Startups

How Slow Can You Go?

Posted by Burgher Jon
/ July 9, 2012 / Leave a comment

Just how bad is immigration policy in the United States? There is a plot being hatched to park a ship in international waters and allow skilled, foreign-born workers the opportunity to work for US companies (including startups) from there. H1-B visas are capped at 85,000 and were exhausted in 10 weeks this...
Enterprise Software Startups Make a Comeback

Posted by Burgher Jon
/ June 20, 2012 / Leave a comment

“Venture capitalists placed $2 billion with IT startups in the first quarter of this year, according to a survey by Dow Jones VentureSource, a 14% increase from the first quarter of 2011. Meanwhile, investors put 76% less investment in consumer internet companies. Software companies attracted the most funding, $1.3 billion,...
The Facebook IPO’s Effect on Software Startups

Posted by Burgher Jon
/ June 6, 2012 / Leave a comment

Two of the heavyweights in the startup world have now weighed in on the Facebook IPO and how it impacts the early stage software world, so I figured it’s time I did to. Paul Graham has warned the companies in Y-Combinator about the dangers of needing money at a time...
The Way I See the “Talent War” in Pittsburgh

Posted by Burgher Jon
/ May 10, 2012 / Leave a comment

There have been a number of interesting articles in the past few weeks about the “talent war” that tech companies in Pittsburgh are fighting. There was one (actually from last year, but I recently saw a link to it) about Pikimal addressing a shortage of developers by finding strong candidates...
Vivisimo Shows You Don’t Have to Sell Fast

Posted by Burgher Jon
/ April 30, 2012 / Leave a comment

Thanks to the Instagram sale there’s another frenzy of articles and people who want to talk about how VC/Seed funded startups “work”. They want to tell you that startups come up with a good idea, prototype, get funded, create massive growth, and then sell… just like that. This worked for...
2 Ways to Spend 1 Billion Dollars

Posted by Burgher Jon
/ April 10, 2012 / Leave a comment

$2 Billion changed hands yesterday in the form of the two biggest news items of the day: Facebook spent $1 Billion on Instagram. They acquired an innovative, competitive (if tangentially) product to make their company better. Microsoft spent $1 Billion buying patents from AOL. The rumor is that they may have...
Learning From Others: Shazam

Posted by Burgher Jon
/ April 4, 2012 / Leave a comment

Lesson: Sometimes you pivot to follow the money. AKA: Sometimes the coolest thing you can do isn’t what you should be doing. Shazam was enormously popular as an app for recognizing music. I still remember when they were brand new, you’d be in a bar and when that new song...
The JOBS Act’s Most Important Provision

Posted by Burgher Jon
/ April 3, 2012 / Leave a comment

The Jumpstart our Business Startups (JOBS) act has been getting a lot of press for allowing “crowd funding.” For the most part, when you think “crowd” you think of something like the company Kickstarter that I talked about last week, and it is… sort of. Kickstarter may be the closest thing...
Turing Thoughts and Another Reason to Love Startups

Posted by Burgher Jon
/ March 28, 2012 / Leave a comment

I was listening to a pod cast on my way to work this morning that was about Alan Turing. Turing wasn’t the inventor of the computer, but one could pretty he easily argue he was the conceptualizer (I don’t care what WordPress’ judgmental little red line says, I’m using it). He sat...
Learning From Others: Morning Star Tomatoes

Posted by Burgher Jon
/ March 21, 2012 / Leave a comment

There aren’t that many new and innovative management styles in the world today, but I recently heard of one. Morning Star Tomatoes (which generates $700M per year processing tomatoes). Want to know what there management structure is? They don’t have one. There aren’t any managers. Instead, at the beginning of...