In the best of times and the worst of times, performant entrepreneurs will thrive, survive, and prevail. VC Focus During Lean Times Tech has been arguably overdue for a correction of sorts, not unlike high finance during the 2008 Great Recession. And VCs have tightened their belts in anticipation of the impending downturn mixed with…

Pricing your product or service appropriately is one of the most important elements that impact customer adoption and your company’s ability to scale. Are you doing it correctly? — Introduction & Callouts There’s been a lot of books and articles written about pricing strategy. Some classic terms you’re probably familiar with are “cost-plus” or “value-based” or “competitive pricing”, among others. In this article, I’m not going to discuss those things because they are theoretical frameworks and easily researched via Google. Instead, I…

Enjoy the free digital version here. If you purchase the physical book or the eBook, proceeds will go to advancing children’s cancer research. How I Modeled a Walrus after a Potato and Sent him to Space Our Storytime Ritual I’m not the most creative person. But I’m a practical father and husband. I have two little rioters at home, ages 4 and 2, respectively. Like many…

Big data and the ability to analyze it, has forever changed the landscape of human talent. It used to be that a person’s professional relevance and value were highly associated with subject-matter expertise. If you possessed domain knowledge, it made you special. Today, the availability and accessibility of big data…

Why the “notice and consent” model is broken, and what we can do about it instead. The Problem with Consent-driven Privacy Models For as long as we can remember, the fundamental tenets of privacy regulation was to put folks in control of their own data by deciding three basic things: whether to share their data how…

The transformation of economic coordination systems, from corporations to distributed gig networks to decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO) — The rise of corporations as coordination mechanisms Back in the 1800s, if you had told people that they’d be working for large multi-national corporations, they’d have called you crazy. Throughout (and even after) the industrialization in the US, most folks worked day-long jobs in local factories, textile mills, steel plants, oil derries, coal mines, etc. And it…

Great companies know their own identities inside and out. They focus on their core competencies and don’t pretend to be something they’re not. — It seems like every day, a new “tech” company is invented. Or re-invented. I can hardly tell the difference anymore. The amount of spin, marketing, and branding that goes into forcing a “tech” identity is dizzying at best. And at worst, it’s misleading, unproductive, and destructive.

“Commodities” are interchangeable goods or homogenous products. As artificial intelligence (AI) technology becomes ubiquitous, accessible, easier to use, and more affordable to all businesses, what implications does it have on competitive dynamics and strategy? Lessons from cloud computing foundational services You don’t have to look too far back in time. Cloud computing isn’t that old, but…