Startups

Why Groupon Should Have Sold

Posted by Burgher Jon
/ December 7, 2010 / 3 Comments

In some of the bigger news this month Google tried, and failed, to buy Groupon for some $6 Billion (with a B). The immediate response from the startup community was, “Go Groupon! Turning back the tide on one of the giant monoliths!” The article I linked to reports that Groupon...
Three Great Pieces on Our Industry Today

Posted by Burgher Jon
/ December 4, 2010 / Leave a comment

I don’t normally do the standard news recaps on this blog. It is what I usually use Twitter and Sauerkraut Sundays for. I normally only post about a story in this space if I have something significant to add to it. However, today there are three pieces that I felt...
Electric Car Growth and the Dependent Build Out

Posted by Burgher Jon
/ December 3, 2010 / Leave a comment

I was extremely excited about the fact that GE is buying 25,000 electric cars. Electric cars are infeasible for most of us. The Chevy Volt, for example, can only get 25-50 miles on batteries only (requiring gasoline to go from there). When I take my car out, it’s usually to...
Lesson 3: The Internet’s Not Ready for the Experience Economy

Posted by Burgher Jon
/ November 29, 2010 / 1 Comment

This is part of a series of blog posts based on the book Rise of the Creative Class by Richard Florida. One of the things Dr. Florida points out is the creative class’ preference for buying experiences rather then products. He argues, as many social theorists lead by B. Joseph...
The Social Date Analyzer

Posted by Burgher Jon
/ November 17, 2010 / Leave a comment

Yesterday I had another solid idea for a stratup. I don’t have the cycles to get it going, so I’m giving it away for free right here on the blog. It’s the Social Date Analyzer. So, you go to a bar or match.com. You meet a girl and chat her...
The Hollywood Model, Richard Florida and the Burgh

Posted by Burgher Jon
/ November 4, 2010 / Leave a comment

I have been aware of the Hollywood Model (DeVany, 2003) for a while. I’ve never read the book, but the discussion of it is something that has interested me for a while. Essentially, it calls on business to work more like Hollywood. It argues that Hollywood used to be run...
The College Years

Posted by Burgher Jon
/ October 23, 2010 / Leave a comment

A lot of people do what they have to do. You want to get yourself to a position where you can do what you want to do. -Chamillionaire Believe it or not, Chamillionaire (the rapper) was actually referring to entrepreneurship and his next line had nothing to do with ghettos. ...
Law, Entrepreneurship, Pittsburgh and Pitt’s IPI

Posted by Burgher Jon
/ October 19, 2010 / Leave a comment

I mentioned yesterday in a tweet that Mike Madison posted on Pittsblog an opening at the Innovation Practice Institute on Twitter. I was going to let it go at that, but the more I thought about it, I decided it was a good excuse to write a blog post. Lawyers...
Brad Feld on Building Entrepreneurial Communities

Posted by Burgher Jon
/ October 18, 2010 / Leave a comment

As someone who’s working to help build the entrepreneurial community in Pittsburgh, I thought the above video would be valuable. The speaker is Brad Feld and the venue is the Tahoe Tech Talk. Brad has spent the last 15 years helping to sculpt Boulder in to a leading entrepreneurial community...
Driving Innovation

Posted by Burgher Jon
/ October 9, 2010 / Leave a comment

In this context I mean innovation related to driving, rather then forcing people to innovate. My daily run through the tech blogs resulted in two stories I thought worth mentioning. The first was the end of GOOG-411. For those who didn’t use it, GOOG-411 was a 411 service that you...