Bezos Most Brilliant Move

It is not what you may guess and it’s not sexy, its API’s! Someone recently asked me what I thought was one of the most important factors to their success and I believe a lot gets tracked back to an internal memo back that read something like this:  All teams will henceforth expose their data and functionality through service interfaces.Teams must communicate with each other through these...

Amazon ads (SEM / CPC)

Hearing more and more about companies popping up to think about the ad universe on Amazon. Most is focused on SEM / CPC, but a great article from today’s NY Times, Amazon Sets Its Sights on the $88 Billion Online Ad Market: Amazon, which has already reshaped and dominated the online retail landscape, is quickly gathering momentum in a new, highly profitable arena: online advertising, where it is rapidly...

Opportunity Zones

Super excited about the possibilities here. Traveling throughout the country, you see areas that have been in the driver’s seat when it comes to innovation (places like Silicon Valley, Boston, Santa Monica, etc.) and when they see success, it breeds infrastructure for others to be successful (see post on Harvard Innovation Lab as an example) and a higher quality of life for a lot of people involved in a...

Impact of the Internet

The slide below from 2015 continues to stay on the top of my mind, which happens to come from my favorite annual report. I would love to see something updated that has big areas of GDP vs. Internet penetration. But for me this is inspiring, as you move away from consumer and business applications, you start to hit on areas that drive positive impact and have the capacity to improve peoples...

Rinse & Repeat (keep it simple)

Founders have visions and (by default) they feel that the future world should look different and if they understand the space that they are working in, they are likely right. But there is a big gap between today’s world and their future vision and the way you get there is one step at a time. So how does this effect early stage companies? Since your capital is limited, you have to make your bet, stay focused,...