Where do entrepreneurs get their money?
One of the first questions people ask me when I talk about SyncPad is “did you guys raise money?” Now, while I’m not against raising money at the right time if needed, I find it sad that there’s a constant association between building a startup and raising VC/angel money. The beauty of today’s technologies is that you can build a profitable product with very little money. Thanks to things like cloud computing, low bandwidth costs, tons of freely available knowledge, people can build businesses investing just time and few thousands dollars. You don’t even have to quit your job to start a business if you don’t have savings/credit and you are really passionate about what your are building.
I found this video on the Kauffman Foundation website, and I found it very interesting. I highly recommend watching it.
Use your iPhone as a GoPro HD replacement
Ever since I got my new bicycle, I wanted to find a way to record videos of my rides. I’m planning to make a video with a bunch of stuff I’ve done here in Miami and I thought that my bike rides could be a great source of footage.
The first thought of course was to buy a GoPro HD camera, but I didn’t want to spend that much money, and I wasn’t really planning to do anything extreme that involved water or mud. Since I already own a small device capable of taking awesome videos–my iPhone 4S—I tried to figure out a way to use that on my bike.
Most bike supports for the iPhone are made so that you could use the phone as a bike computer, so they weren’t ideal for my purpose. After some research, I came up with the following setup:
Here’s a picture of the final result:
While I already had a Glif, I was afraid that a bump could throw the iPhone off the track with a tragic outcome. That’s why I opted for the Canopy Jumba, which I was able to find on Amazon for $20 (apparently that store doesn’t carry the case anymore). Another alternative could be the XShot case, but I’ve never tried it so I’m not sure on how secure the tripod adaptor is.
Here’s a video made mostly with this setup:
Steve Jobs in startup mode
This is a very rare footage of Steve Jobs during the early days of NeXT. What I find very fascinating is to see Jobs dealing with the same problems we startup entrepreneurs struggle every day. It is comforting to see that even what his considered to be the greatest entrepreneur of our age is hustling in order to meet impossible deadlines and pinch and scrape in order to lower their burn rate just like every other startup.
I’m thankful for…
Today is a good day to be thankful for everything I have.
I’m thankful for…
My smart and beautiful girlfriend, and for the time I get to spend with her. She’s one of the best things that ever happened to me.
My family, although they are far away, they are always close to my heart.
My friends, it’s always good to know there’s someone out there who you can count for support and to cheer you up.
My partners and coworkers, often I act as the frontman for both SyncPad and 39, but they wouldn’t be anything if it wasn’t for the people working with me. They are the pulsing heart of both ventures.
My dog, he makes my days so much better. If you don’t already have one, you should go to a shelter and adopt one.
The problem of developing for Android
This morning I saw this great chart by Michael Degusta that clearly shows Android’s poor support for its phones. This is the reason why enterprises are choosing iOS devices over Android ones. This is why many company choose to develop for iOS first. This is why many developers choose to stick with iOS only.
Few months ago I bought a Nexus One, so that I could test some Android apps we are developing at 39, and yesterday I found out that Ice Cream Sandwich (the upcoming Android version) won’t be available since the phone is too obsolete. Now, this is a phone that is only few months older than the iPhone 3gs, that is still sold, supported and updated by Apple.
Every single one
You can tell how much Steve Jobs impacted so many people in the tech industry looking at this screenshot from Hacker News last night: every single story on the front page was about Steve Jobs.
Android app volume to pass App Store but iOS developers to lead in revenue
The Android platform has lots of software stores in addition to Google’s own Android Market, including GetJar and Amazon. The Ovum report noted that Apple “can’t compete with such diversity, but still leads in the value of its apps.”
If you think the App Store is full of junk you should take a look to the Android store.
“Android apps are living in the Wild West without a sheriff,” Howe wrote. “With five other major mobile OSs competing for consumer dollars, Google can’t afford to simply let pirates kill app developers’ businesses. They need to foster some law and order or developers will flee to other platforms and Android will lose customers”
Interesting, some developers actually ask for a more “close” Android store.
On Google buying Motorola Mobility
This morning I awoke to the news that Google was buying Motorola for $12.5 billion, and I immediately started thinking about why they did such a move and what this will mean for the mobile ecosystem.
I can see two main reasons why Google would want to acquire a phone manufacturer: patents and to disrupt their competitor’s core business.
Lately, patents have been the weakest spot for Android, mostly because Google put themselves in that position.
Andy Rubin back in 2005:
“If Sun doesn’t want to work with us, we have two options: 1) Abandon our work and adopt MSFT CLR VM and C# language – or – 2) Do Java anyway and defend our decision, perhaps making enemies along the way”
And this is something that personally bother me. Now they are trying to buy as many patent as possible, whining when they loose bids
This anti-competitive strategy is also escalating the cost of patents way beyond what they’re really worth. The winning $4.5 billion for Nortel’s patent portfolio was nearly five times larger than the pre-auction estimate of $1 billion.
Of course they forgot to mention that they set the $1 billion estimate and that they bid 3.14 times their own estimate.
Now they announced they are going to buy Motorola Mobility with a premium of 63% on last Friday’s closing price. But, don’t worry, as Drummond just said in the conference call to announce the acquisition,
We’ve seen some licensing demands… the patent portfolio will help us make Android “open and vibrant”.
Now the question is: what will happen to the mobile ecosystem? I can’t imagine the other Android phone manufacturers being happy about this. (Google is saying they are, but I strongly doubt that—especially because this could mean becoming second-class citizens in the Android world.) Even if Google will release the source code to all manufacturers at the same time (mind you, they still haven’t released Honeycomb), why would someone buy a “generic” Android phone when they could buy the one made by Google themselves, which I’m sure will come with much better hardware and software integration and probably without crapware?
Given the amount of cash Google has in its war chest, they could willingly lose money on each device sold (maybe even give the phones away for free, with ads, of course), to gain an even higher market share. They obviously aren’t new to this practice; they did this with e-mails, documents, browsers, and mobile operating systems. Of course, this would piss off many Android manufacturers, but it will also cut the legs of Apple and their pricey devices. Or, maybe they could just give free tablets to every college in the United States, a market dominated by Apple (I know of school districts buying thousands of iPads for their students).
I suggest you to buckle up because I’m sure the next 12 months are going to be a really exciting ride.
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