Blog Yes & Know

Community is what we all seek

Just finished a book, Plainsong, that my stepdaughter lent me. It’s an interesting story of 2 brother farmers, a pregnant high-schooler, two young boys deserted by their mother, and so …

Hey what’s that in the corner?

I had another late night meeting last week, where my firm was involved in helping a company evaluate a decision to an upcoming product launch. Sorry for not being able …

Darn that Ben Franklin

I’ve been away from posting here lately. My company has a newsletter we publish and I was responsible for doing the intro copy to our collective work. [For those interested, …

Get a Going

If you hang around me a while, you might hear this very southern voice and phrase “Get a going” come out of my mouth. It usually generates a look because …

Help! Microsoft Is Targeting Our Business

Recently we’ve been hearing that more and more. The companies being targeted usually assume they’ve being singled out for special attention from Microsoft, but when you add up all the reports, a different picture emerges. Microsoft is targeting almost every major tech company, all at once. This is a fairly new behavior for Microsoft, and it means the rules of competing with Redmond have changed as well.
Not so many years ago, Microsoft was famous for its ability to focus on one unifying goal. The cry would go out: “Make Windows the dominant OS,” or “Make Internet Explorer the dominant browser,” and the company would rally around that cry.
Today, the threats to Microsoft are different. The famous “Internet Services Disruption” memo written last October by Microsoft CTO Ray Ozzie is notable because it attempted to focus the company against an entire sector of the tech industry, rather than against a single competitor or product.

Cinching creates more value

I’m always worried about the Valley companies that have too much funding, too much venture capital, too much valuation. In this day of American ‘more is better’ philosophy, you might …

I thinks, I thinks, and nothing happens

Putting a book on the shelf, and flipped through to see what I underlined. Yes, I underline books. But that’s why I don’t use the library. I buy the book. …

Cher Marcel, no Reason to Call

It was a tough week. So I tucked myself into bed a bit early on Friday evening and finished reading Jonathan Saffron Foer’s book called “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close”. …