Avoiding Lock-In Through Open Source

September 13, 2014

As I was reading about Mårten Mickos last week (whose company was acquired by HP), I came across several articles he authored about avoiding lock-in through open source. No where does lock-in come as a bigger surprise than in software. Lock-in happens in many forms. Sometimes it is through reliance on proprietary 3rd-party tools. Other times it […]

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HP Acquires Open Source Tool Provider Eucalyptus

September 12, 2014

The biggest news in our market this week was HP’s acquisition of the open source tool provider Eucalyptus (read the HPCwire article here). I have written before about how proprietary tools and enterprise software license sales are a dying breed. The winning model is to maintain useful open source tools for a market that seeks freedom […]

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Avoiding Problems with A Sales Machine

September 11, 2014

A deal fell apart today and the other side asked what’s my plan, I answered, “do what entrepreneurs do : make it rain without clouds”. — Allen Nance (@AllenNance) September 9, 2014 Johnson Cook put up a terrific post today on problems that can arise from building a sales machine. Go read it! At ArrayFire, […]

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Design vs User Experience

September 8, 2014

I saw this photo and had a good laugh. I have two comments about design versus user experience: No product is ever complete. All products require maintenance, adaptation, and betterment in order to stay relevant. The only exception are TI calculators haha. Too often founders do not anticipate the costs of development that come after […]

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Conditions for First Time Entrepreneurs to Consider

September 7, 2014

I ran across a nice post by Adii Pienaar recently that talks about helpful conditions for first time entrepreneurs to consider. Many of these are similar to conditions we benefitted from as we started building ArrayFire. Build onto someone else’s platform. Even though there is added platform risk, it is very helpful to start adding […]

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Startup vs R&D Firm

September 5, 2014

Over a lunch this week, Oded mentioned that he reads this blog and doesn’t feel like ArrayFire is a startup. He feels ArrayFire is an R&D firm. He is right. I have written before about defining the term startup. To me, ArrayFire will always be my startup. I am a co-founder of it. No matter how […]

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The Customer Can Be Wrong

September 4, 2014

“Customer feedback is great for telling you what you did wrong. It’s terrible at telling you what you should do next.” —Phil Libin, CEO of Evernote Mark Cuban tweeted a link to a fantastic post today entitled, “The Customer Is Mostly Wrong.” I have two main thoughts on the topic Customer Discovery Customer discovery is […]

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Customer-Funding Your Startup

September 3, 2014

Bootstrap vs VC is such a tired argument. Do what you think is best for you. Pro tip: Nobody knows what they’re doing. We’re all winging it. — Josh Pigford (@Shpigford) September 3, 2014 I was invited to attend a talk later this month entitled, “The Customer-Funded Business: Start, Finance or Grow Your Company with […]

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Reimagining Existing Products or Services

August 31, 2014

I love watching existing products or be reimagined. For instance, Uber reimagines taxis and Airbnb reimagines lodging. There are two ideas for reimaging existing products or services that I wanted to share. Movie Theaters Marc Andreessen in a tweet storm shared some thoughts on how to reimagine the movie theater experience. This is about business […]

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Sensibilities in Spending Startup Money

August 29, 2014

As I have hired senior managers and brought on co-founders, it has been important to teach “ownership thinking” on spending money into the habits of these new hires. Co-founders tend to view money spent in the business as if it were personal money. Employees do not have this mentality. Those holding startup purse strings need to feel […]

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