Archives / November, 2004

The Rumors of Email's Demise Have Been Greatly Exaggerated, Part II

The Rumors of Email’s Demise Have Been Greatly Exaggerated, Part II Fred beat me to it.  There was an interesting article floating around yesterday about how Korea, which is one of the cutting edge nations in terms of technology usage, is finding that younger people prefer electronic communications like SMS text messaging and IM to email.  Fred says he sees that trend here in his teenage kids as well. It will be interesting to see how this develops.  It may be over the long haul that more personal communication happens over SMS and IM, but I’m still a believer in email for more formal business communications, any longer form note, and distribution of content or marketing that is best served…

Why Entrepreneurship is Like Windows

Why Entrepreneurship is Like Windows My family and I had a great and very relaxing Thanksgiving holiday, and I hope you did as well.  I always enjoy the four-day weekend — it’s one of the few times during the year where no one (outside of retail) is working, so I always get to relax and take some mental time away from work.  It’s often said that no matter how many hours a day an entrepreneur is in the office, he or she is always working mentally.  It occurred to me this past weekend that being an entrepreneur is a lot like Windows in this way: Usually, at night, you’re in Screen Saver mode.  One little jiggle of the mouse, and…

Everyone’s a Marketer, Part II

Everyone’s a Marketer, Part II In Part I of this posting, I talked about how everyone’s job function is increasingly touching customers and therefore, in our networked world, everyone needs to think like a marketer.  This posting has the same theme but a different spin.  From the perspective of the individual person (in a company, and in life), marketing is central to success, although the definition of your target market needs to change with the circumstances. Interviewing for a job?  How good a job have you done building the brand of you (your list of accomplishments)?  How good is your collateral (resume)? Want to get an increase in your department’s budget or buy a new piece of hardware?  Have you…

Complex Collaborations

Complex Collaborations I just read a new book entitled Business Without Boundaries:  An Action Framework for Collaborating Across Time, Distance, Organization, and Culture.  I happen to know one of the authors, Don Mankin, who was on our trip to Antarctica last year.  The book is a good, quick read for anyone running an organization that requires any degree of complex collaboration, whether in the form of multiple offices with a single company, close relationships with suppliers or customers or channel partners, or even a joint venture. Mankin and his co-author Susan Cohen present three case studies:  John Deere, Radica, and Solectron.  They then tie their learnings together into a solid framework that’s almost a how-to checklist for organization leaders to…

Reverse Engineering Venture Economics

Reverse Engineering Venture Economics Most entrepreneurs don’t really understand how their VC investors actually make money, so I thought I’d take a shot at explaining it in general terms. Let’s say a venture firm raises $100 million from a series of what they call Limited Partners, or LPs.  LPs can be anything from diversified institutional investors like pension funds or banks to high net worth individuals.  The partners in the venture firm, or General Partners (GPs) typically derive money from two sources. First, they receive a small percentage of their fund as an annual management fee to pay basic operating expenses.  These fees range in size, but a typical one is 2% per year.  So on the $100 million fund,…

For Whom the Bell Tolls, Part II

For Whom the Bell Tolls, Part II Great news for fans of Vonage and other Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) services.  Today, the  The Wall Street Journal (that link may only work for a week or so) reported that FCC Chairman Michael Powell just drove a successful vote to declare VOIP an interstate service, exempt from state regulation and really paving the way for much smoother and broader adoption. I’ve received a number of comments on my earlier posting which sang the praises of Vonage and VOIP, and apparently not everyone has had the same positive experience as we’ve had with the service.  But it’s still going strong for us!

Gmail – I Don’t Get It, Part II

Gmail – I Don’t Get It, Part II Back in June, I blogged about Google’s new Gmail service, how I didn’t understand the fuss, and how its features would ultimately be replicated and true usership stalled at a couple million.  I stand by those assertions (just look at what Yahoo, Hotmail, and Lookout have done to the landscape since then), but my company Return Path published some data today that’s interesting on this topic. We run the largest Email Forwarding and Email Change of Address service around, so our data on email switching is pretty solid — we’ve had about 16 million consumers register a change of email with us in total, and about 25,000 new ones come in every…

Caught In Their Own Underwear

Caught In Their Own Underwear This is, as Brad says, priceless. According to PC World, verification emails sent by the challenge/response anti-spam technology from Mailblocks, Inc., which is now owned by AOL, are being blocked by…you guessed it, AOL (and Earthlink, too). Read the full article here. This is a little embarrassing for AOL, but it really underscores the continuing problem in the world of email, spam, and anti-spam systems: false positives. It’s almost impossible, with the moving targets of technology, consumer complaints, and aggressive spammers, to get filtering right 100% of the time. We all know the multi-faceted solution is out there somewhere (authentication, reputation, monitoring, improving permission and mailing practices, legislation and enforcement, etc.), but the industry hasn’t…

We Did What?

We Did What? Newsgator founder Greg Reinacker has a pricelss posting about the first time an entrepreneur discovers that something happened in his company that he didn’t know about. An absolute gem.