Business

Foursquare, the Innovator’s Dilema and Bubbles

Posted by Burgher Jon
/ September 29, 2011 / Leave a comment

Yesterday I wrote about just how quickly FourSquare seemed to lose their competitive advantage in the location space. As I pointed out, it’s not that they’re not leading the manual “check-in” market. It’s that it’s becoming increasingly clear that the “check-in” model isn’t going to be the one that prevails...
FourSquare out of the “A” Box Already?

Posted by Burgher Jon
/ September 28, 2011 / Leave a comment

I got a new phone a couple of months ago and stopped using FourSquare. Haven’t missed it. The reality is what I have liked about Foursquare has always been about potential. My reason for liking FourSquare has always been about its potential not its current state. There is so much...
Netflix Is Separating for Good Reasons, Just Not Your Reasons

Posted by Burgher Jon
/ September 20, 2011 / Leave a comment

Reed Hastings made a big bet a few years ago on streaming video. They setup the streaming site and the infrastructure on Amazon’s cloud then worked through all of the growing pains and figuring out how to charge for it till it was a profitable little business. They’ve since grown...
Tomorrow’s News on Android and Motorola

Posted by Burgher Jon
/ August 15, 2011 / 8 Comments

As someone who follows all of this very closely, I wanted to take a post this morning and make a few points that it will take the media a few days to discover. All of the stories today will talk about how Google believes it can’t compete with Apple unless...
An Interesting New Vehicle for Tech Investors

Posted by Burgher Jon
/ August 12, 2011 / Leave a comment

I’m not bullish on the stock market right now, not at all. In fact, I’ve started looking long and hard at a number of different options for investing. From startups to real estate, I just think there is more stable opportunity to be had outside the stock market right now. ...
Productivity in and out of “the Office”

Posted by Burgher Jon
/ August 1, 2011 / Leave a comment

I moved back up to Pittsburgh in December of last year, but continue to work for the company that I moved down to Charlotte to help get started. I’m back in the office once a month or so, and it really has me thinking about where and how I’m most...
Amazon Didn’t Cave and Give Apple 30%

Posted by Burgher Jon
/ July 26, 2011 / Leave a comment

Remember when Apple announced they were going to be taking 30% of every “in app” sale? I speculated then that it could be a conflict of interest for Apple. To paraphrase myself (more details if you click the link)… it seems counter-intuitive to BOTH create unreasonably high prices for the...
Why Google Labs Closing Makes Me Nervous

Posted by Burgher Jon
/ July 23, 2011 / Leave a comment

While we’ve learned a huge amount by launching very early prototypes in Labs, we believe that greater focus is crucial if we’re to make the most of the extraordinary opportunities ahead. In many cases, this will mean ending Labs experiments—in others we’ll incorporate Labs products and technologies into different product...
Network Innovation – Why I Work in a Startup

Posted by Burgher Jon
/ July 16, 2011 / Leave a comment

I often get asked why I insist on being involved in startups eventhough my skill set lends itself better to large companies. The answer is that I love innovation, making something where nothing existed before and big companies are just naturally bad at it; over the rest of the post...
Dropbox is a Great Company, but a Commodity Idea

Posted by Burgher Jon
/ July 13, 2011 / 1 Comment

I love Dropbox and I use it all the time. It keeps my four computer entirely in sync and lets me do my thing on any of them. It was also invaluable when I lost my laptop. Of all the services in the space, they have built the most reliable...