Most other countries use washing machines with much less capacity and water ue (side loaders vs. top loaders), have different toilet flushing systems with smaller loads, and generally put a much higher premium on drinking water. If you compare the US to the UK, also take into account the very different climate. Due to the relatively tame and wet weather, there is almost no irrigation in the UK. Case in point: There is no place like Vegas, in the middle of the desert, with golf courses and fountains all over the place.
Such an incredible person. I've met him a couple of times, and he was always smiling, inquisitive and much nicer than you would ever expect. The good go early.
Can Twitter (or Facebook, or anyone else for that matter) still build the next big thing internally? Are these companies still as 'startup' as they think they are, or are they now too slow and bureaucratic to come up with products unrelated to their own core functionality?
A follow question: should they even come up with the new cool thing, or should they focus on their core offerings and simply buy break out successes when they are apparent?
In my opinion, both FB and Twitter are overestimating their chances here, like any incumbent always does (see Christensen). The questions "what if Google does this" is dismissed by every founder, because obviously Google is too focused on its core mission to make the success of a new social app the forefront of its development efforts.
Both companies are focusing more and more on being platforms for others, rather than building and testing all new paradigms themselves. This is what being the incumbent allows you to do, taking much larger risks, with larger payoffs. Launching a lot of small apps with cool ideas certainly shouldn't be their core business when they need to figure out how to deal with their growing developer ecosystem (again, something both companies are struggling with).
Acting on fear, which both companies did with their recent apps, certainly isn't the right strategy. But maybe I'm wrong and Twitter and Facebook are the only companies that can escape the innovator's dilemma?
BTW - Google is doing fine on that front with self driving cars and rockets, despite their not so apparent track record in social.
Before it's the next big thing? That would mean acquiring all good small startups that are active in _some_ space they are interested in, without waiting for the decision on who's the best. Again, fear does not make good decisions.
Yes, this is what they would do if they understood UX. But that’s not what VCs are for.
What VCs really would do if they understood UX the way the OP implies is build a firm that tries to invest in slowly growing, sustainable companies, with extremely long term outlook and real, sometimes un-measurable value to all stakeholders. Arguably the underlying mantra “small is beautiful” is not one for the VC industry. Also, these will not be companies that can be sold easily or timely (much less at crazy valuations due to cancerous growth), so the VCs themselves would not be very successful.
There’s a conundrum for an investor in building these kinds of companies: in comparison to their peers, they would most likely make less money (given the same kind of investment process, style, mechanism). That’s why bootstrapped companies with little to no outside funding can stay more focused, more consumer and employee friendly, and thus, more “integer”.
What the VC needs is a longer time horizon, lower exit expectations, and more leeway for the entrepreneurs they back in several categories. Now, the good news is some firms are thinking more and more like that, and also the general industry shifts allow more companies to be bootstrapped to work without or with only little outside capital.
Firms that seem to operate this way are the likes of Betaworks, OATV, and a few angel funds, mostly in New York and SF.
Industry shifts that help are the ease of develop&deploy of today’s technology, developer led companies that can build their own product without much capital, and the very easily accessible, and scalable, international market of app stores, webapps, and creative business models.
If you don’t like VCs, you can build your company without them. If you want to keep working on your own terms, you can. If you talk about disrupting, don’t just disrupt the industry your product serves, also take advantages of the disruption in the industry serves you.
Disclaimer: I do not think VCs are that bad, and I certainly know tons of awesome VCs that understand UX. Like, for real.
Good on Joel for pointing out what many have been thinking and saying. Doing it as one of the few relevant startup bloggers in Germany makes it even more important. Overall, I think there are a few rough patches in the post, but I agree with the sentiment.
I do think that e.g. 6WK are doing the right thing, so it's kind of counter intuitive to point them out. They have scaled back the hype, focused on their well growing product WL again, and have made some tough decisions.
Wow, the smugness and adversity to Marissa Mayer is really evident here. Did these two have a run-in in the past or is that just KS's style of reporting?
Actually - we do have cohorts, just a little nuanced from the 3-month programs. Due to the distributed nature of the onboarding and investments (locally in the markets we cover), we decided to kickstart the individual startups monthly. We have a rolling program throughout the year, but the annual Seedcamp Week with Demo Day is completely separated by annual class.
In terms of focus, we haven't changed: product focused teams from all around Europe (and beyond now), at seed stage, at standard investment. Happy to chat and give you more input, of course.
