The New York Times diskuterer, hvorfor ikke store firmaer som eksempelvis Kodak opfandt Instagram. Avisen skriver: Michael Hawley, who is on Kodak’s board, said the answer could be summed up in one word: culture.
“It’s a little like asking why Hasbro didn’t do Farmville, or why McDonald’s didn’t start Whole Foods,” said Mr. Hawley, formerly of the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Cultural patterns are pretty hard to escape once you get sucked into them. For instance, Apple and Google are diametrical opposites in so many ways, have all the skills, but neither of them did Instagram, either.”
søndag den 15. april 2012
onsdag den 11. april 2012
Danskere kan
Dr. Dk skriver:
Podio er blevet købt af Citrix
Den danske opstartsvirksomhed Podio er kun et år efter sin officielle lancering blevet solgt til Citrix. Det skriver Techcrunch
Det velanskrevne blogmagasin Techcrunch Europe har beskrevet Podio som “Facebook for erhvervslivet”, hvilket de to stiftere Anders Pollas og Jon Froda godt kan genkende men alligevel ikke er helt enige i. Der er nemlig meget mere end statusopdateringer og sociale netværk i deres værktøj, som allerede bliver brugt af tusindvis af mennesker og virksomheder verden over.
De to stiftere startede virksomheden i en gammel kælderbutik på Vesterbro for mindre end tre år siden.
Podio er blevet købt af Citrix
Den danske opstartsvirksomhed Podio er kun et år efter sin officielle lancering blevet solgt til Citrix. Det skriver Techcrunch
Det velanskrevne blogmagasin Techcrunch Europe har beskrevet Podio som “Facebook for erhvervslivet”, hvilket de to stiftere Anders Pollas og Jon Froda godt kan genkende men alligevel ikke er helt enige i. Der er nemlig meget mere end statusopdateringer og sociale netværk i deres værktøj, som allerede bliver brugt af tusindvis af mennesker og virksomheder verden over.
De to stiftere startede virksomheden i en gammel kælderbutik på Vesterbro for mindre end tre år siden.
tirsdag den 10. april 2012
FB har købt Instagram, der i starten havde en noget anden forretningsmodel.
New York Times skriver: Kevin Systrom, who founded Instagram with Mike Krieger and is now its chief executive, has been on the radar of Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder, for some time. Mr. Systrom was a sophomore at Stanford in 2004 when he developed a service called Photobox that let people send large photo files to each other. The service caught the eye of Mr. Zuckerberg, who offered him a job. But Mr. Systrom decided to finish his studies and went on to found Burbn, which let people post photos and other updates.
Burbn never attracted more than a few hundred users, but they uploaded a lot of photos. So Mr. Systrom and his team stripped it down and released a sleeker version for the iPhone, calling it Instagram. It gained early momentum because it allowed users to also post their pictures to Twitter, piquing the interest of those who saw links to the photos in their feeds.
New York Times skriver: Kevin Systrom, who founded Instagram with Mike Krieger and is now its chief executive, has been on the radar of Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder, for some time. Mr. Systrom was a sophomore at Stanford in 2004 when he developed a service called Photobox that let people send large photo files to each other. The service caught the eye of Mr. Zuckerberg, who offered him a job. But Mr. Systrom decided to finish his studies and went on to found Burbn, which let people post photos and other updates.
Burbn never attracted more than a few hundred users, but they uploaded a lot of photos. So Mr. Systrom and his team stripped it down and released a sleeker version for the iPhone, calling it Instagram. It gained early momentum because it allowed users to also post their pictures to Twitter, piquing the interest of those who saw links to the photos in their feeds.
mandag den 9. april 2012
En ven er i nærheden
En del nye apps ligner hinanden. De bruger eksempelvis Facebook for derefter at forbinde folk på en ny måde. En sådan app er Highlight, der sender en besked, hvis nogen af ens venner er i nærheden,
Er det en god ide til en ny start-up? Tja ....
Highlight, a new mobile app that senses the people nearby and highlights the ones with friends, hometowns, schools and other connections in common. It's one of several mobile apps that are emerging to take social networking to a whole new, hyperlocal level.
The apps - which also include Kismet, Glancee and Sonar - come as nearly half of all U.S. adults own a smart phone and the number of Facebook users surpasses 845 million. Combined, it means that more and more people are walking around with their social network in their pocket, skriver San Francisco Chornicle.
Er det en god ide til en ny start-up? Tja ....
onsdag den 4. april 2012
De 7 dødssynder
Dette lange klip er taget fra Cnet:
Seven startup sins to avoid
Seven common mistakes have led to the demise of thousands of startups, says Ben Parr. Here's what not to do.
by Ben Parr March 21, 2012 4:05 PM PDT
Twitter and Square founder Jack Dorsey is a man who knows what causes most startups to fail.
(Credit: James Martin/CNET)
I've seen thousands of startups fail, but they almost always fail for the same reasons. Most entrepreneurs fall into the same traps over and over again, despite how easy they are to avoid.
At the London Web Summit earlier this week, I told an audience of European entrepreneurs the seven mistakes I believe most often destroy promising startups.
These are my seven startup sins. Avoid these common mistakes at all costs:
1. Losing focus: If you're like the typical entrepreneur, you probably have hundreds of new ideas for your startup. But you must resist the urge to build lots of features, rather than focusing on the few that will actually take your product forward.
Giving users many choices and features may seem like a good idea, but it just confuses them until they abandon a product in frustration. Simplicity and focus are the keys to building a great company. Google became a $100 billion-plus company with a text box and not much else. Square became a leader in mobile payments by not trying to do too many things at once.
Don't start building every idea that comes into your head. Make everything as simple and streamlined as possible, and don't build everything the customer wants -- you will simply end up with a bloated product nobody will use.
2. Ignoring cashflow: In the early days of a startup, cashflow is far more crucial than revenue or profit. Your job as an entrepreneur is to find ways to extend your company's runway for as long as possible.
It doesn't mean you have to be a penny-pincher, but make sure that every purchase you make will deliver greater benefits than its cost. My company buys the fastest MacBook Pros possible for our engineers because the increased productivity more than makes up for the upfront costs of the computer.
3. Obsessing over competition: Many startups worry too much what Google or another startup may be building. If you obsess over what they're building, you're going to start building products based on your fears. There will always be competition, but the best companies focus on user experience instead of focusing on the competition.
4. Failing slowly: Your first product is most likely going to fail. Whether it takes you weeks, months, or years before you realize your product is a dud is entirely up to your flexibility.
Find out quickly whether your idea will succeed or fail -- research, build, test, and iterate as quickly as you can. Don't be discouraged by setbacks, but if you can see the writing on the wall, don't ignore it -- figure out why your product isn't gaining traction and fix it. Tools like Google Analytics, RJMetrics, and Optimizely are great for gathering the information you need to make decisions quickly.
5. Ignoring company culture: It's easy, especially in the early days, to make company culture a lower priority. But much like plaster, once a company culture is set, it becomes very tough to reshape.
"Zappos sells shoes and apparel online, but what distinguished us from our competitors was that we'd put our company culture above all else," Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh famously said after the company was sold to Amazon. Zappos used that strong culture to successfully recruit employees and customers.
The most important job of a founder is company culture and recruitment. Most successful founders stop coding as their companies scale, but their example sets the tone for the work ethic, priorities, and morals of the companies they created.
(Credit: James Martin/CNET)
Mark Zuckerberg understands the importance of company culture better than almost anybody. He famously takes engineers Facebook is trying to recruit on a walk in the woods of Palo Alto to build a relationship and explain the company's vision.
You should have a strong idea of what kind of company culture you want to build long before you hire your first employee.
6. Being complacent: No company is immune to catastrophic failure -- just ask Yahoo, Digg, MySpace, RIM, and Friendster. Don't confuse traction for victory, because that is what leads to a startup becoming complacent and getting blindsided by an upstart competitor.
7. Not building: You can worry about competitors and fundraising until you pass out, but there's no bigger sin than not building. Ideas are easy to come by -- it's execution that separates successful companies from thousands of could-have-beens.
At some point, you just have to build and see how it goes. That's the beauty of entrepreneurship -- it's democratic. The people, rather than investors or competitors, will ultimately decide your startup's fate.
Seven startup sins to avoid
Seven common mistakes have led to the demise of thousands of startups, says Ben Parr. Here's what not to do.
by Ben Parr March 21, 2012 4:05 PM PDT
Twitter and Square founder Jack Dorsey is a man who knows what causes most startups to fail.
(Credit: James Martin/CNET)
I've seen thousands of startups fail, but they almost always fail for the same reasons. Most entrepreneurs fall into the same traps over and over again, despite how easy they are to avoid.
At the London Web Summit earlier this week, I told an audience of European entrepreneurs the seven mistakes I believe most often destroy promising startups.
These are my seven startup sins. Avoid these common mistakes at all costs:
1. Losing focus: If you're like the typical entrepreneur, you probably have hundreds of new ideas for your startup. But you must resist the urge to build lots of features, rather than focusing on the few that will actually take your product forward.
Giving users many choices and features may seem like a good idea, but it just confuses them until they abandon a product in frustration. Simplicity and focus are the keys to building a great company. Google became a $100 billion-plus company with a text box and not much else. Square became a leader in mobile payments by not trying to do too many things at once.
Don't start building every idea that comes into your head. Make everything as simple and streamlined as possible, and don't build everything the customer wants -- you will simply end up with a bloated product nobody will use.
2. Ignoring cashflow: In the early days of a startup, cashflow is far more crucial than revenue or profit. Your job as an entrepreneur is to find ways to extend your company's runway for as long as possible.
It doesn't mean you have to be a penny-pincher, but make sure that every purchase you make will deliver greater benefits than its cost. My company buys the fastest MacBook Pros possible for our engineers because the increased productivity more than makes up for the upfront costs of the computer.
3. Obsessing over competition: Many startups worry too much what Google or another startup may be building. If you obsess over what they're building, you're going to start building products based on your fears. There will always be competition, but the best companies focus on user experience instead of focusing on the competition.
4. Failing slowly: Your first product is most likely going to fail. Whether it takes you weeks, months, or years before you realize your product is a dud is entirely up to your flexibility.
Find out quickly whether your idea will succeed or fail -- research, build, test, and iterate as quickly as you can. Don't be discouraged by setbacks, but if you can see the writing on the wall, don't ignore it -- figure out why your product isn't gaining traction and fix it. Tools like Google Analytics, RJMetrics, and Optimizely are great for gathering the information you need to make decisions quickly.
5. Ignoring company culture: It's easy, especially in the early days, to make company culture a lower priority. But much like plaster, once a company culture is set, it becomes very tough to reshape.
"Zappos sells shoes and apparel online, but what distinguished us from our competitors was that we'd put our company culture above all else," Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh famously said after the company was sold to Amazon. Zappos used that strong culture to successfully recruit employees and customers.
The most important job of a founder is company culture and recruitment. Most successful founders stop coding as their companies scale, but their example sets the tone for the work ethic, priorities, and morals of the companies they created.
(Credit: James Martin/CNET)
Mark Zuckerberg understands the importance of company culture better than almost anybody. He famously takes engineers Facebook is trying to recruit on a walk in the woods of Palo Alto to build a relationship and explain the company's vision.
You should have a strong idea of what kind of company culture you want to build long before you hire your first employee.
6. Being complacent: No company is immune to catastrophic failure -- just ask Yahoo, Digg, MySpace, RIM, and Friendster. Don't confuse traction for victory, because that is what leads to a startup becoming complacent and getting blindsided by an upstart competitor.
7. Not building: You can worry about competitors and fundraising until you pass out, but there's no bigger sin than not building. Ideas are easy to come by -- it's execution that separates successful companies from thousands of could-have-beens.
At some point, you just have to build and see how it goes. That's the beauty of entrepreneurship -- it's democratic. The people, rather than investors or competitors, will ultimately decide your startup's fate.
mandag den 2. april 2012
Manglende danske initiativer
Det Europæiske Forskningsråd har sluttet uddelingen af penge til innovative forskere i denne runde. Der var ingen dansker, der fik del i pengene af den simple grund, at der ikke var nogen danske ansøgninger til pengene, men derimod mange fra for eksempel Holland.
»Bortset fra Holland har du i de nordeuropæiske lande åbenbart den indstilling, at du hellere vilvære funktionær, end du vil være iværksætter. Der skal nok en anden mentalitet til,« siger Jens Rostrup-Nielsen, der er tidligere forskningsdirektør i Haldor Topsøe i Information.Sikkert sandt, desværre,
torsdag den 29. marts 2012
Crowdsourcing på dansk
Den danske sangerinde Soffie Viemose har skaffet penge til at udgive hendes nye plade på vinyl gennem crowdsourcing, fordi: 'Hun var i gang med gøre en plade færdig, men der var ingen tegn på, at hun nogensinde ville stå med en fysisk skive musik i hånden, da albummet kun ville blive udgivet digitalt.
Det ærgrede den 26-årige kunster, der gerne vil give sine fans den bedste lyd, og derfor kæmpede for at få sin musik udgivet på vinyl.
»På en vinylplade knitrer det, og lyden er mere organisk og lækker, end den digitale lyd musikken har, når man finder den på iTunes og Spotify«, fortæller Soffie Viemose.
Det ville koste omkring 16.000 kroner at få udgivet pladen på vinyl. De penge kunne hverken pladeselskabet eller Soffie Viemose rejse, men så kom den unge musikers bror på en idé.
Han foreslog sin søster, at hun skulle forsøge at skaffe penge til vinyludgivelsen gennem den alternative finansieringsmetode ’crowdfunding’..
Det skriver Politiken i en artikel, der grundigt diskuterer fremtidsmulighederne for crowdsourcing i Danmark.
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