Disqus - Latest Comments for kennethli

Re: A Big Week For The Mobile Web

kennethli — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 21:45:15 -0000

tshelton, as a dev/investor in asia we're surrounded by symbian handsets.. nokia marketplace just opened up but truth of the matter is a lot of developers still have a hard time monetizing on it or even getting installs - users aren't use to downloading and installing apps the way they are on iphone and android at the moment. one of my teams - buuuk - was in the process of porting their iphone app to symbian but found the process a bit more difficult as well (porting to android was relatively painless). in addition to fixing the the web browsing experience, these two factors need to be addressed before the mobile web can really take off on symbian

Re: A Big Week For The Mobile Web

kennethli — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 21:29:19 -0000

Actually, if you really want to do cutting edge mixing of software and hardware, android is much more friendly to work with as they give you much more control over the device. Apple's sdk limits how low level you can actually get with the device (without actually jailbreaking it) and the more you dig in, the more apt you are to get blocked in the apple approval process. One example I've dealt with personally around this issue is control over wifi on the devices. One foreseeable issue with Android though is how performance may differ across different flavors of the devices (e.g. motorola, htc, etc).

Re: The Blog Where Everybody Knows Your Name

kennethli — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 09:14:59 -0000

I wonder what percentage of the regular commenters are from the NY region versus elsewhere. I wonder this because although the internet makes the world a much flatter place, location/offline is also a strong contributing factor towards community. People who have met face to face are much more likely to want to start/continue engaging in conversation with each other. Also, if the hypothesis is that a seed group of commenters do so to get exposure to Fred and for potential business opportunities with him, it would make sense that a larger proportion of these people would be from the northeast, as deals are usually done close to home.

Counter to all of this is that this blog is just a great place for learning and for discourse on technology. So anyone anywhere would want to just jump in =) The fact that Fred responds to comments welcomes people from anywhere to participate and feel connected.

Re: Startup Hotbed Inferiority Complex

kennethli — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 12:54:06 -0000

Hi Fred, being an angel investor/incubator in Singapore (www.frontedgecapital.com) where the startup scene is still largely nascent, I must confess that there are definitely disadvantages to not being in the valley, or even places like Seattle, New York and Boston. All the startup benefits generally found in these hotbeds are much lower here (e.g. capital, smart capital, talent, partnership opportunities, strong community, etc). I see this all this impacting the way startups think (less influence/pushing their ideas and thinking from fellow entrepreneurs or smart investors) as well as operate (less funding, less runway to try different things).

That being said, I think it is still very feasible to create a great startup here, or anywhere else for that matter. As pointed out in one of the previous comments, the founders are the primary assets of a startup. They can easily "educate" themselves and improve their ideas/create new ones with the rich amount of resources available on the web (such as your blog among others) - it is really for the entrepreneurs to know to look for these resources in the first place. And of course the costs doing a startup are quite low now, both in terms of the technology and marketing, so capital is becoming less important. Though entrepreneurs not in startup hotbeds do suffer from a bit of a disadvantage, it is not insurmountable to prevent them from creating something great.

Just a note on some of the examples that you gave, those companies actually leveraged on some of the assets they had locally (which actually may not be found in the valley). Bloomberg serves the finance industry - where else could it be created and succeed but in NY? Microsoft started next to a university with one of the earlier sets of computer terminals. Many telephony based companies come out of the northern europe due to strengths in that area. Sometimes, being in an area other than the valley can have its advantages as well.

Re: Starting from basic

kennethli — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 07:02:54 -0000

good execution takes a lot of time and energy towards the product; a lot of time on research and writing = difficult to find time on executing, especially with a day job. this is almost a must if a product is to be well crafted (let alone iterated). think this is an excellent shift in focus and much to learn from this as well (esp. on the practical side). fully supportive of this, and look forward to seeing the results!

Re: Quick riches versus long term value

kennethli — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 09:12:48 -0000

Have added my thoughts to the topic of short term vs long term value... ended up being quite long so made it into a separate post at http://www.frontedgecapital...

Re: Taking a break from blogging and from everyday life

kennethli — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 03:37:32 -0000

Gee, thanks for pointing out my grammar mistake Jason. You sure add a lot of value by trolling people's blogs and comments. Yes, I know the difference and my grammar is generally pretty good but I suppose even Harvard grads should be allowed to make a mistake every now and then. Please feel free to read through my blog and see if you can catch any other as well - http://www.frontedgecapital...

Re: Taking a break from blogging and from everyday life

kennethli — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 02:30:25 -0000

you work too hard ;) you're posts are awesome though, chock full of gems. writing so many posts do consume a lot of time and energy, especially if you want to create well thought out and written ones. perhaps cut back to one or two posts per week (weekend exercise?). this way you can continue making your great contributions, while also leaving a bit more time to spend on other areas and to not burn yourself out. It definitely is hard to do too many things at once, and do them all well..