Hi, my name is Vincent, a now-familiar face in Tech IT Easy’s blogging family, and today I’d like to write about my thoughts about startups’ reasons to fail (and as a consequence: reasons to succeed). This is my 3rd non-tech topic in a row, and if you hadn’t guessed it, I have little inspiration to write about tech these days.

So, “why do startups fail?” seems to be a relevant question these days and I guess to everyone running or thinking about running or working in a startup. Depending on who you talk to, no actually pretty much everyone, over 90% of startups fail within 2 years of their launch. The stats vary according to whom the startup works with, it is much lower with venture-funded companies, as well as within certain incubators.

The Credit Crunch

One of the most popular reasons I heard while writing my thesis (which involved me interviewing over 200 tech-startups), is of course lack of money. That seems really relevant today, and is certainly a factor.

To give a personal example of how the credit crunch is affecting our lives negatively, back when I started a bachelor in Manchester, UK, about 10 years ago, I was able to get a student-loan quite easily at a British bank. You walk in with your details, get a 1000 pounds overdraft and a credit-card to boot. This was still the case until a few months ago. My brother, who just left for Lancaster, UK, was counting on a similar deal. But banks had withdrawn that service to non-UK citizen, rather abruptly, forcing my brother to find alternative solutions. Banks don’t care about who needs or deserves a loan, when they cut it off, we’re all screwed.

Fred Wilson pointed out that seed-funding will likely suffer most, and true, banks are, both directly and indirectly, an incredibly important source in that arena, as well as at later stages. The graph below showed my own results, for two measures carried out during 2005 and 2006 on the investment climate for high-tech startups in the Netherlands (a Dutch version of that report can be downloaded here).

What this graph also shows is that even pre-credit crunch, most startups didn’t use or weren’t able to use much beyond their own savings (the turquoise part) at the seed and sometimes the later stage (of course that still includes credit cards and similar bank-related funding sources). No way that this is something that should be generalised across all countries of course, I imagine that the distribution of investors will vary quite substantially from country to country.

Forget funding

I happen to think that funding is not the factor to focus on when talking about startup failure. In a perfect financial market, which, many financial people try to convince me, exists, you get funding if other conditions are in place. Receiving an investment is a validation of your idea, and if you can’t get investors to talk to you it’s either because:

1. Your idea is bad.
2. Your presentation is bad.
3. There are too many similar startups applying for funding.

The key here is then for 1. to improve your idea, for 2. to improve your presentation, and for 3. to stop being a sheep and reinventing the mousetrap. While this makes me sound like an asshole, the point is that none of these reasons have to do with funding, they have to do with the quality of your venture.

Non-financial reasons for failing

A startup is a machine that needs to be built, needs to operated and maintained, and needs to produce sufficient output/income to cover the costs that building, operating, and maintaining require.

Therefore, startup-failure is related to:

• Too expensive a building-process (both in money, people, and time), which comes out of bad planning and insufficient skillsets to get results.
• Improper operation and maintenance, which is really to do with bad HR-practices.
• Insufficient output/income, which can be related to the quantity produced (bad planning, skills), bad pricing, and of course a bad market.

The “bad market” factor is an interesting one, because it seems very related to the credit crunch problem. My brother, who is forced to look elsewhere for funding, will be less likely to buy a laptop from the start now. Everything ties back into funding somehow.

Bad market or bad business-model?

The top business models, in my mind, are built to withstand recession. Some could argue that they are built during a recession. An example of this is discounters like Aldi, which was built in a poor Germany, many years ago, and has caused a revolution in European retailing. Im not 100% sure, but I think that the strength of European discounters here has even prevented monsters like Wal Mart from taking over the place.

Other streams of thought about this take you into “blue ocean” or “long tail” territory, both somewhat hip ways of saying that you should think outside the box.

A bad market can be a lack of desire on consumers part to pay for your product. And it can be that the market is simply to small, suggesting that it may be a good idea to think globally from the start. Certainly, investors like the idea of entrepreneurs thinking (realistically) big. Also when you see some of the industry-growth-stats in emerging economies, it makes sense to target those markets, instead of the many 0-2% growth economies in the Western world.

I guess what I’m saying is that a bad market is just an excuse for failure. If your business is advertising dependent, you should be aware that most advertisers cut their spending during recessions, a recession that has been predicted for years now. The same applies to certain luxury goods, etc. So, perhaps the market isn’t bad, perhaps the business-model is bad too.

In summary…

Yes, the credit crunch is scary, as are all recessions. Yes, we would all like our ideas to simply be output – input = profit. But the core of entrepreneurship is to think in opportunities, to not get stuck in ideas, and be market-focussed. It is about breaking rules and making new ones. And, while it is a harsh world where failure is accompanied by a high price, at the core of entrepreneurship is also optimism—the belief that everything can be solved with the right perspective.

So why do startups fail? By setting themselves up to fail.

Vincent out

Hi, my name is Vincent and I’m a co-blogger on Tech IT Easy. Today, my topic is about people within an entrepreneurial context.

People make for an intriguing topic, partially because we all have opinions on what makes a good friend or partner, but we aren’t always able to translate it to practice. As someone who is a partial introvert, I’ve always liked to observe people around me and note things about them. And I like asking people what they think about things like people, and I like to read books about the subject, and I like to write about it. In the end, you build up a nice library of pseudo-science (which I define as a collection of anecdotes).

Is there such a thing as archetypes and (why) should we care?

Yes, I think there is. One of the oldest pseudo-sciences about people in human history, Astrology, classifies people into four main elements: air, water, earth, and fire, each saying something about the core-ego of that person. Most simply put, air-signs are strong socially; water-signs are creative; earth-signs are grounded; and fire-signs can burn you. No, just kidding, I’m fire, but they are passionate. If you don’t believe in Astrology, I recommend picking up a serious book about it and forgetting about the newspaper-”predictions.” Also understand that we all are actually have 12 star-signs or houses, describing different attitudes in different areas of life.

Less pseudo (perhaps), there is a bunch of literature on archetypes in teams, Jeremy and me even wrote an essay about it many years ago. In my opinion, or rather what I like best, is when three characteristics are present in teams: the social, the detailed, and the integrator. The social part is the one that makes the initial contacts (there are certain people that are great at that). The detailed person watches the bottom-line and makes for a great project-manager. And the integrator has the vision and closes the sale. Not necessarily three different people, but three archetypes or traits I consider important to getting things done. Opinions vary on this and are probably more scientific than mine.

You can also classify people by age, education, culture, gender, and other traits, which affect their ability to work together, as does, the size of the team. Educational and cultural diversity affect teams negatively, and studies have shown that teams larger than 9 don’t work as well.

I personally like the idea of 5 people in a team. It’s just small enough not to lose the overview, there’s (hopefully) some duplication of skills, it’s an uneven number during a vote, they all fit in a car, and you can call them the A-Team.

Should you care about archetypes? It’s very hard to build a good team, but what matters in the end is not that all archetypes are represented, but that team-members complement each other.

Teams and startups

In an entrepreneurial context, there’s a couple of contexts in which archetypes matter. One is the initial network, which you use to develop your idea. Part of that network may initially evolve into a board of directors and investors, that will also likely be on the board. Important here are at least two traits:

• Advisors (pre- and post-startups) should add valuable knowledge in a field relevant to the startup: this can be the industry, but also the underlying tech, as well as more practical matters like running the startup. They should also complement you.
• Advisors should be critical, but constructively so. I mean, you can hammer a guy to the ground, but at least do it for a good reason.

I’m sure there’s a hidden rule somewhere that advisors should also be investors as well—put your money where your mouth is.

The other area where teams matter is of course the development of the company. We talked about the e-myth several times on this blog already, and it’s a pretty formative part of my thinking about teams: there are those that manage and there are those that execute, and each role should be clearly defined, even if the management and the execution is done by that same person.

It’s kind of why I believe in area-champions, by which I mean people that are responsible for a certain area in the company. In a software-development-company, you’d need a chief architect to be responsible for the tech part of things. You’ll also need other champions for the marketing and sales function(s), for the operational and financial side of things, etc., etc. Here, archetypes matter and are both defined by personality, as well as experience and skill-set.

I should add that, while I asked about the relevance of process-coding before, I don’t actually believe that you should have to spell out every task for a person, unless that person works in a McDonalds-kitchen or you’re writing a franchisees manual.

In conclusion: Your value matters most

People are building blocks, just like anything else in life, but the one thing I learned from people like my father and other networkers that I respect, is that you don’t get help by treating people as simple building blocks.

If you are a good person and treat people in a fair manner, if you are smart and add value to other people’s lives, then people will automatically come to you. If you’re none of these things, you can still hand out 100s of business-cards, spam your name a 1000 times through social networks, blogs, and other means, you’ll still not be successful. Because you forgot the essential lesson, that a network is only as strong as its individual nodes. And that networks are self-selecting.

Vincent out

Hi, my name is Vincent and I’m a group-blogger on Tech IT Easy. Today, I plan to talk to you about where I see Tech IT Easy going.

We can’t really say that Tech IT Easy is that much of a group-blog anymore. As far as I can count, 3 people out of 15, outside of me, are still posting occasionally. And that’s fine, this isn’t a job, we are a not-for-profit-just-for-fun organisation. And most of us have moved on in life since we started blogging here, me included.

Group-blogging is a funny animal. When you run your own blog or diary, writing is fairly easy. You experience, you think, you write, presto. In theory, group-blogging should be similar, but it isn’t. In a solo-operation, you develop relationships with your readers (and your words!), it ends up being a continuous back & forth, between your thoughts, their feedback, and your renewed thoughts.

In a group-blog, it is harder to maintain that relationship. Different topics, different writing styles, different types of readers, etc. all lead to an interrupted experience for authors and readers both. It’s like you give a presentation, but people keep jumping in with their own presentations.

I suppose I’m saying that group-blogging is bad. I’m not, but there are certain conditions that have to be met. For one, you have to respect the reader, your customer. Why is he here and are we constantly offering him value? Are we providing him continuous value or interrupted value? Are we competitive in our approach? Are we confident and clear? The four C’s of positioning: clarity, confidence, continuity, and competitiveness.

In my opinion, that is not the case. None of us compete, because we literarily cannot afford to. The Techmeme-leaderboard has been like a mirror to many a blogger like myself, showing us that the most read “blogs” are in fact professional media-companies with a business-model similar to newspapers. They serve adverts and pay their bloggers. We do not, which creates an imperfect opportunity cost situation. Do I make money in a job or do I blog here pro bono? Naturally, there are other rewards to blogging here, but I won’t go into that now.

Continuity and clarity are related. Continuity in groups is just like it is in organisations: a standard is set and met or else you are fired. Well that also doesn’t happen here and rarely will. Clarity is about how clearly you write about your topic of the day, are you making sense to the reader? Again standards can be set for that, I recommend learning Ogilvy by hard.

The most important one: confidence. This post I write is not confident. Well, I am confident in the sense that you all know me by now. But I am not at all confident about what will be written on this blog tomorrow or next week. That is something that is up to every author, pretty much.

Now, the original intent of this post is not to sound overly negative. Everyone here has qualities, or else they wouldn’t be a blogger. Everyone can write. But writing also takes following a voice that’s in your head and just going for it. And it requires you to say stop at some point. Around 175 words ago for me would be best.

A suggested approach to positioning

This is meant for our current authors, but also future ones. And to clarify, I am not the boss here, but a wise old guy at the very least.

• Rule 1: introduce yourselves. If you don’t put your name down, how will the reader know it’s you? Apart from Georgia, most of us don’t paint our identity (sometimes quite literarily) with words.
• Rule 2: explain your thesis in a sentence or two in the intro.
• Rule 3: use pictures or don’t, up to you.
• Rule 4: don’t write as much as me (400 is a good length)… and if you do write more, use bullet-points and headings.
• Rule 5: paragraphs are nice to read, around 6 lines at the most, I would say.
• Rule 6: Don’t be afraid to write about other things than tech. It’s you we are reading and the more you write, the more we get you. And honestly, I have little in tech left in me to write about.
• Rule 7: Don’t get too creative with text. Georgia is the exception to the rule, but even her posts I have to read twice, sometimes thrice to get what she’s talking about. Of course, the thesis at the beginning helps.
• Rule 8: write as if you’re applying for a job. Tech IT Easy may not pay you, but you will want to put it on your CV. And the only way to that is if it is a product that you’re proud of.
• Rule 9: Don’t be cheap with your content. I sometimes felt like just posting a video, because I was angry at the lack of feedback I was getting. That’s a bad impulse! Respect your readers and they respect you.
• Rule 10: the best blogposts that are at the tip of your head, just when you’re writing them. If you need to research your post extensively(!), while writing it, it’s probably going to be a bad blogpost.
• Rule 11: always end lists with an uneven number… to piss off that Digg-crowd.

Clarity, competitiveness, continuity, confidence, and not losing yourself in the middle, that’s what it’s all about.

The end,

Vincent

P.S. If you’d like to show us how a good group-blog is produced, click here.

So some short thoughts. Plenty of people have been criticising both the Seinfeld+Gates ads and now the crowdsourced variant of “I’m a PC.” I’ve only really read three points of view, namely Micheal Arrington’s (a media guy), John Gruber’s (a Mac-head), and Jason Kottke’s (an (alternative internet-)culture guy). All three have been fairly negative about it.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkZdkHylJ3w&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&fs=1]

Jason writes:

“That’s the problem with Microsoft’s ads. They’re still #1 and the bigger company, but by referencing Apple’s successful ad campaign, they’re acting like Apple is #1.”

I think this pretty much echoes John’s point of view.

The problem here is that both treat PCs as being one market… the Apple-one, which is students, “stupid users (like me) who don’t want to know what’s under the hood,” and a certain type of individualistic professional. In that market, yes, Apple appears to be doing quite well.

Microsoft has a somewhat different segmentation of customers. It has the three above, it also has the cheapskate (those that have it pre-installed with a $400 PC or those that pirate it), the business-traveller, and the Dell-crowd (lot’s and lot’s of grey machines in big equally grey buildings).

What has Microsoft done with the “I’m a PC” advert? It has attacked a strong player in one segment that it and Apple are both competing for. Apple’s “I’m a Mac” has been promoting Macs as the easy and elegant solution, while Microsoft-PCs are the clunky and slightly psychotic alternative that nobody wants. By showing a diverse set of PC-users, Microsoft simply removed the foundation that Apple built this last year and a half, and has levelled the playing-field.

Is it a me-too ad? Definitely! But we all know about Apple by now and there’s no use pretending it doesn’t exist. Will it affect Apple’s bottom-line? I’m not much of a believer in advertising, but at the very least Apple will have to change their game. I think that Micheal Arrington makes a similar point here.

Does this have any effect at all on Microsoft’s no. 1 market, the Dell-one? It does if you believe that students, “stupid users,” and individualistic professionals will bring about a revolution in the work-place, which may happen eventually. In the short-to-medium term (the one the stock-market cares most about) however, my gut tells me that all of this is pretty irrelevant to that business-only segment, which cares about creating products that work on a massive scale, and about buying PCs that become cheaper with economies of scale.

Vincent

If there’s one job I hate, it’s digging into Excel. I can read formulas as well as the next guy and can put a financial or marketing spreadsheet together easily enough. But man, it’s just such a chore!

The problem is, I believe, related to my own preference, which is definitely visual. I like drawing things out, I don’t like calculating them. I like seeing the effect that numbers have, I believe in the power of numbers, but I don’t really want to see the math. I know there’s other people that prefer the complete opposite, but we all get confronted with Excel-related tasks in our lives.

I’ve been thinking for about 5 minutes about this, but I’ve already come up with three improvements I want to see in Excel and other spreadsheet-packages. They are:

1. Instant zooming in when dragging

Sometimes, e.g. for a pivot-table, you need to select a very specific region on your spreadsheet. It sucks to drag the selection down together with scrolling the screen. Instead, it would be much nicer to just have the screen change, according to the action that you’re doing. Does that make sense? Anyway, here’s a picture. Excel also usually shows a little pop-up with the exact co-ordinates of where you’re at.

2. Visually displaying data

I think what I like the least about Excel is that I eventually lose the overview, especially after crunching away for a few hours. I’d like insta-graph™, by which I mean, I’d like to have instant graphical feedback on the effect that a change in inputs has on the whole. Just inserting a graph already does this, but is generally something you do after you finish your sheet. Instead, I’d like it to be in the sidebar, which both Excel and Numbers are using in Mac OSX.

3. Just drawing the line

No picture this time, but imagine just drawing a line on a graph and Excel filling in the numbers. Or, adjusting a bar-chart, by pulling bars up and down and having Excel doing the rest. Now that would be heaven for me!

Give me another hour, and I’d probably come up with another 10 suggestions. What it comes down to is that, right now, much of software is designed with a “my way or the highway” attitude, and especially things like Excel have shown little in terms of innovation over the years. I’d really like there to be more catering for the rest of us (probably a majority) that wants nothing to do with Excel, but is somehow forced into it. Excel is important after all, especially when trying to plan out your finances, which we all have to do at some point. Apple’s Numbers was promising, but didn’t really deliver either.

So where’s our salvation? And what would you like to see changed in Excel?

It’s a simple question, but one, I’m sure, will solicit a plethora of answers. I previously asked what the ingredients to starting a company were, and I’m sure part of the answers are there, e.g.:

• I don’t have a good idea
• I don’t have the knowledge
• I don’t have the team
• I don’t have the money
• etc.

On the other side, there’s the risk-component, e.g.:

• I can’t bear to fail
• I don’t want to go into debt
• I got kids
• etc.

The people that do start businesses have a number of characteristics, such as:

• the non-desire to work in a regular job
• a network of people that they bounce ideas off
• a stuburn belief in oneself and the idea
• the willingness to take risks to get to where you want to go
• the love for it

I’m still figuring many things out myself, but one thing that I do believe is that life is like a computer that can be programmed.

• You can come up with a good idea and figure out a system of how to research its viability.
• You can find people everywhere to talk to about your ideas and how to set up your business
• You can get money with a good idea
• And you can create tons of positive signals that boost your self-confidence and the belief in your idea.

But it will always be an opportunity cost, between the risk that you take (losing a steady income, endangering your home-situation, etc.) and the upside, that you actually get to do what you want to do (sort of: your customers are still your boss).

So what’s stopping you from being an entrepreneur?

Vincent

I recently read a ‘filler’-article in Fortune Magazine, entitled “The luxury of choice.” It’s about how more and more products today are being customised for picky end-consumers. The way society is evolving, I think that such ‘pickiness’ is something that is more and more on the rise.

I wonder if such a thing also applies to software, by which I mean anything that can be coded and presented to someone on a screen (so web-apps as well). Traditionally, the power of software has certainly been to mass-produce the same thing, save on storage, reproduction, and distribution, and collect the cash.

But for certain people, like me for instance (more right-brained than left) it’s often quite frustrating that I can’t shift software around the way I want. To me, Excel should be 3d, mapping not only the co-evolution of variables over time, but also how different forces, on a Z-bar affect these variables. I’m also a Visio guy and would love for that to integrate well with the numbers.

Beyond that there’s certainly the promise of multi-touch that I find exciting, not because I want to shake things around on the iPhone, but because it’s often much simpler to communicate with a drawing. Instead I’m forced to type this text into an editor and hope you can read between the lines.

I’m sure that companies can have all kinds of things customised these days. I was reading an interview with Micheal Dell (from 1998), who talked about how Dell pre-installed custom-software for companies at the factory already, to save the sys-admins the hassle. These days, I’m sure the magic of networks changed much of that, though the principle remains the same.

But the core of my thinking is that customers, individuals like you and me, are becoming more and more conscious of their rights. They are able to become activists at the click of a button. The internet and the media is making what is and what should be more and more transparent.

When I visualise “luxurious” software, I don’t necessarily see it as expensive either. It only takes a single company to realise that there is a market out there for doing things differently, without charging much for it. All it takes is a smart way to collect information about a customer and an equally smart way to translate that into a customised piece of software for you and me.

Vincent

Not as impressed as Vince with the new browser. Buggy (error at startup time after migrating the favorites) unable to access gmail, suspicious googleUpdate.exe process still active after I’ve closed the app etc …

However, the comic is quite a fascinating experience.

Documenting software to transmit knowledge has always been something I’ve loved to do. The reason is : along with tests, documentation is another abandonned child of the developpers and as such I feel a lot of tenderness towards this activity.

Head First series has been an amazing step toward transmitting knowledge. Kathy Sierra has been studying cognitive science so she knows a tad bout the subject.

But here we’re just moving a step further : a real artist is documenting this rather geeky product …

Scott Mc Cloud is a graphic artist and he has been approached by google to write the specs of the Google Browser. The old times of truck loads of documentation delivered together with your software by the big cat  seems like ages ago.

Kathy Sierra taught us why a) conversational writing kicks formal writing whenever it comes to teach and have your audience remembering and b) Graphics have people responding. Google learned their lesson very well thank you and decided to do both.

At GLV puts it in twitter : Google Chrome’s coolness is mostly under the hood. Hard to convince non-programmers why that’s important. The comic is a brilliant solution.

Best thing : the main characters are software engineers. Respect to the alpha geeks indeed.

Check out Scott interview at techRadar.

(Hi it’s Cecil here. As usual, a copy of this post is available on Heavy Mental)

The aim of this new serie is to propose quick (errrm…) and synthetic overview of a key concept of the IT industry, based on various media and quotes. Lately, I have spent some time googling around for some innovation inputs and it took me a while to gather all this material. So this comes as some sort of digest.

Scott Berkun (again and again !) has been the constant inspiration of this digest. He will lead us through this bulletin with this brilliant video of his lecture on the topic @ Carnegie Mellon (50ish minutes – recommend to view after reading the post). [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amt3ag2BaKc]

Read more »

“Ouch, it hurts, it hurts!” … “Oh yeah, that feels good, so good!” Guess which one is all other browsers moaning collectively (Microsoft & Firefox no. 1), and which one is the geeks…

Let me start by saying that Google Chrome rocks! OK, it crashed about 2 mins after I started it, and I think it has a process running in the background, which speeds up the launch, but which I hate, and it is Windows-only, which I hate 100x, but… it rocks! It’s simple, love that, it completely takes in all the bookmarks you had in Firefox, love that, and Gmail, man, Gmail loads like lightning! The browser loads like lightning too, because of the background process, can’t be any other reason.

Gmail’s loading speed confirms it: Google Chrome is Not a browser. Repeat: it is not a browser. It is a Google app-launcher. It is meant to bring the Google ecosystem to Joe Schmoe on Windows, who may know Google, but hasn’t thought about using its calendar, office-suite, or email, for that matter.

It is, to use a buzz-term, an in-the-cloud facilitator, bringing us one step closer to no longer needing computer-processing and storage, but just doing everything (essential) through an internet-connection. I don’t think, I’ve been this excited about a browser since Phoenix (what Firefox used to be called), which was in 2002, 6 years ago.

What’s different? Or what did Phoenix and now Chrome have in common? Phoenix had tabs, it introduced extensions, it blocked the pop-ups that IE never would. It was an evolution over the status quo. Google Chrome is just a browser, built on Safari’s Webkit-engine, with no extensions, but it helps us do what we were already doing, better. Because the world has evolved from the extension-model, it has gone way beyond what a company like Microsoft has even imagined. We live in a world where web-services matter!

I don’t use an rss-reader, I use Netvibes. I don’t use a mail-app, I use Gmail or Facebook. I don’t use a blogging-app (well actually I do, but the majority doesn’t), I use Wordpress.com. I don’t use MSN, I use Twitter or FriendFeed. When I’m on my PC, I’m in fact on the web, and the desktop only exists for work-documents and multimedia.

Google bites right into that trend, it executed well (ok, unstable browser, but localised in my language), it is a window in a world that 100s of thousands, if not millions, have accepted as their modus operandi.

Strategic angles

The love for strategy is really just the love for competition, disguised by fancy words.

Microsoft’s unbreakable chain?
Microsoft’s strength in the 90s was its software-platform. It was strong on multiple levels: market leader in OS, market leader in Office. And consequently, and still, market leader in browsers. It was able to build all these pieces of software on top of each other, tie them together, so that it would be an automatic choice to use them all. This is still the case today, as it is, by default, installed on 80% of computers out there (don’t quote me on this). Backwards integration, which also made it the number one choice for businesses, who like having the same software installed on 1000s of machines at once. And forward integration, through Office and IE, which add functionality in the value chain towards the consumer. From IE, Microsoft could build towards ActiveX and .Net, Silverlight, and other web-services that it was selling/giving to consumers.

Displacement by Firefox?
Yes and no… For displacement to occur there needs to be some kind of commercial angle. Firefox was built on top of open source principles, which is definitely disruptive, but it wasn’t until Google came into play, that Firefox became a commercial success. Google, these last few years, became the cash-cow for Firefox and other browsers, through affiliate fees it was paying for the use of the search-box.

While that’s cool, it also placed Google into a power-position. It knew that there was money to be made with browsers, it knew how much money there was to be made, so it just had to make the right move at the right time.

Google power
I already raved on why I think Chrome rocks, but for Google, the situation is actually pretty similar to Microsoft, except from the web towards the desktop, instead of the other way around. It is the market-leader in search, which some say is the operation system on the web. Nothing happens, without it going by Google, which can make or break a business. As is the case for browsers depending on Google cash as well.

Where Google leads is the web, and it has a pretty good read on where user-models are evolving too: web-services, with some anchoring on the desktop. So building a browser makes sense, it’s a step in bridging the value chain from web to desktop. Where it gets scary for Microsoft (which also collects Google cash through IE, I think), is when Chrome-users start getting the hint that Gmail works great, that Google Docs will hopefully work great (offline), etc. etc.

And I’m completely leaving Android out of this, whose future I still find hard to read… but I’m hopeful. Chrome definitely proves that Google can build software.

Doesn’t vertical integration rock? Doesn’t Chrome rock? I think they both do.

Vincent, the fanboy. Out.

P.S. I’m also not commenting on Firefox’s Ubiquity, it’ll be interesting to see where that goes… also largely built on Google-tech.

I’ve been posting way too much about (social) media on Tech IT Easy and I’m sick & tired of it… of both social media *and* writing about it. There’s nothing left to say; everything that has been done, has been done. There will be some “process innovation,” sure, the internet is famous for it. But you know what? You can’t place a human being into a user-bucket and expect your site to fill up. Eventually, all kind of things go wrong, because people aren’t users, they are: MFECWCNBPIABs (multi-faceted, evolving creatures, which cannot be placed in a box—.com: that URL’s gonna be worth millions some day…).

The reason, I’m sick of it is because I take more and more a managerial attitude towards tools, how they fit into my life (and that of organisations). I ask myself: how can they be measured—do they increase productivity, in what way, what other measurable benefits are they? Are there use-cases—are super-efficient individuals and organisations using them effectively, if so how, and where is it published (Analysts’ reports don’t count)!?

The thing is, social media isn’t Tech. People make it out as if it was, because social “media’ists” are the Loudest people on the internet. But these are the guys that write books, (get paid to) speak at conferences, place ads on their blogs etc. A conflict of interest, if there ever was one! Every single A-lister has a stake in social media, whether it is their blog, filling up their blog, or using social networks as a way to market their blog.

I’m done with it. No more social-media “marketing” from me!

So where’s the exciting tech at? What are the next horizons that I want to focus on?

• Mobile tech perhaps: I’ve had a post entitled ” the headache that is mobile tech” in my pipeline for a while now, just never got around to finishing it. Essentially, mobile tech (by which I also mean software) is a nightmare, for many obvious and subtle reasons, and I’d love to find an answer on how to circumvent these challenges. At the same time, I still see mobile as a necessary evolution to PCs for many reasons: no.1 being that they also place human beings into “user”-categories.
• Green tech perhaps: reasons to love this subject is that it is a source of competitive advantage for companies. Just look at Wal Mart and how it’s setting a standard, but also look at Shell and how it’s focussing on alternative technologies. Adversity breeds innovation!
• Finding new (more democratic) investment models: I’m not finance-guy, but my thesis was 99% about the financial problems being faced by tech startups. Similarly, there is a big need for financing people all over this planet, which organisations like Kiva are trying to solve. It may be more of a social movement, than a technology, that’s not to say that there aren’t overlaps. And I’m sick & tired of banks abusing our money and creating scandals like the current real estate crisis.

Those are my three, for now, though not exclusively. For myself, I’m interested in new ways to e-commerce for instance. I might write something about that in a few months. If there is an exciting tech on the horizon that you feel should be covered more often, feel free to suggest it in the comments!

In any case, if I post another word about social media on Tech IT Easy, please internet-slap me.

(That does not count for my fellow bloggers on Tech IT Easy, of course!!!)

With best regards,

Vincent

So Fidji Simo and Remy Miralles just got married! You can all congratulate them both here.

They announced it around 3-4 times this weekend, and I congratulated them three times on three separate platforms already! There is so much choice out there today, that I think content-creators (Fidji et al) and content-consumers (me et al) are confused about what the best medium is to communicate.

I know I sound old, but it used to be so simple in the good old days, where someone would get married, you’d pick up the phone and just congratulate them.

Anyway, for the fourth and (hopefully) last time: congratulations Fidji and Remy!!!!

The Tech IT Easy gang!