, or two, in your company when you just don’t know what to do. You aren’t growing fast enough. or The competition seems to be getting the best of you. or You can’t raise financing. or You just lost an important deal. Or maybe more than one. or That great new […]
