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Political Debates on German vs US TV: Paging John Stewart
Albert Wenger – Oct 8, 2015
Last week I spent a few days with family, friends and startups in Germany. When I was at my parents we watched a television debate about Islam, religious freedom and German society. I was struck by the stark contrast to [...] Read more
Going to Mars
Albert Wenger – Oct 1, 2015
I was thrilled to hear about NASA’s discovery of water on Mars. I am hoping it will contribute to interest in a human mission to Mars. Ideally, such a mission would not be under the banner of a single nation [...] Read more
Learn To Commit
Albert Wenger – Sep 28, 2015
This past Saturday Susan, our daughter Katie and I (with help from our son Michael) taught a one day computer bootcamp for women at Cornell. Susan, who is a Cornell alum, had come up with the idea a few months [...] Read more
Kickstarter is Now a Public Benefit Corporation
Albert Wenger – Sep 21, 2015
I am super excited that Kickstarter is no longer an INC but rather now a PBC, a Public Benefit Corporation. This means the company has changed its Delaware charter to include its mission of supporting creators as pari passu with [...] Read more
Ad-Blocking Points the Way To Decentralizing Power And That’s a Good Thing
Albert Wenger – Sep 20, 2015
Robert Reich has an op-ed piece in the NY Times today arguing that “Big Tech Has Become Way Too Powerful” and that we should apply anti-trust regulation. There is little doubt that network effects have made tech’s new incumbents such [...] Read more
More on Subscriptions and Micropayments
Albert Wenger – Sep 19, 2015
Two days ago I wrote a post explaining why I am bullish on crowdfunding and skeptical on micropayments as an alternative to funding content, especially journalism. The explanation was a bit dry and abstract, but in the comments I provided [...] Read more
Crowdfunding Is More Likely to Replace Ads Than Micropayments
Albert Wenger – Sep 18, 2015
The rollout of iOS 9 and along with it adblocking plugins for mobile Safari has re-ignited the debate over the ethics of removing ads from pages. Marco Arment who released the paid Peace adblocker previously wrote a piece laying out [...] Read more
On Demand Services and (Mis)Understanding Vertical Integration
Albert Wenger – Sep 15, 2015
While thinking about my talk at the On Demand Conference today in New York, I stumbled upon a tweet which quotes a Bloomberg piece on Baidu’s Robin Lee (the CEO): This of course sounds a lot like the on demand [...] Read more
Basic Income and On Demand Services
Albert Wenger – Sep 14, 2015
It is Basic Income Week and I am speaking at the On Demand Conference in New York. That is a fortunate co-incidence as On Demand companies ought to be strong supporters of Basic Income. First, with Basic Income, the distinction [...] Read more