johnny won - human

Born or Raised In the U.S., Why Are Entrepreneurs Returning to Korea? | Inc.com

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 15:20:03 -0500

Born or Raised In the U.S., Why Are Entrepreneurs Returning to Korea? | Inc.com:

It’s funny, the story really doesn’t address the question with a well defined answer but it doesn’t really matter. The beauty of the story is the amount of hustle by the Korean-Americans & internationally minded Korean nationals trying to reconquer the old-school Chaebol powered Korea.

If it means sleeping on a futon next to your desk for a year to win then so be it. I’d do it in a heartbeat.

"SOME parents give their children cakes. A few give them cake shops. The hot topic in South Korea is..."

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 17:33:02 -0500

“SOME parents give their children cakes. A few give them cake shops. The hot topic in South Korea is the trend for daughters and grand-daughters of chaebol families to open bakeries and other small food outlets.”

- Bakers and chaebol in South Korea: Let them eat cake | The Economist

This in a nutshell defines Korea’s chaebol problem.

"The Asian woman speaking in this video would be no different than him having a black person speaking..."

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 14:02:06 -0500

“The Asian woman speaking in this video would be no different than him having a black person speaking in slave dialect”

- — The Rev. Charles Williams II of Detroit’s King Solomon Baptist church

Pete Hoekstra Ad Draws More Criticism, Called ‘Really, Really Dumb’

Pretty much dead on.

Facebook Files for an I.P.O. - NYTimes.com

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 19:27:15 -0500

Facebook Files for an I.P.O. - NYTimes.com:

And a new era begins. The publicly traded social networking company.

How Samuel Palmisano of I.B.M. Stayed a Step Ahead - Unboxed - NYTimes.com

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 11:51:56 -0500

How Samuel Palmisano of I.B.M. Stayed a Step Ahead - Unboxed - NYTimes.com:

IBM is at an entirely different level than what people would assume. Totally closer to an Apple or Amazon than a Microsoft or Yahoo.

4 reasons:

This column is a glimpse of the thinking behind some of the major steps I.B.M. has taken under Mr. Palmisano’s leadership, based on two recent interviews with him.

He says his guiding framework boils down to four questions:

• “Why would someone spend their money with you — so what is unique about you?”

• “Why would somebody work for you?”

• “Why would society allow you to operate in their defined geography — their country?”

• “And why would somebody invest their money with you?”

…

The four questions, he explains, were a way to focus thinking and prod the company beyond its comfort zone and to make I.B.M. pre-eminent again. He presented the four-question framework to the company’s top 300 managers at a meeting in early 2003 in Boca Raton, Fla.

“This needs to be our mission and goal, to make I.B.M. a great company,” he said, according to executives who attended the gathering.

THE pursuit of excellence in those four dimensions shaped the strategy. To focus on doing unique work, with its higher profits, meant getting out of low-margin businesses that were fading. I.B.M.’s long-range technology assessment in 2002 concluded that the personal computer business would no longer present much opportunity for innovation, at least not in the corporate market.

The Seven Habits of Spectacularly Unsuccessful Executives - Forbes

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 11:24:45 -0500

The Seven Habits of Spectacularly Unsuccessful Executives - Forbes:

Pretty much ego, hubris, vanity, hype & the lack of imagination.

The Downside of Obvious

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 13:00:00 -0500

It occurs to me at the beginning of 2012 that the most obvious business decisions in 2011 are the decisions that needed the most scrutiny and thoughtful analysis. Coming up with a disruptive web product or a business idea can’t be obvious nor can it be simple; they should be both brutally ridiculed and as Fred Wilson notes, mocked and misunderstood.

My lesson from 2011 is the obvious products and ideas that are praised for their simplicity are stripped of their disruptive quality that only the unknown can offer. And when building a disruptive product or idea, the unknown is far more limitless than what is known.

Going forward, this framework sounds like an excellent litmus test to make the most disruptive and challenging ideas come to life. There is something that should be uncomfortable about building the obvious to everyone idea because it truly indicates that the upside is nil.

(via A VC: Mocked And Misunderstood)

BRIC for Mobile. Worth Billions of $. Calling it now: (via A VC:...

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 12:36:50 -0500

BRIC for Mobile. Worth Billions of $. Calling it now: (via A VC: Where To Find Your Future Customers/Users)

"Shift the dynamic of business away from gaming the expectations market and back to doing the real..."

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 13:19:48 -0500

“Shift the dynamic of business away from gaming the expectations market and back to doing the real job of delighting customers.”

- The Dumbest Idea In The World: Maximizing Shareholder Value - Forbes

A nice goal for everyone in 2012.

The Economist’s Special Report on Games. Read the whole...

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 21:25:22 -0500

The Economist’s Special Report on Games. Read the whole thing but here are some why you should read it highlights:

Gaming is a $50+ billion industry
It’s filled with tech people
They’ve already figured out what everyone else hasn’t

6 Things Jeff Bezos Knew Back in 1997 That Made Amazon a Gorilla - Forbes

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 17:16:50 -0500

6 Things Jeff Bezos Knew Back in 1997 That Made Amazon a Gorilla - Forbes:

Total gems. All of them.

In my opinion, with Jobs now gone, Bezos is the best CEO in the world. How he’s built the company into an e-commerce juggernaut over the last 15 years is utterly amazing — especially when you consider he was in his early 30s and an ex-quant from D.E. Shaw when he moved out to Seattle and started the company.

Couldn’t agree more.

Why is so much of Silicon Valley obsessed with small ideas that don't solve a problem? - Quora

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 17:08:00 -0500

Why is so much of Silicon Valley obsessed with small ideas that don't solve a problem? - Quora:

Some elegant answers but this part nails it:

1. People’s lives are improved by fun apps and games, in the same way they are by movies, music, food, and books. We don’t usually ask why people waste time in those fields. Kirsten Dunst is never asked why she makes movies instead of working on gene therapy. Nor do we suggest that we stop making movies because we already have plenty of those.

2. And, what starts out as trivial often ends up being the most impactful of all, asYishan Wong pointed out in one of the comments. Examples:

“Trade Pez dispensers online” -> a marketplace larger than many national economies (eBay)

“Tell your friends what you are doing” -> a global communications network (Twitter)

“Hook up at Harvard” -> a billion person network, disrupting governments (Facebook)

“Send money to your friends” -> disruptive payment network (Paypal)

Apple's Approach to Advertising

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 10:25:12 -0500

I thought it could best be summed up with these two articles. Read both full articles but for the lazy:

Daring Fireball: The Just-Buy-Our-Devices Model

I see Apple “monetizing” Siri simply as a way to sell more devices — more iPhones now, more iPads (and who knows, maybe Macs?) in the future. Siri could be the interface to future products, like tiny little Nano-sized devices, or home entertainment systems. Google’s ad-driven model disrupted Microsoft’s pay-for-software-licenses model. Apple’s just-buy-our-devices-and-look-at-all-the-cool-shit-you-get-with-them model could disrupt Google’s ad-driven model.

…

Siri doesn’t need to lead to advertising in order to add to Apple’s bottom line. Consider iCloud — Apple now offers free-of-charge online services ad-free. It’s a sunk cost in the name of the overall experience for Apple device buyers.

TidBITS Opinion: Will Siri Change the Rules of the Search Game?

Siri and search companies both compete to control your contact point with the Internet. Search does this through deep integration with Web browsers; even to the point (with Google) of producing entire operating systems whose primary goal is to serve as your conduit to the Internet and drive you towards Google services. The value to Google in producing Chrome OS and Android is in increasing usage of Google for the purpose of gaining access to your activities and delivering more targeted advertising.

Siri is a new user interface designed to increase the usefulness of the iPhone, and it’s hard to imagine it won’t eventually come to other products. The Internet is only one of its potential components, which also include on-device data and apps like calendars and reminders. Siri tracks your activity to improve its accuracy, not to deliver advertising. The value to Apple is in selling more devices.

These are completely different financial models, even though both systems track and analyze your activities. One is funded by advertising, the other with device sales. (And both, perhaps, with licensing to drive users to particular partners.)

Now argue that Apple cares about advertising at all. I wouldn’t say Apple is gunning for Google, Apple just doesn’t need Google in order to make Siri work.

Forget Gen Y, just call us Gen Mobile

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 19:04:49 -0400

Forget Gen Y, just call us Gen Mobile:

VentureBeat

This has a nice ring to it doesn’t it?

Luck Is Just the Spark for Business Giants - NYTimes.com

Sun, 30 Oct 2011 22:50:02 -0400

Luck Is Just the Spark for Business Giants - NYTimes.com:

“Luck favors the persistent, but you can persist only if you survive.”

Jim Collins

"Again, it’s important to stress that Amazon’s gadget model is the opposite of Apple’s: Tim Cook..."

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 11:48:04 -0400

“Again, it’s important to stress that Amazon’s gadget model is the opposite of Apple’s: Tim Cook sells media so he can sell iPads and iPhones; Bezos sells Kindles so he can sell books and videos and music and even advertising. Apple has already established that its model works. Now we get to see Amazon’s theory really put to the test.”

- Why Amazon Is Happy to Burn Money on the Kindle Fire - Peter Kafka - Media - AllThingsD

This is the way to be bold.

"Over the last month 66,560,159 people have played the Sims Social on Facebook. That is more than..."

Wed, 12 Oct 2011 13:09:49 -0400

“Over the last month 66,560,159 people have played the Sims Social on Facebook. That is more than double the audience who tuned in for Ashton Kutcher’s recent debut on the hit sitcom “Two and a Half Men.” It is roughly twice the number of copies of “The Catcher in the Rye” sold during the last 60 years. And it is about 20 million more people than have ever purchased Pink Floyd’s 1973 classic “The Dark Side of the Moon.””

- Sims Social Is an Astonishing Success on Facebook - NYTimes.com

This is pretty much the future.

Obsession

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 11:47:00 -0400

I’ve obsessively followed Apple since I first got to play with the Macintosh LC II at Old Trail with Mac OS 7 in 1992. I was 9 years old.

Since then, I’ve had 16 iPhones (some broke, not my fault), Dells, built my own PCs, bought the iBook, 12” Powerbook, the Mac G4 Cube and now I’m writing this on the MacBook 11” Air which I would argue to be the single greatest portable laptop ever. And throughout all this time, the single thing I’ve enjoyed most about obsessively following Apple is being at the forefront of the leap forward.

I remember kicking around in terminal with OS X 10.0, remarking at the then beauty of Aqua & the UNIX kernel and 10 years later 10.0 has evolved into the rock that is now OS X Lion. This leap forward that is available by being the earliest of early adopters has given me an obsession for not just speculating on what’s next but be part of something to help move things forward. I don’t mean this by just throwing down an AMEX to own something but use OS X to code things, iPhones to develop mobile marketing programs and use an iPad to design new interfaces.

It is unimaginable for me to think I could be the person I am today without my obsession with Apple and certainly my career would have gone nowhere. I think this is the impact Steve Jobs has had on my little world.

Moneyball for tech startups – SplatF

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 09:49:49 -0400

Moneyball for tech startups – SplatF:

And what it comes down to, from the mouth of Fred Wilson no less:

“We have not been able to quantify it. We haven’t even tried. Although I am sure someone could do it and they might be very successful with it.

To us, the ideal founding team is one supremely talented product oriented founder and one, two, or three strong developers, and nothing else. The supremely talented product oriented founder should have been obsessed about a product area/idea for a long period of time and just has to build something to satisfy their passion/curiosity. That’s about it. Joshua Schachter/Delicious, Jack Dorsey/Twitter, Dennis Crowley/Foursquare are the iconic examples of this kind of person in our portfolio.”

"Out of 100 people, 1% will create the content, 10% will curate the content, and the other 90% will..."

Fri, 16 Sep 2011 21:26:30 -0400

“Out of 100 people, 1% will create the content, 10% will curate the content, and the other 90% will simply consume it. That plays out on this blog, that plays out in Twitter, and that plays out in most of the services we are invested in. Twitter has 400mm active users a month, 100mm of them are engaged enough to log in, but only 60mm tweet. For years people have made it out like this is a bad thing. It’s not a bad thing. It is an amazing thing. Let people use the service the way they want and you’ll get more users. Logged out users are users just like logged in users. We should focus more on them, build services for them, and treat them like users, not second class citizens.”

- A VC: The Logged Out User (continued)

Positively perfect.