Startups

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...
New Fund Starting in Pittsburgh

Posted by Burgher Jon
/ March 15, 2012 / Leave a comment

I wasn’t going to make a post today because I have quite a bit going on in my personal life but my hand was a little bit forced by the morning’s news. Sean Ammirati formerly the CEO of mSpoke (which you’ll recall was the local company that sold to LinkedIn)...
Another Great Idea

Posted by Burgher Jon
/ March 5, 2012 / Leave a comment

Sometimes you’re scanning through Read, Write, Web or whatever your favorite tech journal is and you see something that makes you go, “well, crap, I wish I could invest in that company.” Such is the case with Twilio. The company is a bit skype-like in that it brings VoIP to...
Startup Opportunities in Pittsburgh

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

Over the last few weeks several opportunities to jump in to the Pittsburgh Tech Entrepreneurial Scene have showed up in my mailbox. I thought three was enough to post about. All of these look to be great opportunities, if you’re sitting on the side of the pool why not use...