I was sitting in a conference room yesterday where there were several different makes of laptops out on the table. Seeing a bunch of computers this way really hit home how beautiful Apple’s laptops really are. And its not just the clean silver case – several of the PCs had a similarly styled exterior. For me, its the rounded corners. Simple. Elegant. Clearly Apple cares about every aspect of their laptop design. There are a few great vignettes in Walter Isaacson’s book on Steve Jobs that talk about Jobs obsession with rounded rectangles. From the original Macintosh application windows to Apple laptops to the iPod, iPhone and iPad designs. And while its harder to produce products with these rounded corners,…
Archives / March, 2012
One platform to rule them all
I write often about my love of start-ups. And in truth, I really enjoy all stages of a company’s development – each for a different reason, of course (the early days, working closely with the founding team on product; mid-stage when maybe you’re helping with key management hires as the business scales; and later when hopefully the business has grown quiet large, working on strategic partnerships, overall strategy or maybe the sale of the business). And each stage has its own cadence (which, of course varies from business to business). Most of the time, it takes years to validate an investment thesis as companies work methodically through product launches, and the stages of scaling a business. It’s only after time…
Hiring between portfolio companies – playing nice in the sandbox?
I put up a post this morning over on the Foundry Group site which I thought I’d repost here with some additional comments. It concerns whether companies in a shared venture portfolio should have any special rules of engagement about hiring from other companies in the portfolio. The question of whether Foundry has a “policy” around this has come up a few times and we wanted to clarify very clearly that we absolutely don’t (nor could we – not only would such a blanket rule be to the detriment of our portfolio, it would also likely be illegal). That said, I do know that a few of the CEOs in the portfolio have a “no poaching” policy when it comes to friendly companies….
The solution to my iMessage problem
It turned out that the solution to my iMessage problem was relatively straightforward. That said, it only worked because I still had my old phone (it hadn’t been stolen; I hadn’t traded it in; etc.). It also worked when doing things like going to Apple’s site and deauthorizing my devices didn’t (which I still don’t understand). So the problem I pointed out really is a serious bug. But for me, I had the phone and the solution (as a few people suggested in the comments to my post) was as simple as disabling iMessage on my device. Apparently this triggered a reset on the Apple server such that messages sent to me were no longer being routed through iMessage, thus…
I’m getting sick of the bullshit
I love the start-up world. I love working with founders and young companies. I love the excitement of working on business ideas that are new and different. I love seeing the success that often comes from this hard work. I’ve never before in my professional life seen a time of such innovation and creativity. At Foundry we see more business plans now than we ever have. And what’s more, more of those business plans are really interesting (and fundable). It goes without saying that I love the business of venture capital. I love helping entrepreneurs work on their ideas. And I love helping companies figure out how to become as successful as possible. I love the challenge of trying to…
Apple’s secret iPhone lock-in feature
If you’ve been following my twitter feed you’ll know that about a month ago I finally made the switch from AT&T to Verizon (brief conclusion: what took me so long? from my experience this month, the VZ network is vastly superior). At the same time I decided that I’d give Android a real try (I’d played around with it in the past, but never adopted it as my primary device). Enter the Galaxy Nexus. The slightly over-sized, slightly too much of a battery hog, but generally pretty well executed device from Samsung which at the moment is the only Android device running Ice Cream Sandwich (for those of you wondering why I didn’t just get another iPhone, the quick answer…