At least one startup's doing just fine vs. Blackboard. Instructure Canvas just closed series B, is CEO'd by former Mozy founder and is LMS of choice for a growing number of schools (and soon to be @ Auburn if twitter's to be believed).
They avoid litigation (apparently) by open-sourcing their stack and charging for hosting/integration. Rails-based goodness.
[not affiliated - but was just identifying LMS options for a client]
They avoid litigation (apparently) by open-sourcing their stack and charging for hosting/integration.
That's a strategy to give buyers confidence in a new vendor, not an anti-litigation strategy. Open Source doesn't protect you against IP infringement claims.
tl;dr Contractor develops psyops backend for the cloud. Creates fake persona pool. Uses anonymizer/chameleon for IP obfuscation, vmware/virtualbox instances for each persona, enables deploying to vps around the world. Uses system to age personas via social/email accounts and salt with rss, social & checkin data.
I've got to believe that the social networks and Google have been thinking about way to combat this problem too. I wonder what kind of impact Google's open-source two-step authentication [1] (and other types of mobile device verification systems [2]) will have on efforts to develop meaningful persona management software. If implemented properly, mobile device verification would surely inhibit such efforts.
I hope it's as helpful as the classic "If You Want to Write" by Brenda Euland -- which was written in 1938, but has aged very-very well. Originally found this book via Guy Kawasaki on his list of great books for entrepreneurs & creative types.
If you're a fiction writer, you do NOT want to miss The Art of Fiction, by John Gardner. The last chapter, Exercises, is a seminar all by itself on what to practice writing, and why.
Joe Ades -- passed away last year after many years selling on the streets of NYC. He was profiled a few times, but this article sheds more light on his life and business:
Looking forward to following behind the scenes on this. Saw the initial tweets about WPEngine and mighty interested in the 'lessons learned' re: using social for first block of customers.
From the comments: SmartBear's measuring initial success as $360k ebitda ($30k a month). While arbitrary, seems a smart goal. Makes for a sustainable and salable business (with room for a bit of R&D and bonus structure).
Mark Bittman, food writer at NYT strikes a balance between food hyperbole and science that appeals to me. (e.g. full appreciation of health, weight, environment, pleasure trade-offs)
His personal goal of "vegan until 6" is an example. Veggies & fruit during the day, then a balanced dinner with protein.
"I got sucked into his enterprise -- our livelihood now depended on it -- and though I had little input into its direction, I stood to lose everything if it failed."
Article echoes much of what my wife has dealt with in 15 years I've been building companies.
Ok, Colbert (and smart MSFT product-placers) - I'll bite. Today is officially "Bing for a Day" here. I just set my Chrome default engine to Bing for the first time. Should be fun -- wondering if I'll miss the Goog in the next 24 hours.
Yes. And jives with Kayak.com founder's Big Red Phone tactic:
"About a year ago, I bought a red telephone with a really loud ringer for the office. Whenever a customer calls the help number on our website, that phone rings. The engineers initially complained about it. They said, "That's so friggin' annoying!" And I'd say, "There's a really simple solution: Answer the friggin' phone and do whatever it takes to make that customer happy. Then hang up, unplug the phone, walk it down to the other end of the office, and plug it in down there."
Another way of saying same. If employees are in your future, focus on revenue per employee (RPE).
Napkin math: sub-$100k RPE and your wee company is nominally profitable after salaries, fixed & variable costs. Greater than $100k per employee, profits scale nicely.
While nice to talk about the Goog's RPE ($1 mil '08), I prefer to "fish" for company ideas a little closer to Earth. For inspiration, Inc 5000 companies with 50 or fewer employees, sorted by revenue:
I agree on RPE, but the data on the Inc. website is highly suspect, however, with regard to number of employees.
I did a random sampling of several companies that had tons of revenue with just 1 or 2 employees and checked out their websites and the Inc. data is flat out wrong in many cases.
this company is listed as 3 employees on INC., there's 4 in their management section alone...seems INC maybe has PUBLICLY listed employees, and is not counting the chairman...
They avoid litigation (apparently) by open-sourcing their stack and charging for hosting/integration. Rails-based goodness.
[not affiliated - but was just identifying LMS options for a client]