Don’t Just Score – The Clemson Win Applied to Business
“When they scored, I just looked at the clock, it was 2:01 & I smiled & told myself, they left too much time on the clock.” – Deshaun Watson Having lived in Clemson until I was 15, I can’t help but comment on the Tigers’ win in the NCAA championship game earlier this month. After all, I found something to say last year when they lost. Let’s start with Clemson quarterback Deshaun Watson and his thoughts after Alabama’s go-ahead touchdown in the late fourth quarter. (See above, as tweeted by ESPN reporter Brett McMurphy.)...
read moreFrom T-1s to Cable Modems
Last month, I discussed Andy Kessler’s idea that we are all billionaires now. His point relates to the exponential rise in the power of technologies, as measured in terms of capability-per-dollar. One of his examples relates to T-1s. Up until the late 1990s and before the cable modem, if you needed anything more than the 56 kilobits per second (Kbps) available through telephone dial-up, T-1s were your only option. Developed in the early 1960s to deliver several dozen voice calls over copper wire, the T-1 later referred more generally to...
read moreHow to Be a Tech Billionaire
One billion: that big number that uses three commas to separate nine zeros. Billionaire: someone who can flaunt three commas. Celebrity investor Marc Cuban has taken up the “three commas” mantra. In 2015, he co-launched a brand of the same name, selling t-shirts bearing these punctuation marks. Interesting business, this “aspirational brand.” Even if you include billionaire wannabes with the few, like Cuban, who have that much wealth, the market seems very limited. Or is there another way to look at it? There’s a billion in...
read moreHire a Freelance Writer, Sell More, Get Acquired
Why hire a freelance writer? The immediate reason is to complete a task. A marketing department needs a white paper or a solution brief or a series of blog articles, and no one internally is available. So they look outside for someone who can get it done. That answers the question, but only so far. Why does a company need that content in the first place? One big goal is to increase sales, or a suitable proxy, such as sales leads. For some kinds of content, that link is more obvious than for others. Take white papers. No matter how persuasive...
read moreTrip to Philly and Cable-Tec Expo
This year’s trip to Cable-Tec Expo required no planes, only trains and automobiles. Trip summary: Car ride to/from the Amtrak station, trains between Richmond and Philly, and uber to/from the hotel. There for less than 48 hours, I still had enough time to connect with friends and clients and make some new connections. The floor included not only booths, but also (much in the style of the newly defunct INTX event) meeting rooms and an “Innovation Theatre” – the latter MC’ed by PR pro Brian Baumley, who seemed very much at home on...
read moreAd Blocking: Containment or Rollback?
In US foreign policy, a classic debate has been over whether to force change in or simply prevent the expansion of an enemy state. The choice is between “rollback” or “containment.” A similar debate is surfacing in the ongoing ad blocking “wars” between advertisers and consumers. The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), an online media and marketing industry group, thinks you can do both. In a report released last week, the IAB said not only that “ad blocking is a problem that can be contained,” but also that “two-thirds of consumers using...
read moreThe Third Wave and Steve Case’s Apple Disconnect
Former AOL CEO and Chairman Steve Case has been snagging headlines and interviews. A year after Verizon bought AOL for $4.4 billion and 16 years after AOL peaked with a market cap of $163 billion (when it bought Time Warner) Case has been talking up ideas contained in a book released last month, The Third Wave: An Entrepreneur’s Vision of the Future. The book is a mixed bag. Case himself calls it “part memoir, part playbook for the future, part manifesto.” The title theme is his classification of the First, Second and Third Waves, which...
read moreBoston INTX – Less Turbulence, More Focus
Last year in Chicago, change was in the air. The NCTA had just unveiled INTX, the Internet & TV Expo, as the new brand for the Cable Show. The proposed Time Warner Cable-Comcast merger had flopped, but industry dealmakers were not done yet. Only a few weeks later, Charter announced its intention to acquire Time Warner Cable. At this year’s event in Boston, attendees were more comfortable with saying and hearing the expression “In-Tex.” The Charter-Time Warner Cable merger was a done deal, having finally met with anti-trust regulatory...
read moreThe Wired in Wireless
It was once common to think that cellular communications were entirely wireless. If the public were polled, a large number would have thought that calls hopped back and forth from tower to tower until they reached their destination. The truth, of course, is otherwise. The all-wireless misunderstanding is less common today. All it takes is one look at a cell tower. While festooned with antennas and transmitters of all kinds (some, indeed, microwave) communications towers are highly wired structures, with hard-to-conceal cables dropping into...
read moreRichmond VA vs. Silicon Valley?
Richmond VA-based Lighthouse Labs hosted a “Startup Journey” forum last week, featuring medical services innovator Iggbo. It also touched the sensitive issue of Silicon Valley. Lighthouse Labs Talks with Iggbo Lighthouse Director Todd Nuckols moderated the event at the University of Richmond. Headlining the evening were two of the Richmond-based founders of Iggbo, whose mission is to streamline the delivery of blood samples to medical laboratories. Dubbed the “Uber of phlebotomy,” Iggbo launched in early 2015 and scaled up fast. It raised a...
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