Have you ever heard of a company called Dun & Bradstreet? They are ‘sort’ of like Experian for businesses – supposedly helping their subscribers to make credit decisions about suppliers. Recently a potential client of one of our company’s ran a D&B report on our company. The score came back very low and the company [...]

Austin-based Capital Factory accelerator program – their second annual Demo Day is coming up on Wednesday, September 8th As the culmination of a ten-week technology accelerator program this summer, Capital Factory’s Demo Day will provide the five portfolio start-ups with the opportunity to launch their business concept to the world and specifically, to attending investors, [...]

I’ll have to admit I am guilty of this one. When I raised my first round for my first startup I immediately bought a Porsche. I used my own money, but it sent the wrong message to my wife, investors, partners, employees, customers and vendors. It is hard to negotiate salary with prospective employees when [...]

Just a quick note about the Big in Japan team’s latest milestone. Yesterday they released the iOS4 compatible barcode scanner SDK for developers. If you are a developer who has already used our SDK in your app to scan barcodes or you are a developer thinking about using our SDK in your app – please [...]

Everyone in Dallas seems to be building a mobile application and lots of these people call or email me to share their ideas with me. More than a few of these entrepreneurs ask me to sign an NDA before they are willing to ask for my feedback and/or advice. The quick answer is that I [...]

The Washington Monthly is running an article by Steve Benen titled, “Republicans just don’t like the unemployed.” Feel free to read the post, but the title really says it all. Democrats like Steve (generally) think that extending unemployment benefits will help ‘fix’ the jobs problem here in the United States. They suggest that if you [...]

This is the story that won’t die and perhaps that is a good thing. Some background: Google hires drivers to carry their photographic and wifi listening equipment on almost all of the streets of the world. Starting in 2006 Google’s listening system began storing ‘snippets’ of email, text, photographs and websites from wireless access points [...]

The Amazon folks have been in Dallas visiting ShopSavvy, but their real reason for the visits must have been the WOOT! deal. MG Siegler is reporting Matt Rutledge just sold his business for $110M to Amazon. I have tried to meet with Matt over the years, but he would never return my calls. After I [...]

We are in the process of interviewing several candidates for positions at Big in Japan (HTML5 Ad Designers, iPhone Developer, Blackberry Developer, Android Developer, .NET Developer, PHP/JAVA Developer) and it shocks me how many candidates have no examples of their work. Before agreeing to interview an iPhone developer I ALWAYS ask them for a list [...]