Writing

New platforms create new opportunities. One would think that established vendors with big balance sheets, big investments in R&D, and established brands would quickly move onto a meaningful new platform, using their market power to prevent new entrants from creating [...]  Read more

Jason Knight stepped down from his role as the CEO of Wesabe yesterday in order to devote his full attention to a medical situation in his family. Chairman and co-founder Marc Hedlund, who previously served as the company’s chief product [...]  Read more

Most companies grow in steps. They operate at one level for a while, make good progress, then take a step up, and start operating at a new level.In the past month, our portfolio company has stepped it up on a [...]  Read more

Over a year ago when we first started thinking about personal financial management tools on the web, I had this OMG moment when I realized that a web based personal financial management service was going to be way more disruptive [...]  Read more

Over the last two years, our portfolio company Adaptive Blue has become known for its ability to automatically recognize things like books, movies, stocks, and wines on the web. By using semantic analysis to figure out the difference between The [...]  Read more

Yesterday the New York Times ran an Op-Ed piece that led with the collapse of the effort to create a hand-held device for managing the 2010 census. The latest problem is the Census Bureau’s failure— after nearly four years and [...]  Read more