One of the topics that came up in my post Mobile Internet Apple Facebook was around open vs. closed platforms. This issue comes up at the start of almost every new startup company in a variety of forms. I’m constantly struggling with trying to figure out the best way to pull together solutions, especially with how fast things move.

I’ve been having discussions with several people recently about the role of the CTO (Chief Technology Officer) in very early stage companies. In December 2007, I described how I commonly take on an Acting CTO Role in a Start-up . I used an image from Roger Smith that describes the varying roles of a CTO as the company matures. However, I’ve now begun questioning how and what an early-stage / startup CTO should be.

Tim Berry has a great post on Why I Hate Those Huge Market Numbers tells us that he doesn’t like to see business plans with multi-billion market numbers used as the basis for projections. It’s the old – 5% of massive market gives us a big number. I agree completely: If it makes you feel better to give me that number in passing, okay, go ahead, but don’t put any emphasis on it.

The analysts at Morgan Stanley have produced a report that’s quite good reading on some of the major trends concerning mobile web. The report consists of: The Mobile Internet Report Summary Slides – a 92-slide presentation that provides highlights on the key themes The Mobile Internet Report Key Themes – a 659-slide presentation that drills down a bit more The Mobile Internet Report – a 424 page report which explores 8 major themes in depth and includes the two aforementioned slide presentations + related overview text Some interesting things as I was going through

In 2008, Noah Everett wanted to share photos on Twitter. Since there was no way to do it, he grabbed an old server and created Twitpic as a side project. This program will show you how he did it, but before you listen to it, I want to impress you with some numbers... ...Tags: Tags: Intervie

Tags: Events 2010 sxsw texa SXSW’s film and music pedigrees (begun as a music festival in 87, later adding film and “interactive” portions) make it the sexiest geek conference of the year. In four months, the entire city of San Francisco will travel to Austin to hang out with their friends from LA, New York, and that world so horribly nicknamed “flyover country.”

I interviewed 3 startups that Paul Graham helped launch through Y Combinator. Each told me about a specific piece of advice that he gave them that turned their business around. How How does he do it? That's what I asked in this interview. ...Tags:

via: Mobile RSS Email Alerts Bios: Dion’s Bio January 20th, 2010 The social Web in 2010: The emerging standards and technologies to watch Posted by Dion Hinchcliffe @ 10:38 am Categories: ATOM , Badges , Blogs , Collaboration , Community , Convergence , Enterprise Web 2.0 , Gadgets , Identity 2.0 , Lightweight Service Models , Open APIs , Products , RSS , SaaS , Small Pieces, Loosely Joined , Social Computing , Social Media , Social Networking , Social Software , Social media

You can see in the video that Adriaan "Adii" Pienaar was a bit uncomfortable when I asked him to reveal that his company, WooThemes, makes over $2 million a year selling Wordpress themes. But in the pre-interview he agreed to say it on Mixergy and that he would show my audience how they achieved those sales. He's He's doing it to.. ...Tags:

This is a story about how an entrepreneur can build an internet business on the side. The business Sean Percival launched wasn't meant to be the next Google. He was just trying to make some money and improve his business skills. Sean Sean built a site that sold customize European license plates, the kind of plates you might see on cars speeding on the Autobahn