I worked for an EdTech start-up that missed the VC boat by a few months. Having evaluated our competition VERY thoroughly, I can honestly say some of these companies walked away with $10,20,30 million simply because they had asked earlier. I can't speak for every market, but funding in this one definitely "dried-up".
Looking at this from a bigger picture perspective, there is a tone of Who is John Gault in the tech community lately?
The VCs, business plans, markets ruined it... boo hoo. I'm going back to be a cog in big business.
What happened to the revolution?
This isn't a free fall, it's a shake out. Instead of free land, we have been racing for free brands. Names like Amazon, AOL, Yahoo, and Excite are well known as much for being first as anything else.
It's too late to be first. Now you have to be good... or close your doors.
A revolution has occurred.
Discounting all the progress that's been made in educating the masses about distributed networks is like discounting the assembly line when the auto industry started shaking out.
Are those of you giving advice like go back to established businesses actually following your own advice? Or misleading potential competition?
We've come along way baby! (to quote Norman Cook quoting Virgina Slims, both applicable)
Have you stopped and thought about the average person's understanding of a distributed networking lately?
More people understand that they can connect their machine to a much larger system than five years ago, agreed?
More people understand that the real power of a computer comes from its connection, agreed?
And even more importantly, the next generation (of haves) will have a systems mentality they take for granted... much like previous generations have taken democracy, electricity, ATMs for granted.
In the pre-DSL days I had 2 additional lines for ISDN. Periodically I would get a bill from AT&T for long distance on one of the lines. I'd call AT&T, bitch and they'd apologize.
A few months later it would happen again. I finally wised up and called USWest (now Qwest).
After getting the run around for a few hours I finally asked...
"What government agency do I complain about you too?"
Like magic I was forward to someone who had a clue. They told me that when lines are set up, they are given a default long distance carrier through a random process (every LD carrier gets a shot at your line). When "the computer" sees you don't have a LD carrier, it signs you up with your default carrier. Only by requesting NOT to have a carrier by default can you get around this.
Six months later MN passed a bill allowing USWest to charge $5 or $6 a month for the privilege of NOT having a LD carrier.
I'm not sure if this is still that case or not. I only have a cell phone these days and I've never had a telemarketer call me on it.
Does anyone know if soliciting over a cell phone is illegal?
Coming from a communications background into programming, I made what I now know to be a fundamental mistake. I focused on learning specific languages and NOT the fundamentals of programming. I've read that many schools still teach Fortran, not because they think it's going to make a comeback... but because they want students to focus less on the syntax and more on process and theory. Encouraging students jumping head first into C before experiencing the 'coding horrors' of a large project built on a sloppy code base. I call your local consulting company and ask them to come in with some 'real world' code to review. Maybe after seeing a 1,000 hard copy of a big project they'll say... "oh, now I see why..."
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.thestandard.com/article/display/grok/0, 1151,18073,00.html
Looking at this from a bigger picture perspective, there is a tone of Who is John Gault in the tech community lately?
The VCs, business plans, markets ruined it... boo hoo. I'm going back to be a cog in big business.
What happened to the revolution?
This isn't a free fall, it's a shake out. Instead of free land, we have been racing for free brands. Names like Amazon, AOL, Yahoo, and Excite are well known as much for being first as anything else.
It's too late to be first. Now you have to be good... or close your doors.
A revolution has occurred.
Discounting all the progress that's been made in educating the masses about distributed networks is like discounting the assembly line when the auto industry started shaking out.
Are those of you giving advice like go back to established businesses actually following your own advice? Or misleading potential competition?
We've come along way baby! (to quote Norman Cook quoting Virgina Slims, both applicable)
Have you stopped and thought about the average person's understanding of a distributed networking lately?
More people understand that they can connect their machine to a much larger system than five years ago, agreed?
More people understand that the real power of a computer comes from its connection, agreed?
And even more importantly, the next generation (of haves) will have a systems mentality they take for granted... much like previous generations have taken democracy, electricity, ATMs for granted.
Everything is connected. So what's next?
In the pre-DSL days I had 2 additional lines for ISDN. Periodically I would get a bill from AT&T for long distance on one of the lines. I'd call AT&T, bitch and they'd apologize. A few months later it would happen again. I finally wised up and called USWest (now Qwest). After getting the run around for a few hours I finally asked... "What government agency do I complain about you too?" Like magic I was forward to someone who had a clue. They told me that when lines are set up, they are given a default long distance carrier through a random process (every LD carrier gets a shot at your line). When "the computer" sees you don't have a LD carrier, it signs you up with your default carrier. Only by requesting NOT to have a carrier by default can you get around this. Six months later MN passed a bill allowing USWest to charge $5 or $6 a month for the privilege of NOT having a LD carrier. I'm not sure if this is still that case or not. I only have a cell phone these days and I've never had a telemarketer call me on it. Does anyone know if soliciting over a cell phone is illegal?
Coming from a communications background into programming, I made what I now know to be a fundamental mistake. I focused on learning specific languages and NOT the fundamentals of programming. I've read that many schools still teach Fortran, not because they think it's going to make a comeback... but because they want students to focus less on the syntax and more on process and theory. Encouraging students jumping head first into C before experiencing the 'coding horrors' of a large project built on a sloppy code base. I call your local consulting company and ask them to come in with some 'real world' code to review. Maybe after seeing a 1,000 hard copy of a big project they'll say... "oh, now I see why..."