Startups, Mass Extinction

James Surowiecki: The Startup Mass Extinction : The New Yorker: "....starting a company may be easier, but making it a success isn’t. Competition is fierce, profits are scarce, and venture capitalists aren’t generous when it comes to later stages of funding. As Gideon Lewis-Kraus shows in “No Exit,” a new Kindle Single about startup culture, the life of a new company is often brutish and short. Though we may be seeing a “Cambrian explosion” of new companies, as The Economist recently put it, there’s a mass extinction going on, too..."

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Fred Wilson Interview at Startup School NY 2014 (video)

Fred Wilson Interview at Startup School NY 2014 (video above)

Fred Wilson interviewed by Aaron Harris


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Startups, Valuation Trap, High Burn Rate

The Valuation Trap – AVC: "A second iron law of startups might be that the higher the valuation of a startup, the fewer options it has for financing and exits…… once a company has raised mezzanine capital and is valued in the billions, its options are essentially to go public or find a very interested buyer with deep pockets. There are few other options on this side of the startup pipeline. [quoting TechCrunch article] The past three months have not been good for highflying tech stocks and now we are seeing IPOs being postponed. Both Square and Box have recently done that.

Another thing that Square and Box have in common is very high burn rates. The author of the Techcrunch post says that Square lost $100mm and Box lost $160mm in 2013...."

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Resource Scarcity, Third Industrial Revolution

How resource scarcity is driving the third Industrial Revolution | McKinsey & Company: "Will shortages of energy, materials, food, and water put the brakes on global growth? Far from it. By combining information technology with industrial technology, as well as through harnessing materials science and biotechnology, innovators are showing that it is possible to produce more with less and to access resources at far lower costs. In this video interview, former McKinsey director Stefan Heck and director Matt Rogers, coathors of the new book Resource Revolution: How to Capture the Biggest Business Opportunity in a Century (New Harvest, April 2014), argue that to be successful, managers will need to think in new ways about products, services, and technologies. An edited transcript of their remarks follows...." (read more at link above)

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Story-centered Design, PowerPoint Prototypes

" . . . a new use for PowerPoint: building prototypes. These clickable mockups are great for rapidly testing with users and applying what you learn right away. They simulate the experience of using a website or app without having to write any code. Braden Kowitz described how the Google Ventures Design Studio uses clickable mockups in a previous Design Staff article...." (read more at source:Story-centered design: how to make a prototype in PowerPoint | Google Ventures
also:
http://www.gv.com/lib/the-product-design-sprint-prototypeday4

http://www.apple.com/mac/keynote/

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