Month: December 2015

 

• Here’s a 99-page shareholder presentation on why Yahoo needs to fire Marissa Mayer (BusinessInsider)
• Why 2015 Was a Breakthrough Year in Artificial Intelligence (Bloomberg)
• All the Product Reviews Money Can Buy (NYT)
  • How the anonymity of internet hurts or benefits online/local retailers?
• Google Ventures Owns Part of Several Unicorns, but the Biggest (And Trickiest) Is Uber (Recode)
•  Costco has one secret that makes it ‘Amazon-proof’ (BusinessInsider)
• What if? Whether to kill baby Hitler might be a political firecracker, but can counterfactuals say anything deeper about the past?(aeon.co)
• Why Wall Street Loves — And Should Fear — Google’s New Supercomputer (vice.com)

• Microsoft’s quantum computer simulator: A glimpse into the future of computers (TechRepublic)
• How search engines make us feel smarter than we really are (boingboing)
• TensorFlow: Google open sources the machine learning library that drives products like Inbox and enables pure research(Dzone).
• The Last 90 VC-Backed Tech IPOs Have Dramatically Underperformed the Market (all in one chart) (ClimateerInvesting)
• What Happens When There Are Fewer Suckers at the Poker Table? (link)
• The world’s tallest building will be one kilometer high (verge)
• Corporate directors – among the highest paid part-time employees in america (bostonglobe)
• Your next business partner should come with a prenup – Scott Kupor (Fortune)

“A business exists to create customers” – Peter Drucker.

As a startup founder you need to work on a business plan only if it is absolutely necessary and helpful to get funding. Rather most investors would want to see traction. Unless you are a proven entrepreneur with multiple successful exits, the days of getting funding with just an idea is over long, long time back. Bootstrap your startup, get traction and then think about spending time to write a business plan when you are forced to do so. Until then, spend all your time getting customers to use your product.

Prominent VC Dave McClure has said recently that “Don’t write business plan, rather build a functional product that people are using” (here). If you don’t believe in his words, here is another proof from more than 40 years. Intel’s Moore jotted down first business plan so small you would think it is a tweet. Check out the image below.

 

 

Coffee and reading.

• Why Smart People Struggle with Strategy (HBR)
• Will Quantum Mechanics Swallow Relativity? (Nautilus)
• Department of Defense Head Ashton Carter Enlists Silicon Valley to Transform the Military (wired)
• The single biggest way shoppers are manipulated by retailers (BusinessInsider)
• What’s Worked in Computer Science. 1999 vs 2015 (Danluu)
  • Interesting read if you are computer systems nerd or just want to know what we were thinking in 1999 and how it panned out fifteen years later.
• Why Your Big Data Needs Good Algorithms (Datamation)
• When was the modern science invented (newhumanist)
• The Samoan Pipeline: How does a tiny island, 5,000 miles from the U.S. mainland, produce so many professional football players? (californiasunday)