Is LinkedIn Useless?
Is LinkedIn useless? Most people you would speak with would say so. Then why does Sequoia put money in it?
The Tech Opportunity in Toys
The $20 billion toy industry has faltered in recent years as children’s tastes and styles of play have changed. Toy spending has been widely seen as migrating to consumer electronics. Children are increasingly craving devices their parents want, many analysts say, like cellphones, digital cameras and portable digital music players, iPod being the best example of a beneficiary of this shift. Is there an opportunity for the tech sector innovators in this transition?
Microsoft + Hollywood
Don’t be surprised if the rules of the content business change dramatically in the future. For example, a successful movie may be turned into a book!
Interviews for Leadership Recruitments …
All your interview questions should try to answer these basic issues …
Domain Knowledge, an Over-rated, Irrelevant factor in Leadership
One obstacle I run into constantly is that my clients insist on hiring from within the same industry. It can be a huge mistake. Why not hire someone who is just plain talented? Believe me, in six to eight months a talented marketing person, or manager, or strategist, will be able to learn everything there is to know about your business - and then there’s the bonus that your new executive is actually talented. IBM’s Lou Gerstner came from RJR Nabisco. Did IBM worry whether Gerstner would be able to switch from selling cookies to computers?
Jeff Christian on Talent
These are notes to myself, from Jeff Christian’s book … Formula Five for an exceptional leader: (1) Honesty and Integrity (2) Intellectual Firepower (3) Energy and Passion (4) Leadership (5) Humility. Exceptional leaders are what talented people become. Signs of talent explained.
Sabrix: Marrying Domain Expertise with Algorithms
The trend question that Sabrix poses for VCs and other enterprise software entrepreneurs: are there other such deep domain knowledge based opportunities which may allow you to carve a niche for yourself, and has a sufficient TAM to be interesting to investors?
And for VCs, this is a shift away from very deep, defensible technology based investments to something that is perhaps not the most challenging technical problem to address. Domain expertise, however, is extremely defensible, especially when married with technology.
Digital Projection: Minus the last bit of Analog
Collinear is a little company that is working on Solid State Illumination for Front and Rear Projection Systems. Led by a veteran CEO with extensive background in Consumer Electronics, the company is working on a very hard problem:
“Utilizing semiconductor lasers and non-linear optics, the Company’s illumination module replaces the last remaining analog components of projection [...]
