if you're bored, you're not paying attention
This column is a profile of independent Norwegian entrepreneur Jorn Lyseggen.
… Story continues … “Dylan’s Desk: Meltwater aims to build a billion-dollar business without venture capital”Meltwater Group is 10 years old, and has been almost entirely self-funded. Lyseggen started the company in Oslo with $15,000 of his own money and has been growing it through revenues ever since.
I’ve come to the conclusion that my Android phone hates me.
It probably hates you, too.
The breaking point came today when I tried to use my phone to Google the word “Edsel.” Instead of delivering the answer, my phone — a cheap LG model from Virgin Mobile — spontaneously rebooted itself.… Story continues … “Dylan’s Desk: Android hates me, and it doesn’t like you much, either”
This column starts with the $3.4 billion acquisition of SuccessFactors by SAP, ties together “the cloud” with mobile computing, throws in a dash of futurism and somehow winds up with a reference to Glee.
… Story continues … “Dylan’s Desk: Pick up the phone now! Supercomputers are standing by”Want to give your CEO an iPad?
As I write, the VentureBeat offices sit enveloped by a cloud. In all directions, the fog wraps our office building in a soft, gray fuzz, obscuring the views of downtown San Francisco, the bay, and the ocean.
It’s not unlike the cloud of marketing and hype surrounding “cloud” technologies.… Story continues … “Dylan’s Desk: How I learned to stop worrying and love “the cloud””
Caterina Fake: “Much more important than working hard is knowing how to find the right thing to work on.”
In my latest column for VentureBeat, I wrote about my experiences as an entrepreneur during the dot-com boom, and why it’s so important not to delay if you think you’ve got a startup in you. The only way to learn how to start a company is by going out and actually doing it.… Story continues … “Dylan’s Desk: The time to start a company is now”
This @ericries piece from last weekend is one of the smartest things I’ve read on race & meritocracy. He discusses how the gender makeup of major symphony orchestras changed radically after implementing a simple change: Making people do their auditions behind black screens, so the auditors can’t see gender or race, but can only hear the music they’re playing.… Story continues … “One simple change to make hiring more fair”
Glam Media founder Samir Arora thinks he knows the future of media.
The secret, he is betting, is brand advertising displayed against high-quality, premium content.
That stands in stark contrast to the advertising model that’s worked best for the past decade online, in which increasingly specific text advertising is targeted at potential customers’ immediate desires, largely via search engines.… Story continues … “Dylan’s Desk: How the Internet is dividing publishers into two camps”
I was a judge at a startup competition recently. It was great fun and all of the 8 contestants were brave enough to make a 2-minute presentation in front of a room full of people — not to mention four cranky judges.… Story continues … “Norwegians take top prize in startup competition, with a killer presentation”
Minted, a marketplace for community-sourced paper products like custom stationery and wedding invitations, has raised a big pile of the green kind of paper — the kind you can spend.
For anyone whose parents told them to stop doodling Celtic knots or obsessively repetitive graphic designs and focus on doing schoolwork so they could get a decent job, that must come as encouraging news.… Story continues … “Art can pay: Minted raises $5.5M to expand graphic design and stationery business”