Josh Maher's Blog » Innovation
On failure
Tweet Failure has such a negative connotation in our society – the word itself though isn’t a negative word, it isn’t derived from some Latin root that forces it to be negative. It is entirely within our own minds and society that we have developed the understanding of the word failure to mean a bad thing. I have suggested on more than one occasion that we should embrace failure more thoroughly in our society. Even suggesting a Most Influential Failure award for Seattle’s GeekWire and including failure in my 10 brief thoughts on success. Most people have a hard time embracing failure though due to these social norms. Even my own kids do a terrible job embracing failure so I doubt that it is something that any one person can easily … Read entire article »
Filed under: career, Entrepreneurship, Innovation
startup moats
Tweet Figuring out the business strategy for most startups is a hard problem, should there be a focus on users, conversion, margins, licensing, etc? These are all operational aspects that can be changed and adjusted over time and unfortunately these are the primary areas of concern for most startups. What is missing is figuring out where the startup fits in the overall picture, what is their strategic advantage relative to other businesses (young and old)? I came across this tweet by Brad Burnham from Union Square Ventures, they clearly get the question about strategy and have formed an investment thesis around this understanding. USV in 140 characters: invest in large networks of engaged users, differentiated by user experience, and defensible though network effects — Brad Burnham (@BradUSV) June 8, 2011 Looking at USV’s track record, they … Read entire article »
Filed under: Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Investing, Startups
Investing Lessons from the World Financial Symposium
Tweet If you haven’t been following the series on investing lessons from venture capitalists, now is a good time to start. The latest in the series comes from some great insight that was provided at the World Financial Symposium here in Seattle. The question of course that everyone has next is what the hell is the world financial symposium and why is it in Seattle? Amazingly of course the angel investors on hand at the symposium generally had the same thought in response to the always outstanding question of why isn’t Seattle a bigger startup community? Regardless of the amount of angel and venture capitalist investment that happens in the region, there is an amazing amount of talent on the entrepreneur and investor sides of the table. Some of the lessons from … Read entire article »
Filed under: Economics, Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Investing, Seattle, Startups, stocks, Technology
measured and actionable life
Tweet Measured life is worthless if it is not actionable when you need it to be… Yet most of the measurement tools that have been built have been built only around measuring. This is great and leaves the measurer the opportunity to analyze the data, combine it with other data, and gain a deeper understanding or a different perspective. What if we did the analysis though and helped the person measuring themselves without their input? A text at lunch with a restaurant suggestion If you have been tracking your food, your workouts, your sleep etc. Wouldn’t it be nice as your usual lunch time was approaching if your weight management system sent you a friendly text with a link to a dish at a healthy restaurant that has an ingredient/calorie profile that fits your weekly limits? A … Read entire article »
Filed under: Innovation, Technology
Take This Travel And
Tweet I am sick of traveling! There I said it, at least two weeks a month I am on the road with customers staying in some hotel room in some city other than my own. I honestly wouldn’t mind a few days here and there a month. Even one day a week wouldn’t really be all that bad, but when you are planning to be gone for more than half of your family’s life because of your work – I think there is definitely an issue. After all if you are not planning to be with your spouse and kids, what was the reason that you brought them into your life? Even with all that hatred for travel, I get wrapped up in. I enjoy going out to eat at new places, … Read entire article »
Filed under: career, Innovation, Technology
Teams and Individuals
Tweet As most of you know I have a degree in sociology which I am very proud of – I find it fascinating how people work in society and how individuals operate in those environments. A few of my posts here have been a product of that interest and continued passion. I recently came across this article on Culturnicity about team vs. individual ethnographic studies and it got me thinking about the similarities to innovation in general. Before you go too much further, please go read the article so the rest of my analogy makes sense… Seriously – go have a read, it is short and worthwhile. The general idea in the article is comparing the pros and cons of using a team to accomplish the same goal of a longer individual … Read entire article »
Filed under: career, Entrepreneurship, Innovation
Creating Markets
Tweet I have had a few posts recently on my twitter feed about the government creation of markets (I am not talking about the U.S. government specifically by the way). There are a number of these that I am not sure are entirely desired, but nonetheless in retrospect any armchair economist can easily spot the reason the government screwed up and the normal market conditions prevailed. Take the war on drugs for example. The government wanted less drugs so they spent loads of money to capture shipments of drugs and attack drug traffickers. Any reasonable business person would run the numbers and find that if there was a sustainable demand at level X, they should produce and ship enough product to meet the demand at level X and account for the loss to … Read entire article »
Filed under: Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Investing
Mentoring and Experimenting
Tweet This is on the heels of an analysis over at RWW on the success and failure of technology startup accelerators and the subsequent post on Forbes about job creation being the success story in startups even if we can’t easily quantify their success. The key takeaway for accelerators is that they are becoming the university system for tech entrepreneurs. There are a few tiers of accelerators, the top ones have better odds at setting the participants up for immediate success with more exits and successful startups being built from these top tier startups. There are a larger majority of lower tier accelerators that don’t show this same immediate success for the participants. I would bet that just like community college, the participants learn what they need to be successful they just … Read entire article »
Filed under: career, Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Investing, Startups, Technology
