Todd Pinkerton

I picked up my usual box of Frosted Flakes cereal at the grocery store this week, when I noticed the giant GUITAR HERO FREE TOY INSIDE! promotion.  The picture took up half of the box cover, with the Guitar Hero brand featured prominently.  I figured hey, they must be doing really well, to promote their games to such a mass-market audience like... like everyone who buys cereal. So when I got home and opened the box, you might say I was a little disappointed. That's a bit of an understatement.  I was a bit more, WHAT THE FUCK WERE THEY THINKING.  This game is possibly the biggest turd to ever come out of a box of cereals, and that's including the short-lived "Turd Crispies". First, its in some weird clunky wrist-watch form factor. Maybe 5-year-olds like that, whatever. Not a major gripe, just... whatever. Second, the 'game' consists of a tiny LCD screen with a few sprites representing musical notes your character is supposed to catch. They 'move' by disappearing from on position and re-appearing in a nearby position. This is the basic principle behind video games and motion pictures, but in this instance there are exactly 3 positions for the notes to ...

In my consulting career, I've been fortunate to see similar problems multiple times -- hopefully, I'll learn from each one and not make the same mistakes the next time I encounter that particular situation. One situation in particular involves a conversation with an entrepreneur, and it goes something like this : Entrepreneur: I have an idea for a web app that will revolutionize the [blank] industry, and make us bajillions! me: That's great! I can tell you are passionate and excited, and that's critical to your success. But do you have enough cash to pay for this coffee? Entrepreneur: Yes, we have some funding to get started. And I have a business plan explaining our strategy, and I have a powerpoint deck of what the product does. Me: That's even better! I'll have another espresso then. Entrepreneur: We'd like you to get us started on our website development. Here's our feature set for beta release. How long is this going to take? How many people, and what other stuff do we need? Me: Ummm....and that's where the conversation gets difficult. Because the business plan doesn't go into great detail about the product (it shouldn't), and the powerpoint slides have a bunch ...

I've long been a fan of Guy Kawasaki. From the early days as Apple evangelist, to his current role as early-stage VC, Guy has always had keen insight into technology and social trends. He's written a few books with some practical advice on building successful companies, drawing upon his own experiences in the trenches. Guy preaches what I have understood for a long time: the cost of starting a web company has dropped dramatically in the past 5 years or so, to the point where the economics of funding and launching a startup are drastically different. Old and busted: $5M in series A VC funding, years of technology development, then hopefully some revenue. New hotness: bootstrap on credit cards or angel investors for

BetaHouse, the co-working space I am involved in, was featured in this NetworkWorld article on the rise of co-working. BetaHouse co-founders Jon Pierce and Greg Gibson were interviewed and talk about the benefits and challenges of working in such an environment.

last week MIT announced a $50M gift to form a new entrepreneurship and development center. The donation was made by investment firm Legatum. The center will focus its efforts on products and technologies to solve problems in developing nations. Joost Bonsen, who has long been involved in fostering entrepreneurial activities at MIT (including the Developmental Entrepreneurship seminar, the Nuts-and-Bolts of Business Plans IAP seminar, and the 50K / 100K competitions) is on the exec team for the new center. I'm very excited for Joost, his hard work in this area deserves this kind of support. I ran into Joost Monday night at the Muddy Charles pub, where he was hosting an event for MIT entrepreneurs and friends. Also present were Cory and Erica of IntutiveAutomata, makers of Autom, the weight-loss coach robot. It's an interesting idea, that a human-like device pushes our social and behavioral buttons in a way that keeps us motivated -- more so than a website or other low-touch support system could. I'm curious to see what the results of their clinical trials are.

this week I'm in San Francisco at the O'reilly Emerging Telephony conference, chaired by my good friend Surj Patel. The conference is all about how the old-school world of telephones and phone networks are now merging with the Internet. So now, anyone who can write a web application can create a voice service. This is part of the inspiration behind Ringfo. Some cool stuff so far : Adhearsion, a ruby on rails interface to the Asterisk PBX. My former Colleague from Orange Sunil Vemuri has a company working on recording and searching all your phone conversations; and Chris Sacca gave an inspiring talk about US broadband penetration and Google's muni wifi project in Mountain View. More details when I return...

MIT has a funky 4-1-4 schedule -- there's a short period between the two semesters, and during the one-month period students can take classes for credit, which are designed to be more 'fun' than their usual requirements. One of this is called The Nuts and Bolts of Business Plans, which serves to compliment the annual MIT 100K startup contest. Students learn what it takes to write a good business plan, and in the process, how to navigate the waters of starting a company and finding funding. So far it's been a very informative course. If you're not in the Boston-area to attend, the course materials are available for download.

RadioSherpa, a startup I worked on previously, won the "consumer" category of the MIT 1K competition. The 1K is a runoff to the annual MIT 100K competition, where students assemble teams and submit their business plans. the grand prize is 0.1M USD, hence the '100K' title. I wasn't even aware that our co-founder, Deva Seetharam, had entered it into the competition. One thousand dollars won't help the balance sheet much, but hopefully the exposure from winning will help move the company ahead with partnerships, customers, or investments. If you're a software developer and are interested in working with a winning team, contact sasha@radiosherpa.com .

My friend Chuck studies entrepreneurship at MIT; he turned me on to http://startup-review.com, a blog specializing in case studies of internet companies. I haven't seen this approach anywhere else among the 'innovation' blogs out there, and the writing quality is pretty good. I read one in particular about Digg.com , whose lessons I plan to utilize in a upcoming project. Startup-review.com is blogged by Nisan Gabbay, a former VC. While I don't often agree with (or enjoy reading) the investor's perspective -- I'd much rather read a blog by one of the entrepreneurs "in the trenches" -- Nisan's writing is insightful and thorough. One good reason to read his analysis is that he promises to interview at least one member of the founding team at each company he profiles. This alone should set this blog apart from those which merely speculate. This kind of hard analysis of what attributes successful startups have is long overdue. Until we understand what factors contribute to success, we have less chance of getting there. My only criticism would be that he only profiles 'successful companies' -- those that have had an exit, or sustained high revenues, or become a well-known 'big brand'. ...