Deron Quon
Jenny Wu
Lynn Chen
Stephen Liu
Teddy Zee
Tina Leung
Privy 5 LA
Privy 5 NY
Privy 5 SF
Privy 5 SHA
Mobile Industry Snapshots
With the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain this week along with TED in Long Beach, CA, it is timely that I just completed a wireless industry report for Pegasus Strategies LLC, an advisory firm that I work with occasionally. It is fitting with the TED conference since Pegasus Strategies was founded by Adrian Hong, who is a TED Senior Fellow.
Pegasus Strategies LLC is a strategic advisory firm that advises corporations government and NGOs, with a particular focus on emerging markets and areas in transition. It has a wide range of expertise in the Middle East, North Africa and Asia regions in particular.
Anyway, I hope you find this mobile industry “cheat sheet” useful. It provides a quick overview of the wireless world along with detailed profiles of public companies to trending startups.
2012 Predictions: It’s Doom & Gloom for Amazon, RIM and Zynga
My 5th annual technology sector predictions is posted over at VentureBeat, a leading technology journal/blog in Silicon Valley. An excerpt and full link below:
In hindsight and as an entrepreneur, I would say that I wasn’t risk-taking enough in my predictions. Now that I’m putting together predictions for 2012, there’s a global crisis looming, Europe is about to collapse, China’s real estate bubble is bursting and the U.S. is possibly being sucked deeper into the economic abyss, so what do I have to lose? Especially if the Mayan predictions come true, no one will be around to mock my predictions in 2013. So doom and gloom plus bold and big is the general theme for this 5th annual edition of my technology predictions. And here they are:
Mojo Shifts from Amazon to Big Box Retailers
Several states will lift their sales tax amnesties for online businesses in 2012. Those amnesties have provided huge competitive advantage to Amazon. How many shoppers do you know who check out items at brick and mortar stores and then buy them on Amazon? I believe those days are numbered and Amazon will take a big blow once the amnesties are lifted. The companies to gain the most from this are big box retailers (i.e. Walmart, Target, Best Buy) and possibly eBay.
The ecommerce space has become like a Hollywood fitness guru that presents the latest, hottest biz model every year. It went from flash sales to vertical flash sales to curated ecommerce to LoMo social commerce to LoMo SoMo OhNo and so on. While some sites are making a killing, I don’t see them growing big enough to benefit significantly from Amazon’s loss as much as the big box retailers. Most of these new ecommerce companies struggle with logistics, inventory management, customer acquisition and fighting to maintain healthy margins as they work on those other areas…
2012 Predictions: It’s Doom & Gloom for Amazon, RIM and Zynga
Billion Dollar Brothers: Entrepreneurial Lessons From the Duo Behind ‘Guitar Hero’
Sharing my interview of the Huang brothers and their awesome story of how Red Octane and Guitar Hero was founded and launched. I loved their story, insights and passion. You can read it over at Mashable here:
Billion Dollar Brothers: Entrepreneurial Lessons From the Duo Behind ‘Guitar Hero’
You can also visit their Privy 5 San Francisco restaurant recommendations here:
The Coming Ubiquity of Video Communications
Over the past decades, the promise of video as a standard form of communication has been presented to us through many mediums, from Star Trek to The Jetsons and even through my old Avengers comic books over 30 years ago. While corporations utilize video conferencing technology at a rapid rate, it hasn’t yet penetrated the daily habits of people across the globe but it will.
The core technology has been there for decades, but not the bandwidth and compression technology along with the hardware to make it an everyday utility. With the growth of Skype’s video chat, Google’s GTalk, Apple’s Facetime and other services, combined with the proliferation of smartphones and tablets, video will become the standard form of communications versus SMS, voice only and even email in some situations within a few years. Drilling down further, here are a few trends that I see.
Video Will Replace SMS Communications
The days of text-based communications as a primary tool are reaching an end. SMS is slowly being replaced by mobile video chat services such as Facetime, Qik (acquired by Skype earlier this year) and Tango. Even just looking at Tango’s numbers reveals a rapidly changing landscape. Two months after their launch late last year, it hit over 4 million users and now boasts 23 million users. I can tell you that those users are SMSing less often these days. Read More >
Silicon Valley’s Pay-It-Forward Culture Drives Innovation
Recently, the highly regarded serial entrepreneur and Stanford lecturer, Steve Blank, wrote a piece titled, “The pay-it-forward culture of startups”. Reading it allowed me to revisit a common question that is asked to many people in Silicon Valley. What makes this area so unique as the entrepreneurial innovation engine to the world? Representatives from countries, cities and companies all over the world visit the halls of HP, Google, Facebook, Twitter and others every week to somehow bottle the special air we breathe here or the secret potion that’s poured into our water.
There have been numerous studies done on the rare combination in Silicon Valley of venture capital, major research universities and a large pool of engineering and entrepreneurial talent, but I really believe it is the intangibles that make Silicon Valley unique and foster an incredible amount of innovation. The tangible elements have been replicated, such as in NYC or Boston, but the intangibles are more difficult to replicate.
Steve Blank described the pay-it-forward culture and how it allowed a young Steve Jobs to be mentored by Bob Noyce, Founder and CEO of Intel, and how this helped in Job’s development to become the most influential CEO of the past decade. It is the ubiquity of this pay-it-forward culture that makes Silicon Valley unique.
What does paying it forward mean? Providing information and knowledge about how to build a technology company, how to raise venture capital, and the countless lessons learned from startup life. There are seminars and consultants that provide such knowledge, but an important fabric of Silicon Valley are the experienced entrepreneurs who are happy to pass down their experiences, mistakes, successes and any kernel of wisdom that they can provide to help others to succeed. Read More >
