Incentive misalignments are one of the most frequent and pernicious behavioral pitfalls that I’ve witnessed over the years.  These are cases where individuals act in the interests of themselves and against those of the company or others as a result of some structural flaw.  This crack in the foundation is usually the result of how the company poured the cement.  A [...]

My friend and Socialgreat collaborator, Bill Piel, has a new mobile web app out call Beerjot.  I’m really impressed with the quality of the app, its unique angle, and Bill’s ability to whip it out in a weekend.  For thouse of you not interested in using it, I’ve posted a screenshot walkthrough.  Beerjot, is optimized for iPhone and Android and [...]

I had the good fortune to have some wonderful writing teachers at Collegiate. The school was known for stressing writing, and in a given week, I typically wrote one or two five page papers. This continued into college, with two large research papers and a 150-page thesis. We were always given length requirements for the papers that were ranges, and [...]

I was lucky enough to get an invite to check.in yesterday afternoon.  Martin and his colleagues have done a traffic job implementing a fully functional mobile app experience in the browser in HTML5.  My big kudos to them.  They also have taken the check.in domain to a whole level of precision beyond my overly prefixed domain photocheck.in. I used the [...]

SEC Watch, a Dogpatch New York resident, is in the process of soft launching their new pro/enterprise product.  The first 24 readers who follow this link can get a free pro account (I took the first one!).  In my experience, investors use two primary inputs: pricing information and public filings; SEC Watch revolutionizes the latter. The site allows for much [...]

The iPad will be the end of us all.  So said MG and so rewteeted Joe. My iPhone is on my nightstand.  She bids me goodnight and welcomes me to the new morning.  When the iPad joins her, I will literally be on the full screen web at all times.  Frightening but for many of us true.  And so when I [...]

Which of these platforms may enter your product market?  It’s a frequent question asked by almost every tech entrepreneur, and in many ways, I feel like its the equivalent of worrying about the weather; I tend to agree that point solutions often beat broad solutions.  With that said, we can take the flawed step of looking at history as a [...]

Yesterday, Polaris announced it’s investment in Formspring.me.  Mike and Ryan have great posts explaining the investment and the firm’s excitement.  Following on the theme of evolving use case that I blogged on earlier in the week, with regard to Chatroulette, I had a similar experience with Formspring.  After answering this question: I had two excellent developers email me.  One is [...]

Spencer has been extolling the virtues of 37 Signals for many months, but it was not until I saw Jason Fried speak at SXSW that I was intrigued.  I bought and read ReWork in about three hours.  It’s the first book that I’ve read which is specifically geared to the lean and agile world of software business. I’m also a [...]

Even before joining Polaris, Peter had expressed to me his belief that the job space was ripe for innovation, specifically, using the open APIs of social networks.  The notion of building on Facebook, immediately resonated with me, and over coffees and lunches, the complete vision stirred even more excitement.  The last piece of the puzzle, was that Peter had been a [...]