In his much-acclaimed book The Zero Marginal Cost Society, The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons and the Eclipse of Capitalism, palgrave mcmillan 2014, Jeremy Rifkin declares the internet economy and its key ambassadors the millennials to have dethroned capitalism for the sake of the new “World Wide Web” – inspired economic model. According to Rifkin, “openness”, “universal access for … Read More
Smart Tech VCs do not Invest in Brands
There are times when you really wonder… Four days ago, I read an article on hackernoon.com on “The Value of a Brand for Tech Companies” by Cameron McLain, principal at Hummingbird Ventures. The gist of this article is that tech start-ups and VCs alike should embrace the idea, that brands constitute an important value for tech start-ups worth of being … Read More
Tech-Revolution IIoT?
Being a historian of science by education, it amazes me to find most of my contemporaries in the venture business so at ease with detecting with an abundance of certainty “next big things”. How they manage to identify “tech revolutions” within their immediate vicinity or forecast the lives of the generation to come remains a mystery to me. I wish … Read More
ICO Instead of Series A?
Emitting publicly listed shares instead of diluting ownership by a series A financing round sounds like a very tempting way for founders to get going at early stages: Instead of having to “prove” their company’s worth to notoriously skeptical VCs and angels, they would simply have to pimp their equity story and promise things that need not come to fruition. … Read More
Prognostic Fallacies
My most recent blog post dealt with fake problems (and corresponding fake solutions). Today I want to direct my “spotlight” (kindly notice a dose of self-irony here) at fake reasoning and fake explanations. In today’s newsletter “Pioneers’ Breakfast” by the excellent German special interest magazine t3n the reader is invited to read an article on the allegedly inexorable surge of … Read More
Startups Fake Problems Revisited
My post on Monday raised the contention that many pitch decks invent or magnify problems in order to make their “solutions” appear more impressive. I also stated this was an issue particularly pertaining to Germany and less so to start-ups in America, China, France, or the UK. My third claim was that over there, investors operate on more solid empirical … Read More
Think Before You Pivot
Today I just want to quote a recent post by @andrewchen from @a16z which I really liked. It’s from an interview Andrew gave to @AdamRisman from Intercom an (ex) start-up I also truly like. The podcast can be listened to here: https://blog.intercom.com/andrew-chen-on-growth. The pivoting passage I want to quote goes like this: “Adam: You’ve consulted with a lot of growth … Read More
Problems & Solutions: Footnotes on German and American Pitch Decks
The way start-ups are generally supposed to pitch is to present to investors an industry’s problem to which they can provide an, ideally unrivaled, sound, and singular solution. There is hardly a deck that does not follow this rhetoric. And for good reason so. What is problematic though is that, in continental Europe, or, to be more precise, in Germany … Read More
“AR/VR Shows Signs of Advancement – and New Worries”
Movie, TV, Live-Events, Education and Gaming are the fields which proved most disappointing as target branches for AR & VR technologies whereas manufacturing, automotive, real estate and retail give new hope. PerkinsCoie’s Survey Industry insights into the Future of AR/VR – AR/VR shows signs of Advancements – and New Worries of March 2018 shows that gaming’s lead position has suffered … Read More
Aspirational Marketing 2.0
For years on end, celebrity endorsement has been celebrated as the ultimate kick for consumer brands seeking to unleash mass desire. From Borg/ Federer & Rolex to Ronaldo & Nike the strategy was straightforward and – indeed – quite successful. It went like this: If a superstar with mass appeal in sports, entertainment, or whatever publicly praises the brand and/or … Read More