On 19 February, Chinese New Year’s day, Angie and I walked past the Apple store in Hong Kong’s IFC mall. It was just before 11AM (opening time) and we saw a few hundred people lining up outside the store. We assumed that there must be something special going on, so I approached an Apple store […]

I was very excited when I read Satya Nadella’s recent public email message about his direction for Microsoft. I left the company in early 2010, frustrated with its direction. The email seemed to confirm what I had hoped about his appointment as CEO. Then I saw Jean-Louis Gassée’s critique of the message and realized that I had read Satya’s […]

Google’s announcement about Chrome dropping H.264 support for the HTML5 video element caused an explosion on the Web. I must admit that I initially fell in line with the “See! Google is Evil” narrative. Many parts of the announcement just didn’t seem to make sense. Google was dropping H.264 in the name of openness, but was […]

All the attention on Groupon’s new financing round got me interested in their growth potential. Now, I have no special insight into the Groupon model, but here are some back-of-the-envelope calculations. The value to an advertiser aside, the thing that strikes me about Groupon is how modest local deals can multiply into a giant business if […]

This should come as no surprise: Big companies are killing successful startups by acquiring them. I was recently looking for an event management tool when this point crystallized in my head. I had signed up for eVite, but couldn’t find the ability to nominate a co-host for an event, or the ability to customize the […]

I have a lot of fun working with Angie on youlookfab.com, where she draws on about 18 years of experience as a designer, buyer, and fashion stylist to give people advice on what to wear and how to wear it. The site started out as a blog, but over time it has become much more […]

This is the number one reason that large companies discard great new product ideas, new markets, even potential acquisitions. In light of the existing revenue streams the new idea doesn’t make a material difference to the company’s bottom line. Not only in the short term, but in the long term too. The projected P&Ls always […]