May 2012
3 posts
1 tag
The Times They Are A-Changin'
Come gather ‘round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you
Is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’
Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’.
Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes...
3 tags
My Open Innovation Article on Fast Company
Head over to Fast Company to read my article on “5 Lessons For Using Open Innovation To Maximize The Wisdom Of The Crowd” - it’s one of my better ones (I think). :)
And please know - I wouldn’t have been able to write this article if not for the superior work of some of the smartest people I know. I couldn’t give them credit in my article, so I do it here:
John Lilly, who essentially...
3 tags
Mozilla for Entrepreneurs
My dear friends at Pollenizer recently asked me if I could write a guest post on their blog discussing the lessons we learned at Mozilla, which are particularly interesting for entrepreneurs and startups.
Head over to the Pollenizer site for the article and do let me know what you think of it!
April 2012
6 posts
3 tags
about:me
Last week I was invited to speak at Stanford’s E-Bootcamp event about… myself. The invitation to the event read:
The event will feature 100 of the best entrepreneurial students around the world and over 50 of the most successful and inspiring Silicon Valley leaders. As an E-Bootcamp speaker, you will share your personal story and entrepreneurial spirit with our student participants....
3 tags
Platform Wars - The Video
A few weeks ago I talked at the inaugural tl;dr conference about “platform wars”. I recently was asked by the organizers of Russia’s Internet Forum to give the same talk to their audience. As we had to work with some nasty timezone challenges, we decided to go with a recorded version of my talk. Here it is:
3 tags
Putting exits into perspective
Are you also wondering about the sky-high valuations and exits some Silicon Valley companies are seeing for a little while now? Well, consider this a black swan - they are anomalies, outliers - but not the norm.
In Inc. Magazine’s latest issue you find this neat little infographic - which is eye-opening: Only 2% of all private companies being sold in the time-period from 1995 to 2012...
4 tags
Incubators don't work - and it's fine
A few weeks ago I had the great fortune and pleasure to pick Jed Christiansen’s brain for a good two hours. Jed is probably the one person on this planet with the best data set about incubator and accelerator programs around the world, the companies which go through them and the possible reasons why some incubators are so much more successful than others.
I fundamentally believe that most...
4 tags
Mozilla for Entrepreneurs
For quite some time now I find myself talking to entrepreneurs all over the world about the lessons we learned here at Mozilla, turning the unlikely contestant Firefox against all odds into a hugely successful product used and loved by millions of people.
I believe that our story holds a couple of key concepts which are highly applicable for startups of all colors. In the past I have used a...
2 tags
Platform Wars at tl;dr Conference
A few days ago I had the great pleasure to talk at the inaugural tl;dr conference in San Francisco. The conference’s aim was to bring voices around the Post-PC revolution together.
In their own words:
With the launch of the iPhone we entered the era of the Post-PC device. This new generation of connected devices brought the promise of exciting new applications. And these days a massive...
March 2012
6 posts
5 tags
On VC Funding - Food for Thought
And there’s another option for startups that don’t want to go public: Forgo VC and angel investments entirely and fund the company with the profits from your business. That organic-growth option may sound quaint, but it can still be quite successful. Indeed, VC funding is by no means necessary to fund a fast-growing company. In 2009 Paul Kedrosky, a Kauffman Foundation senior fellow and venture...
3 tags
How to Evaluate Innovation
One of the more complicated questions we ask ourselves here at WebFWD every time we receive a new application is: How innovative is the idea? And how do you measure this in an objective fashion?
A while ago I came across Doblin’s “Ten Types of Innovation” model - although it is by far not perfect, it provides a really neat, concise way to look at (and evaluate) innovation. The...
2 tags
The Funnel
If you have ever seen a presentation which talks about customer acquisition or similar topics, you will have inevitably come across the infamous funnel image. The basic premise is: You start out with a whole bunch of prospects (people) and by virtue of the process they get less and less until you end up with your customer(s) (or whatever it was that went through the process). The image most often...
4 tags
Pitch 101
All you need to know about pitching your startup. Seriously.
Graphic from StartX - the Stanford Student Startup Accelerator
…and don’t forget to read Guy Kawasaki’s “Art of the Start”.
2 tags
“I don’t deny that it’s easier, cheaper, and less risky to put up a...”
– Norm Brodsky on the New Breed of Entrepreneur in Inc. Magazine
Read the article - Norm has a point.
4 tags
Innovate in the Open (TCC Keynote) →
Here’s the video of my keynote at this year’s Teladata Technology Convergence Conference where I talked about “Innovate in the Open”.
February 2012
8 posts
4 tags
Cashflow matters.
If there is a single thing, a single activity and a single metric you should care about when building a business (or a sustainable open project - which you should run like a business anyway), it is cashflow.
Cashflow is simple: Money in minus money out. If your cashflow is positive your business lives, if your cashflow is negative your business dies. Simple as that.
Yet I am befuddled by...
2 tags
“Trade in personal data has emerged as a driver of the digital economy. Many tech...”
– Google’s iPhone Tracking: Web Giant, Others Bypassed Apple Browser Settings for Guarding Privacy (WJS)
There is no free lunch.
4 tags
Putting my money where my mouth is
Two days ago I mentioned that I intend to write a book about Open Innovation (the Mozilla way).
I am thinking about finding a company (ideally not in tech) which is interested in implementing an Open Innovation strategy into their business process and which would like my support/help to do so. It would help me refine my thinking and gain insights into challenges, problems and opportunities...
2 tags
The Rewards of Growing Your Mission vs Your...
A little while ago I met the wonderful people from SecondSight, a Dutch think tank which publishes a quarterly magazine/book on future trends (their tagline is rather fittingly: “Open Your Eyes to the Future”). They asked me to write a piece for their latest edition titled “New More Free Power”.
After a long, engaged discussion with the team we settled on a story on the...
5 tags
The Mozilla Way - Innovate in the Open
It all began with a rather innocent question: After experiencing the amazing qualities of operating completely in the open here at Mozilla, creating and leading some very exciting Open Innovation projects such as Mozilla’s Design Challenges & since last year our WebFWD accelerator program and thinking, analyzing, discussing and talking more and more about Open Innovation and how we do things...
3 tags
“Concentrate on learning a new habit: brevity. Respond to emails with as few...”
– The Single Sentence Email Project
I’m sold. I’m hooked. Count me in. And please excuse if you find my brevity rude. I am just trying to get some things done in life. Plus I’m German.
Also read this from Fred Wilson: The Black Hole Of Email
4 tags
Coffee - The Rabbit Hole Edition
As you might know I am pretty obsessed with good artisan coffee making (espresso to be precise). Recently I found myself in the middle of a long discussion about the “right” equipment.
Good coffee is pretty much a function of 1) the right beans, 2) the right grinder, 3) the right machine, 4) the right temper and 5) skill.
If you ever want to go down the espresso rabbit hole -...
3 tags
Innovate in the Open!
Today I had the great honor & pleasure of keynoting the Technology Convergence Conference 2012, talking about Open Innovation, Mozilla and how to apply all this to your business.
The summary of my talk reads:
Open Innovation, Crowd Sourcing, Community-driven Innovation, Chaords (describing organizations which are a mixture of Chaos and Order) - the world around us is using...
January 2012
9 posts
4 tags
How to not approach a VC (or incubator or angel or...
Every once in a while (and sadly more often than you would expect) I get an email from someone seeking an investment (be it through Mozilla’s WebFWD program, FoundersLink, the VC fund in Europe I am a venture partner at or my own angel investing) which just riles me. Take this prime example (details have been removed to protect the innocent):
Dear Sir / Madam !
Please, examine the...
3 tags
Disrupting & Innovating - A Reading List
Phil Morle, good friend and cofounder of Pollenizer recently sent me his reading list for disruptors. The list is too good to not share:
Innovation Tournaments - How to chose an idea
Blue Ocean Strategy - A way to canvas a business concept to make it distinct from incumbents
Innovators DNA - How to think innovatively
Seeing What’s Next - Applying the framework of ‘Innovators...
3 tags
“The share of adults in the United States who own tablet computers nearly doubled...”
– “Tablet and E-book reader Ownership Nearly Double Over the Holiday Gift-Giving Period” by Pew Internet
I can not emphasize enough what this means - the future is upon us! If you don’t develop your stuff for mobile and tablets (as well as the large install base of PCs),...
4 tags
SOCAP Video Interview on Social Entrepreneurship &...
After being on a panel at last years’ Social Capital Markets (SOCAP) conference Daniel Epstein, founder of the Unreasonable Institute, asked me about the importance of social entrepreneurship and innovation. Enjoy!
5 tags
IP is a funny thing
From time to time I find myself in discussions with entrepreneurs and startups about the value of (protected) intellectual property (IP).
The argument often goes something like this: Entrepreneur thinks that the IP she created, is the core of her company and thus needs to be private and protected. Yours truly argues that under certain conditions (and probably more often than not) it might make...
2 tags
Entrepreneurs/Students at Mozilla
Last year (jeez - is it really 2012 already?) I had the great fortune to host a bunch of entrepreneur/student groups from all over the world here at Mozilla.
I simply love interacting with entrepreneurs - especially when they are young and/or first time entrepreneurs. The energy is boundless, there is nothing holding them back and they have no fear. One thing which stood out for me was the fact...
4 tags
“There has been an explosion of incubators in the last few years. Most of them...”
– Incubators are a Ghetto by Andrew Clay Shafer and via What history teaches us about startup incubators by Om Malik
Great rant from both Andrew and Om - and one I, in principal, agree with. But I think you also have to see the flipside - even if these incubators don’t deliver a lot of value,...
4 tags
“With some deals for private companies “definitely on the expensive...”
– WSJ: Some Venture Funds Hit ‘Pause’ on Big Deals
I guess this doesn’t come as a surprise…
Which brings us back to the point of: Focus on building a business, not a frothy, high growth, no-business-model one-feature only product and call it a business.
3 tags
1 tag
“The downside of the prosperity bubble is that Silicon Valley could be falling...”
– Bloomberg Businessweek: It’s Always Sunny in Silicon Valley
It baffles me that we produce some of the brightest talent in the world (hello Stanford alumni!) and these kids are only interested in creating the next Angry Birds…
Yet another reason why what Mozilla is doing with WebFWD is so...
December 2011
4 posts
3 tags
Generation Github
1,205,808… More than 1.2 million people are using Github today.
A whole generation of developers & hackers all around the world are growing up with Github deeply embedded into their developer DNA. This is a whole generation of people for whom sharing code is the default (the vast majority of code repositories on Github are public - you have to pay for private repos). A whole generation...
3 tags
iOS ain't the Web
Release early, release often…
You know the drill, right? Today you want to get your product into consumers’ hands as early as possible, learn & iterate quickly and push out updates on a regular cadence. Lean startup and all that…
This works great when you are developing on the Web - where I get to experience your latest and greatest iteration without me doing much. It...
3 tags
You are hosed. But do it anyway!
I recently sat down with a good friend to go through some stats which show the harsh, ugly truth of Angel/Seed/VC funding. It essentially goes like this:
In the first half of 2011 there were about 175,000 startups looking for early stage investments in the US (note that this number is not limited to tech). Out of those, a mere 26,300 received angel and/or seed funding - that’s only 1 in...
October 2011
3 posts
4 tags
Never Walk - A talk about entrepreneurship and...
Part 1 - Roger
This is one of the most inspired moments in the history of athletics: Roger Bannister crossing the finish line on 6 May 1954 during a meet between British AAA and Oxford University at Iffley Road Track in Oxford, United Kingdom, where he became the first human to run the mile in less than four minutes. An extraordinary achievement which was, at the time, considered impossible....
2 tags
No Bullshit Advice & Mentorship
I spent this week at the excellent Startup Week 2011 event in Vienna, Austria. I talked with numerous entrepreneurs, founders, hackers and builders. I received a lot of interesting questions, was asked for advice on a wide range of topics and found myself in the middle of many exciting discussions.
Now - Personally I don’t think that my advice is worth a lot. But here’s the deal: I was deeply...
2 tags
Never Walk
During the inaugural Startup Week 2011 in Vienna, Austria, I had the great pleasure to talk about the intersection of two of my main passions: Business and Running (the other two are my family and good espresso).
Below the deck from my talk - I will put together a properly commented version sometime soon as the deck doesn’t stand very well on its own.
(function() { var scribd =...
September 2011
2 posts
2 tags
Trends (Discussion at Emerce eDay)
As part of my attendance at Emerce’s eDay conference in Rotterdam I was asked to lead a discussion on some of the larger trends we’re seeing happening on the Internet at the moment. Below is the short deck I used as a backdrop.
(function() { var scribd = document.createElement("script"); scribd.type = "text/javascript"; scribd.async = true; scribd.src =...
2 tags
David vs Goliath - Presentation from Emerce eDay
Last week I spoke at Emerce’s eDay conference in Rotterdam (Netherlands). Emerce reached out to me with the question: “How did Mozilla win?”. In the follow-up calls with the Emerce team we discussed the “David vs Goliath” situation in which Mozilla found itself, competing against Microsoft when we launched Firefox only six years ago, and how we managed to grow its...
August 2011
2 posts
1 tag
The End of the PC Era
This is the way the world ends - Not with a bang but a whimper.
T. S. Eliot
Yesterday HP announced that they would (among other things) spin off their PC business (and thus effectively divest from it). Take note of this event - as it will mark the end of the PC era. At least the PC era as we know it.
A little while ago IBM completely divested from their PC business by selling their notebook...
2 tags
Baffling Logic: M&A in a Startup World
Mergers and acquisitions are notoriously hard to execute well. Numerous sources quote the success rate of M&A activity across industries at only about 30%. That’s two-thirds of all mergers and acquisitions fail.
Yet - Startups seem to have a huge appetite for acquisitions (especially here in Silicon Valley). Baffling.
July 2011
1 post
2 tags
Mobile First
The world around us has moved on - yet a lot of us (yours truly included) are somewhat stuck in the past. That is - the PC era. If you ever had a doubt that the future is mobile and that this future is here - read this interview excerpt from Charlie Rose talking with Glenn Hutchins (Hutchins is the Co-CEO of Silver Lake who just made a killing selling Skype to Microsoft).
“What made Skype...
2 tags
An experiment - Dot Plan Files
John Carmack, legendary creator of the first and some of the finest 1st-person shooters, kept some sort of work diary in the form of .plan files. They serve as a form of microblog and capture my work and thoughts for the day (more: http://www.team5150.com/~andrew/carmack/plan.html).
As we just launched Web FWD, the innovation accelerator program from Mozilla, I will start creating .plan files and...
June 2011
3 posts
2 tags
We just launched Web FWD
I am extremely proud and happy to announce the launch of my latest project: Mozilla’s Community-Driven Accelerator Program Web FWD.
Here’s the release blog post:
Today we’re launching Web FWD (Web Forward), the community-driven innovation accelerator from Mozilla Labs. Web FWD supports Open Web innovators by providing a space at Mozilla where they can build their products. We are...
3 tags
Books for Entrepreneurs
In a recent discussion I was asked which books I would recommend for an entrepreneur to read. My (current) shortlist is in no particular order:
Guy Kawasaki’s “The Art of the Start” - very practical advice for everything from building your product, marketing to fundraising. Pretty much a must-read.
37 Signal’s “Rework” - tons of good, practical information for...
April 2011
4 posts
1 tag
Is this the new mantra? Design for Mobile First.
A little while ago I met with a rather large (as in “publicly traded” large) and (despite their size) innovative software company. One of their Senior Vice Presidents told me that they recently started to design all their products (which are mainly for PCs and increasingly for the Web) using the mantra of “Design for Mobile First”.
This is an interesting point - during our...
1 tag
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In the World of Apps APIs are the new Hyperlinks
The following is more a snippet / thought / exploration than anything else - just wanted to get this out and put it somewhere… Hyperlinks allow you to seamlessly browse the Web - clicking on a link in an email inside your webmail client can transport you to an article on Wikipedia which can lead you to a reference on some other website. Hyperlinks provide the glue which keeps the Web...