“The More I Find Out, The Less I Know”
Two Down, Two to Go
She Who Puts Up With Me foolishly volunteered to organize the annual Halloween party for her mothers of twins group. That party was last night. Eighty-eight kids, most under the age of five, plus sixteen girl scouts who volunteered to help, and probably another fifty parents.
Maturing Software Companies
Technology companies, and software companies in particular, do a great job of growing. They don't do such a great job of maturing. That is to say, when it comes time to transition from a growth-oriented business model to a more mature replacement-oriented business model, a lot of companies fall flat on their faces. This is not merely hypothetical: Microsoft will almost certainly have to confront this issue over the next few years, as it runs out of new "must have" features to force its customers to upgrade.
The consumer software business generates revenue mainly by doing two things: bringing new users into a piece of software, and getting existing users to upgrade. Without upgrade revenue, the total size of the market is limited.
George Gilder
It was hard to live through the dot-com bubble and not know about George Gilder, seer of the Internet Era. If there was anyone who personified both the hype and the disappointment, he was the one.
I stumbled across my first Gilder article back in 1994 or 1995, talking about the promise of optical networks and the "telecosm," as he described an always-connected high-speed world. As a graduate student struggling with relatively low-speed networks (back then, a T-1 was a big deal!), the vision was both compelling and made immediate sense.
Gilder's problem was not that he didn't have vision. He had plenty of vision. His problem was that, with his head in the clouds, he forgot that his feet still had to be on the ground. He was right about what the technology is capable of, but wrong about how long it would take to deploy and build viable businesses.
Bew!
The twins, Skeeter and Scamper, have learned a new word, expanding their vocabularies by about 20%. In keeping with the upcoming Halloween holiday, they've both learned to say, "Boo!"
Since they're both only just figuring out vowels, it comes out a little differently. Imagine a kitten trying to imitate a ghost. "Bew!"
What’s the problem with insider trading?
Insider trading--the illegal selling and/or buying of stock based on inside information--has been at the center of many Wall Street scandals over the years. What's really wrong with this practice? It isn't that insiders trade stock, but that they have access to information which most people don't have, and that the information gives them an unfair advantage. Rather than simply banning trading on inside information, why not legalize it, and use insider trading to improve the flow of information to the market?
Late Night Arrival
After nearly 10 hours of travel to get from Minneapolis to Miami, then another hour in stop-and-go traffic at 1 AM (yes, I'm not making this up), we finally arrived at our hotel around 1:30 AM to a rude surprise. The hotel was overbooked, and there was no room for us.
Never mind that, had we not arrived at all, the hotel would still have charged us for a night in a room they didn't have (due to their 24-hour cancellation policy). Not only was there no room in the hotel we had booked, there was no room in any other hotel within five miles.
Scarce Resources
One way to look at economic systems is that they are the mechanisms through which a group of people allocate scarce resources. The growth and size of an economy is limited by its most scarce resources, and (at least in a free-market economy) mechanisms evolve to try to use relatively plentiful resources instead of scarce ones. So what is the limiting resource in our economy today, that resource which keeps our economy from growing faster? The answer will come as a surprise to anyone who has been unemployed lately, but our economy is limited by the relative scarcity of people.
Love, Lost in Translation
I finally got to see "Lost in Translation " with She Who Puts Up With Me last night. Not your usual Hollywood romance, but both very funny and insightful. We both came out of the theater seeing ourselves in the story.
What happened to the glamour?
I'm not old enough to remember this, but I'm told that there was a time when travel--and especially air travel--was glamorous, exclusive, and maybe just maybe even fun.
The big news this week is that they're providing metal knives with the first-class meals. Fortunately, I got an upgrade. My VP of Business Development is stuck in coach, where they're now charging $5 for airline food.
I enjoy business trips
I enjoy going on business trips. Traveling can be a lot of work, yes, but it is also fun to see other places, renew old acquaintances, and meet new people. Breaking up the office routine is also refreshing, and I always come back re-energized. Occasionally, I even get to do some sightseeing, which is like an added bonus.
After a certain point, though, the trips become draining. Not physically, but spiritually.
Come to the convention in exciting Des Moines!
I've never understood why trade shows and conventions are always in glamorous big cities like New York, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles. It would be more productive (and a lot cheaper) to go to Des Moines, Iowa, or Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
A stock exchange for used music and movies
Used CD's and DVD's appear to be an almost-ideal market for an exchange-style market, matching multiple buyers and sellers.
Right now, there are a lot of used CD dealers, and some auctions on eBay and similar sites. Used music (and movies) has all the characteristics which would make it a good candidate for a market modeled on the stock exchanges.
The cult of the NDA
To all those entrepreneurs with innovative, unique business ideas who want to capitalize on them before someone else does, I have one piece of advice: Get over it.
The Glamorous Life of a Startup CEO
Parties, schmoozing, junkets, respect and admiration, what's not to like about the glamorous life of running a startup?
I'm in Manhattan today for an industry conference which runs all next week. We've got a booth, we're sponsoring one of the major events, and I'm going to spend a lot of my time talking to an audience. So what am I doing with my day off before the action starts?
Well, this evening, I stuffed 450 CDs into jewel cases and envelopes.
My Grandparents’ House
I have many happy memories of this house, which my grandparents lived in for 50 years. The island (from which the photo was taken) is connected to the mainland at low tide by a sandbar, and I (as well as most of my cousins) got stuck on the island more than once as the tide came in.
Grandpa’s memorial service
In New York this evening, after my grandfather's memorial service.
I inherited a lot from my grandfather: his offbeat sense of humor, his disregard for convention, his passion for learning. I identified with him more than just about anyone else in my life.
Can the death penalty ever be moral?
If you believe as I do, that life is sacred, then can the death penalty ever be morally acceptable? A lot of people would answer "no," but I don't think the answer is that simple. The governor of Massachusetts is trying to find a system which guarantees only the guilty will be executed , but even if you have a perfect system, when is it right to administer the death penalty?
Let me begin by saying that, in general, I oppose the use of the death penalty. My opposition is grounded in the fact that our system of administering capital punishment appears to be deeply flawed, with the ranks of death row populated mostly by people who couldn't successfully find or negotiate a lesser punishment. Actual guilt or innocence seems to have little to do with it, which is bizarre at best, and abhorrent at worst.
Bandwidth Caps?
Some cable modem providers are starting to impose bandwidth caps on heavy users. There is a much better technological solution.
I won't deny that the problem is real. Heavy Internet use creates a burden on the network, and slows it down for everyone. And, if the usage patterns for cable modem subscribers are similar to other areas, a very small number of heavy users accounts for a large percentage of the total traffic. Getting 1% of the users to cut back could free up 10%, 20%, maybe even 50% of the network for everyone else.
The problem is that broadband ISP's market themselves as having "unlimited" usage, and they generally don't publish any particular amount of network use which is excessive.
Crossing the Line
There's a certain point when a child (or a grownup, for that matter) who has done something wrong realizes that he's not just in trouble, he's really in trouble.
Yesterday, our older son Scooter (who is four and a half) was playing quietly downstairs while She Who Puts Up With Me was napping, and I was reading. The twins, Skeeter and Scamper, were also napping. A calm, restful time in the DFN household. Too quiet, as they say in bad detective movies.
Then She Who Puts Up With Me went downstairs.
Stock Trading: Speed vs. Price
There's a tradeoff between speed and price when buying or selling stock. In the U.S., our markets favor trading quickly rather than getting the best price for investors....and I don't think a lot of small investors understand this. Should market orders be banned?
There was an article in the Wall Street Journal today about the SEC examining how the stock markets work and whether it is better for investors to get the best possible price when they trade stock, or to get their trades done quickly.
About time!