Stripe Builds Roads
Patrick was the oldest of three boys, born in 1988 in a small village in Ireland. His mother, a microbiologist. His father, an electrical engineer. Patrick took his first computer course at the University of Limerick when he was only eight and was programming computer code by the age of ten. At sixteen his project on artificial intelligence won […]
Mind Over Mattress
Jim invited his mother over for dinner. When Mom arrived she was a bit surprised to meet Jim’s breathtakingly beautiful roommate, Krista. Mom had assumed her son’s roommate was a guy. During dinner Mom couldn’t help but notice the playful banter between her son and Krista. Giddy energy. Affectionate looks. Laughing together at “inside jokes.” Mom suspected […]
Become A Master Marketer
They tried to keep it a secret. But the word leaked out. The company would release its first cell phone. Underground photos circulated around the Internet. What would it look like? Techies rumored the specs. How fast would it be? What features would it have? The more speculation, the more interest. It became the hot […]
Birthing A Spongmonkey
Yes, you read that right…Spongmonkey. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuPTZWhz46M I know, the name alone might make you cringe. Spongmonkeys were the pair of horribly annoying, disfigured, singing rodents that appeared in Quiznos’ commercials in 2004. One sings obnoxiously off key, while the other strums a few depressing chords on an out of tune guitar. It was one of the worst ideas […]
A MARKETING MISCONCEPTION
Have you heard the joke that marketing is like sex? Every company thinks they’re good at it…but few actually are. That joke is usually followed by a statement like, “It’s easier to identify a hundred companies that market poorly than ten that market superbly.” So what is great marketing, setting a company apart from the rest? To answer […]
The Kiln of Competition
When Robinhood launched in 2015 with $3 million in venture capital, established stock brokers laughed it off as just another fintech fad, much the way taxi drivers shrugged off Uber in the beginning. But by 2019 the “big 4” brokerage houses (Charles Schwab, Fidelity, E*TRADE, and TD Ameritrade) were on the defensive. Fast forward to today. Just a few […]
Doing The Impossible
During the height of the Cold War in the 1960s nuclear paranoia was at an all time high. I remember those scary “duck and cover” drills we had to do in the classroom. The U.S. government was scared too…in the event of a nuclear attack we had no system set up to communicate and disseminate vital information. […]
The Success Trap
The Boston Globe named his company “the Apple of its time,” calling it “a juggernaut of innovation.” When Harvard scientist Edwin Land founded the company in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1932 at just 23 years old, his initial focus was polarized sunglasses. His polarizer technology patents also spawned products like glare-reducing goggles for dogs and 3-D movie glasses. During […]
Gravity Doesn’t Care
When my three boys were young I fondly remember nights with them studying at the kitchen table after dinner. When they were old enough to deal with more complex subject matter, I bought a set of Britannica encyclopedias to help them. The 32 volume set wasn’t cheap! That was in 1990. In 2001 a free encyclopedia […]
Carvana… Will The Big Guys Wake Up?
When my oldest son, Brian, started high school at Brophy I told him if he got straight A’s I would buy him a car when he turned 16. After his sophomore year he’d “made grades,” so his hunt for a car began. This was before the Internet was mainstream, so Brian searched newspaper ads and the best […]