Tim Marman's Loosely Coupled

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• Innovation, Disruption and The Economics of Free

  Hank Williams managed to stir up quite the controversy with his recent post lamenting the rise of free and blaming the VCs . His assertion is that the venture capitalists have made free, ad-supported businesses the norm and effectively "ruined it for everyone else" (my words). I believe it should be possible to start a small business and to have a small number of profitable customers, and to earn a living. From there, it should be possible to work hard, and to grow your business into something substantial. Until recently, this was the American way, and it applied to technology as much as to any other business. But no more. In today’s “free” world, in most online business categories, it is inherently impossible to start a small self-sustaining business and to grow it. This is because in the digital world, advertising, the only real revenue stream, cannot support a small digital business. If businesses were based on the idea that people paid for services then small... Posted Apr 08 2008, 10:41 PM by Tim with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: Rants, Innovation, Business, Entrepreneurship, Startup, Venture Capital, NextNY, Notches

• Twitter is, or will be, a Messaging Platform

  Charlie discusses the future of Twitter and touches on what I think are two key points: corporate twitter and content subscription. The key as Charlie discusses is the opt-in and one-way nature of Twitter. That is, I only get updates from someone if I explicitly choose to receive them, and the party I subscribe to doesn't necessarily need to listen to me. That sure sounds a lot like an RSS aggregator, doesn't it? To me, Twitter is exactly that: a messaging aggregator. The future of Twitter is a messaging platform . Twitter has a number of ways to deliver updates - you can get them on your phone (via SMS), from IM, or on the web. And of course, you can get them as RSS and bring them anywhere you want. You can also send the updates from any of those mediums. Ever better, Twitter has an API for putting data in and getting messages out, which means I can update Twitter and have this "status update" sent out to Facebook , my blog , and so on. Delivery based on context and priority The key feature... Posted Jun 18 2007, 03:05 PM by Tim with | with no comments Filed under: Technology, Web 2.0, Innovation, Business, Blogging

• Getting the first penny

  Josh Kopelman says the first penny is the hardest . The truth is, scaling from $5 to $50 million is not the toughest part of a new venture - it’s getting your users to pay you anything at all . The biggest gap in any venture is that between a service that is free and one that costs a penny. (emphasis in original) Darren has noticed similar trends with MyPhotoAlbum . Jeff says "people will pay for these services but they have to have some persistent utility in order to cross that threshold, but the persistent utility is what is challenging." Converting free users into paying users is only challenging if you don’t ask them to pay. Premium feature sets is one way to do this, PBWiki being a good example, while increasing consumption thresholds being another. DabbleDB gives you more users for each pricing tier, other companies give you the ability to create more files, etc. Basically, the latter is what I prefer because it gives new users the opportunity to appreciate all the features while... Posted Apr 05 2007, 06:45 AM by Tim with | with no comments Filed under: Innovation, Business, Entrepreneurship, Startup

• Wisdom

  There is an important distinction between factual information and understanding how to apply it in context ( via Matthew ). Data is "the sun rises at 5:12 AM" Information is "the sun rises from the East, at 5:12 AM" Knowledge is "If you're lost in the woods without a compass, follow the direction of the sun to find your direction" Finally, wisdom is "Don't get lost in the woods" Posted Jan 25 2007, 04:40 AM by Tim with | with no comments Filed under: Innovation, Business, Social Behavior

• A look at Apple and Microsoft strategies

  I've been thinking about some of the interesting strategic decisions that Microsoft has made lately. I already discussed their curious IP licensing strategy , and their choices with Zune and Windows Media Player have me similarly baffled. In many ways, these moves have been something I expect more from Apple than Microsoft. Apple has always been known for delivering closed systems, controlling the experience from end to end. Apple software runs on an Apple OS on Apple hardware. Conversely, Microsoft has thrived largely because it has recognized the value in delivering not just products, but platforms. Office and Windows are both successful not just because of what they do as a product, but because they leave room for third party developers. It is those developers, not just Microsoft itself, that really enable a true ecosystem. Even the Xbox 360 has been a platform, not just for the media content providers, but now for the independent game developers. Given their history, it should come... Posted Jan 01 2007, 02:42 PM by Tim with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: Rants, Gadgets, Things that amuse me, Music, Innovation, Business, Microsoft, Apple, Audio

• notch.es is hiring

  Notch.es is seeking ninjas . If you're a rock star, give Corey a call. I'm reposting the two job descriptions here. Don’t want to spend the next six months working under florescent lights on a corporate PC with no Internet access fixing someone else’s five year old code? Would you rather help build the next Digg or Delicious? Here is an opportunity to work in an exciting, fast-paced, collaborative early stage start-up with lots of room to flex your creativity and help shape the product. We practice iterative development; pair programming and have short milestones. We are looking for self-starters who are not afraid to voice concerns, take initiative and drive major subsystems. Corey will be at BarCamp NYC2 tomorrow. I have to work in the morning but I'm registered and will be there in the afternoon/evening. Posted Sep 29 2006, 08:32 PM by Tim with | with no comments Filed under: Software Development, AJAX, Innovation, Business, C#, .NET

• Is Apple following Palm's footsteps?

  The recent BootCamp announcement is an interesting shift in strategy for Apple, and I think there are two ways to look at this move. On one hand, they have removed a barrier for people buying Apple hardware. People who like the new MacBook Pro but are either afraid or unwilling to give up Windows. If this was the case, they're basically betting that people will be more willing to try the hardware and then decide to stick around. It's similar to the move they made a few years back by making the iPod work on Windows, and we all know how that worked out. On the other, this could signal a decoupling between Apple software and Apple hardware. This would be a major shift - until now, they have sold the entire experience from end to end. The iPod was successful because it combined good industrial design with a simple user interface. I'm sure Apple would love to sell OS X for use on your Dell, but then they realized that it's far easier to get XP working on their limited set of hardware. Microsoft... Posted Apr 14 2006, 04:03 AM by Tim with | with 5 comment(s) Filed under: Technology, Rants, Gadgets, Innovation, Business, Apple