Going through the higher and higher number of IPO filings, I was suprised to find Wozniak’s names among the officers of one the filing companies. Steve Wozniak, Apple co-founder, is the chief scientist of Fusion-io, a Salt Lake City start-up which has raised more than $100M with NEA and LightSpeed and made more than $30M […]
Palo Alto: a History of California, Capitalism, and The World by Malcolm Harris is a remarkable work. Point ! Now there has been some debates about it as you can listen on NPR. It is a marxist analysis. But you cannot disagree with the claim of the Washington Post on the cover page : “Conviction […]
In my previous post, I mentioned this anthology of articles compiled by Loup Cellard and Guillaume Heuguet. Consisting of six articles (5 of which are translated) and a long introduction by the authors, it is a most interesting dive into what this region represents from a historical and political point of view. So here is […]
A friend mentioned this new book about Silicon Valley to me a few days ago and I quote: “The author’s argument is wrong (but it’s pernicious). […] Indeed, entrepreneurship generates excellence and independent-minded people, while [another view – opposition to liberal capitalism] creates a population of people dependent upon the state.” I’m not sure I […]
Yesterday I had a short debate about Wozniak and Jobs initial ownership in Apple Computer. It is true that at the IPO Wozniak had much less ownership than Jobs, but this can be explained by the fact that he gave or sold at a low price shares to employees (whom he thought deserved it and […]
This morning, I was participating to a workshop about startups and one question came about the relationships with investors entrepeneurs are trying to attract and invest in their company. I told them it could be frustrating for many reasons, often because VCs never say no but decline too often to invest too. The best illustration […]
“Anything that won’t sell, I don’t want to invent.” – Thomas Edison This article arouse from a discussion with colleagues about what innovation really is. I have to admit the conversation helped me in clarifying and correcting a few misconceptions I had. So let me try to explain how the three concepts of Invention, Entrepreneurship […]
How many times will I say how great a book is Walter Isaacson’s The Innovators – How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution ? And how many posts will I write about it ? Now this this the 4th part ! Isaacson shows how collaboration in software contributed to a […]
Innovation is about business models – the Atari case Innovation in (Silicon) Valley: after the chip, innovation saw the arrival of games, software and the Internet “As they were working on the first Computer Space consoles, Bushnell heard that he had competition. A Stanford grad named Bill Pitts and his buddy Hugh Tuck from California […]
Thiel’s concludes his Class Notes Essays (CS183 —Stanford, Spring 2012) with philosophical considerations about the uniqueness of founders (class 18) and the singularity of technology (class 19). Founders are a topic I regularly covered, for example with European Founders at Work or Founders at Work. Again Thiel presents unusual ideas about founders. He sees them […]