DealHorizon - the faster, easier way to create and share business plans

A commenter on my blog the other day (Tim Ogilvie) mentioned a distinction that I found really interesting between intent generation and intent harvesting. This distinction is critical for understanding how internet advertising works and why it is broken. It also helps explain why sites like the newspapers, blogs, and social networks are getting unfairly [...]

There is a widely held assumption that new business models will continue to emerge online - that statements like "how will Twitter ever make money?" will look as silly in 10 years as similar statements made 10 years ago about Google look now. There is no question that, if they wanted to, Twitter could make tens [...]

The alleged societal benefit of patent law is that it creates a financial incentive to innovate. The societal drawback is that it reduces competition, reduces the spread of innovation, and creates deadweight legal costs. Perhaps patents are necessary in the pharmaceutical industry. I know very little about that industry but it would seem that some sort [...]

I know a brilliant young kid who graduated from college a year ago and now works at a large investment bank. He has decided he hates Wall Street and wants to work at a tech startup (good!). He recently gave notice to his bosses, who responded by putting on a dog and pony show to [...]

I got my first computer (TRS-80 Model 1) in 1980 at the age of 8. I got my second computer - an Atari 800 - two years later. I was living in Springfield, Ohio. Very few people were interested in computers in that area then. The only people that seemed to be [...]

People usually think of business competition as occurring between substitutes - products that serve similar functions for the user. Famous substitutes include Coke and Pepsi, and Macs and PCs. In fact, especially in the technology sector, some of the most brutal competition has occurred between complements. Products are complements when they more valuable because of the existence [...]

First let me say I love Google. I think Google created one of the greatest inventions of the past century and continues to give back much more value to the world than they "capture" in revenue. Secondly, I think Google itself has almost nothing to do with the decline of newspapers. That is due to, among [...]

When I was in business school I remember a class where a partner from a big consulting firm was talking about how they had done extensive research and concluded that broadband would never gain significant traction in the US without government subsidies. His primary evidence was a survey of consumers they had done asking them if [...]

A friend asked me the other day "Which VC firms should I pitch?" and I started to respond to him, but then realized that most of my knowledge of VC firms is already available online in the Which VC firm should I pitch? Hunch decision topic. That is the idea behind [...]

It seems like every successful entrepreneur I know at one point or another kicks around the idea of creating an incubator. The appeal is the idea that you can do not just one startup but many, and just focus on the "fun stuff" in each one (idea generation, product features, strategy, etc). History has shown [...]

At first it seemed like Silicon Alley Insider would be this, but they seem to have moved away from covering NYC startups. The New York Times covers national tech, as does the WSJ. The majority of their tech articles are about CA companies. I think for the NYC tech startup ecosystem to really [...]