english Archives – Page 7 of 17

Thoughts on Remora’s Curse

Published by Joni on May 21, 2017

Remora’s curse takes place when startup attaches itself to a large platform in the attempt to solve the chicken-and-egg problem of getting users. The large platform then exercises its greater power to void the investments made by the startup into the platform, essentially causing more or less deadly delays and needs for re-design. The idea originates from Don Dodge who…

Machine learning and Facebook Ads

Published by Joni on May 17, 2017

Introduction One important thing in machine learning is feature engineering (selection & extraction). This means choosing the right variables that improve the model’s performance, while discarding those reducing it. The more impact your variables have on the performance metric, the better. Because the real world is complex, you may start with dozens or even hundreds of variables (=features), but in…

The Role of Assumptions in Startup Pitching

The Role of Assumptions in Startup Pitching

Published by Joni on April 30, 2017

More than truthfulness of the numbers, investors evaluate the assumptions underneath a pitch. They are not asking “Are these numbers real?” but “Could they be real?”. The assumptions reveal the logic of thinking by the founders. When examining them in detail, one should get logical answers to questions like: How many sales people are needed to hit the sales goals?…

Startup due diligence: Some considerations

Startup due diligence: Some considerations

Published by Joni on April 30, 2017

We had an interesting week with the Qatar Science and Technology Park (QSTP) that had invited several high-profile entrepreneurs from the US to evaluate the technologies of Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI). Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to attend all the sessions, but from what I saw I picked up a few pointers for due diligence work done by investors when…

The balanced view algorithm

The balanced view algorithm

Published by Joni on April 16, 2017

I recently participated in a meeting of computer scientists where the topic was “fake news”. The implicit assumption was that “we will do this tool x that will show people what is false information, and they will become informed.” However, after the meeting I realized this might not be enough, and in fact be naïve thinking. It may not matter…

The strategy algorithm

The strategy algorithm

Published by Joni on April 11, 2017

Introduction The purpose of the strategy algorithm is to present a simple, parsimonius, and proven method for successful creation of a corporate strategy. In corporations, the problems usually do not relate to lack of resources or options, but to complexity of having in fact too many choices. This can lead to illusion of superiority which is not a short-term problem…

Using flow principles to introduce addiction to mobile or Web app

Using flow principles to introduce addiction to mobile or Web app

Published by Joni on April 7, 2017

Introduction Flow is a well-known concept in psychology, invented by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and published in 1975. It describes the state of losing yourself to a task; basically losing the sense of time and being just very immersed and focused on what you are doing. While many professionals (including myself!) would kill to have flow 100% of the time, because it…

User feedback: A startup perspective

User feedback: A startup perspective

Published by Joni on March 30, 2017

Introduction – the first-order problem The first-order problem for startups often is, they are not making something people want enough to pay for. As you can see from the CB Insights data, founders identify this as the most common reason for failure. Figure 1 Reasons for startups failure Notice the connection between 1 and 2: We can paraphrase that as…

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