Nice resume. Now about your lack of startups...

Good article in favor of buy-vs-build and how it’s getting mixed with hiring-vs-acquiring. Gist of the article is the merger of the following three quotes:

1) “Like everything else in technology, the cost of starting a startup has decreased dramatically. Now it's so low that it has disappeared into the noise.” PLUS

2) “When companies buy startups, they're effectively fusing recruiting and product development.” EQUALS

3) “companies that acquire technology will gradually learn to go after earlier stage startups. They won't necessarily buy them outright. The solution may be some hybrid of investment and acquisition”

It's an intriguing article and makes for some interesting food for thought if you interpolate beyond where the author has taken it. For example:

• If an ever increasing number of undergrads start their own companies, how long before it's just *expected*? Part of the min requirements? It wasn't so long ago that "I wrote and shipped an indie game" or "I ran a fan site for an MMO" was an attention-getter on a resume. Today, standard fare. Maybe one day you can't even apply for that MBA program without at least 1 startup under your belt.
• If it becomes something that everyone is doing, then the min bar will be starting a SUCCESSFUL startup. Of course, those people may not want to be hired or acquired at all. Makes for a nice feedback loop there.

Hmm...

(Of course, while the cost of starting web-based businesses may be dropping, there are still many industries that are pretty capital-intensive, in which case this may apply less.

What's a startup cost these days?

Blogosphere abuzz with Guy Kawasaki's breakdown of his "Web 2.0, User-Generated Content, Citizen Journalist, Long Tail, Social Media site" startup.

Total cost: $12,107.09

Go read, discuss amongst your friends...

(I never asked my dad how much he and his cohorts spent on their little post-retirement web startup).

Shareware Espresso: Coffee without the DRM

There's a coffee shop startup in Kirkland (a stone's throw from here) started by Ervin Peretz, a programmer at Google, which has been making the news because of their pricing: They don't have any.

Just a black metal lockbox. Order your mint double mochachino extra foam, then just decide what you ought to pay for it and put some money in the box. No one will peek at how much you put in.

Through his "voluntary payment" cafe, Peretz is poised to become the Robin Hood of the Starbucks set. Using an efficient, low-overhead business model and narrow profit margin, he figures he can finesse the largesse of well-off latte lovers to cover the tabs of the less fortunate. The idea emerged during a booze-fueled debate in a Saigon bar, where Peretz and a colleague had traveled to blow off steam after a period of long hours at work.

OK, any entrepeneur whose business plan was devised "during a booze-fueled debate in a Saigon bar" has my official stamp of approval! I like the guy already.

Will be interesting to see if it pans out. In a high-end neighborhood like this one in Kirkland, it's likely it could work. Would the same thing fly in a rougher-around-the-edges urban area, likely not.

I can't help but think that there's some similarity here to the no-drm music sites starting up. PC usage is of course far more anonymous, but there's there's some similarity in the cost/convenience side of it. 99 cents for a song is pretty reasonable, as is $2-3 for a latte, or $10-$20 for a premium casual game.

Is there a demographic equivalent to the high-end neighborhood in the coffee case? If you shipped casual games without DRM, would the bulk of the paying customers CONTINUE to be paying customers? Esp if you could somehow make payment easier as a result? I dunno.