Connie Loizos
Every big company faces obsolescence at some point. For its part, American Express isn’t going gently into that good night any time soon. Instead, the credit card processing giant is determined to remake itself into a nimble software and services company — one that both facilitates the kinds of digital transactions that are overtaking other […]
For VCs in search of the next hot investing trend, Mark Suster has two words: Internet TV.
Not that anyone has been paying much attention to him, Suster told a crowd at the Venture Alpha conference held yesterday in San Francisco. “I’ve walked up and down Sand Hill Road and not a single person agrees with me.”
Suster thinks this “means I’m on to something.” But it’s easy to see why others might not agree, beginning with the enduring popularity of good old-fashioned TV. According to the Nielsen Company, Americans watch 5.3 hours of television every single day, and every year, they watch just a tiny bit more than the year before. Indeed, in its latest report....
Right now, at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, two local companies, Automattic – which powers the popular blog platform WordPress — and the digital media and ad network Federated Media, are taking the wraps off a major partnership. Their big news: That the more than 24 million blogging sites to use WordPress (including […]
Cornell and Stanford have always had a bit of a strained relationship. When in 1891, former California governor Leland Stanford founded the university, he tried to entice Cornell’s then-president, Andrew White to lead it. White passed, but as a token of goodwill, he recommended the man who became Stanford’s first president: Cornell graduate David Starr […]
By the time you own part or all of a professional sports team, you’ve made it financially. In fact, numerous NFL owners grace the pages of Forbes’ newest “Richest People in America” feature, including billionaires Stanley Kroenke, part owner of the St. Louis Rams; Dallas Cowboys’ owner Jerry Jones; Robert McNair, who has a controlling […]
Public market investors who once hungrily awaited the IPO of Zynga keep receiving more to digest about the company. It’s not clear how the confusing array of data will settle with them, either. While Zynga’s July 1 S-1 filing was met with much fanfare, some worrisome numbers have emerged since, including in a September amendment […]
Steve Jobs’ death last Wednesday has spurred an astonishing outpouring of emotion. Beyond the countless makeshift memorials to him, a coming authorized biography of Jobs now sits atop Amazon’s best-seller list. More than 8,500 tributes to the Apple co-founder have been published by major media companies alone. Even the unsurprising details of Jobs’ death certificate became headline news when released to the public earlier this week.
Yet the question of why we’re so preoccupied with Jobs' passing is as complicated as was Jobs himself.
Certainly, timing is a factor. At 56, Jobs died at the height of his powers, with his company now among the most valuable in the world.
“Like Marilyn Monroe or Kurt Cobain, we’ll never see
To remain successful, companies have to be ruthless about killing their own ideas. The smartest ones kill off their bad innovations quickly, as happened today, when Netflix’s affable CEO Reed Hastings admitted that the company’s plans to separate its DVD rental service from its online streaming unit would make life unnecessarily “difficult” for its loyal customers.
The decision came three months after Netflix announced that it was creating a separate payment plan for DVDs and streamed movies, and less than three weeks after Hastings appeared in what may be the world’s cheapest-looking corporate video to offer his sincere apologies for mishandling Netflix's confusing news -- before informing users that he had more of it. Specifically, he said, beyond two payment plans, Netflix would be breaking itself into two companies: Netflix for streaming video, and brand-new Qwikster for DVD rentals.
Whether the zaniness will hurt Netflix in the long term remains to be seen, but at least we gained a very funny "Saturday Night Live" sketch from it. Check it out, along with seven other, terrible, short-lived ideas.
Internet entrepreneur Kevin Ryan is killing it — particularly when it comes to fundraising. Ryan is the founder and CEO of Gilt Groupe, a popular shopping service that was founded in 2007 and has raised a stunning $236 million, including from Goldman Sachs, General Atlantic, and Matrix Partners since its 2007 founding — at what […]
The New York-based health information technology company Truveris has hired Bryan Birch as its new chairman, president and CEO. Birch joins the company from Touchstone Health plans, where he was chairman, president and CEO and remains non-executive chairman. Truveris received $3.8 million in Series A funding in February of this year, including from Tribeca Venture Partners, New […]