Some of the best entrepreneurs are engineers. If you can design and build new products, all you really need is an idea. But many engineers believe that you need much more: the business skills to read a P&L, file articles of incorporation, raise money, get press, meet customers, manage employees, and all that other jazz…. Read More
At last Thursday’s SIC conference, Tricia Duryee asked why online real estate companies have prospered in Seattle. One panelist cited low home prices, which let young entrepreneurs buy homes they could never afford in Silicon Valley, and from there begin to wonder how real estate could be better. Another suggestion was that HouseValues’ roaring 2004 IPO… Read More
There has been over the past 18 months a Cambrian explosion of startup life, many incubated by angels and seed funds. And now the process of natural selection is beginning again. I got back from the Valley Thursday and what I gathered from the people there is the same as what I’ve heard here: that… Read More
The Occupy Wall Street protests once seemed so futile to me. You just can’t stop smart people from making money, and I’m not really sure why you’d want to. But it turns out you can persuade those people to make money by doing something useful beyond lining up on either side of a financial bet. They… Read More
Redfin just raised $14.8 million, in a round led by Globespan Capital. The press release rattles off the stunning accomplishments that brought us to this pass: $6 billion in Redfin transactions, $85 million in savings to consumers, 97% customer satisfaction. Michael Arrington broke the news, in a blog post with a photo of Redfin as… Read More
Many folks asked this past week how I’ve felt about Steve Jobs’s death, and wondered why I haven’t written about it. When I first heard the news, I thought of a graph Jonathan Franzen drew in “How to Be Alone,” about how Franzen’s ailing father made no concessions to Parkinson’s and then, when that effort… Read More
Redfin just took down Scouting Report 1.0 for good. Our latest problem was that the data we used for Scouting Report had problems at the source that weren’t easy for us to fix, mostly because agents work informally in teams, or sometimes don’t formally record when an out-of-town agent represented a buyer in a deal. So… Read More
On hearing this week that Barnes & Noble stock traded up on 140% growth for its e-book reader, the Nook, I had only one thought: more gadgets, please. If a book retailer can develop a device that sells like hotcakes, the entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley and Seattle surely can too. The fact that Barnes &… Read More
I have sometimes been a critic of Steve Jobs: for outsourcing manufacturing, overlooking charities, diverting idealists, sidestepping the web or simply demanding the best. But long before that, Steve Jobs was a critic of me. I hear him whenever I do something mediocre or make a business decision that has no soul. I hear him whenever I… Read More
Everything I’ve read about the American economy argues that our most serious problem is the number of able-bodied men and women who in previous generations would be working but now haven’t worked in years. Such articles evoke the ghetto’s despair, the laid-off factory worker, the aging salaryman left behind by a digital economy. But my… Read More