I wish more companies had no exit strategies
I was with a friend recently who has a pretty exciting Internet startup company. He has raised some money and might raise more, his product is in beta and it’s good. It solves a difficult technical problem many companies are struggling with. We argued a little over the name of the product. Of course I thought my suggested name was better or certainly cleverer, but then he said, “It doesn’t matter because we’ll probably sell the company before the product ever ships. It may never appear at all.”
His company will exit almost before it enters. This is happening a lot lately and we generally think it is a good thing but it’s not.
Best Buy is doomed
Best Buy is in trouble you know. It’s in the news all the time. I wrote a big column about it myself last year. Same store sales have suffered, corporate employees are being laid off, the big U.S. electronics retailer is pulling out of Europe. Best Buy management is in turmoil. The founder leaves in a huff, then tries and fails to take the company private, and is now making nice-nice with the same management he previously reviled. There’s a new head of stores (I wish him well), who thinks the answer is price matching, better sales training and paying workers to sell more stuff, which sounds like commissions to me (Best Buy was always anti-commission).
All this drama is generally lain at the feet of Amazon.com on the Internet and Walmart down the street, both of which have reportedly been cleaning Best Buy’s clock. Only they haven’t. Best Buy has been killing itself with bad Information Technology. It’s been a long, long time since I introduced a new Cringely Law, but here comes one (I’m not sure what number this is), courtesy of Best Buy: compartmentalized IT can kill companies that are understaffed and overstressed.
The sneaky thing about Google Glass
Remember when Bluetooth phone headsets came along and suddenly there were all these people loudly talking to themselves in public? Schizoid behavior became, if not cool, at least somewhat tolerable. Well expect the same experience now that Google Glass is hitting the street, because contrary to nearly any picture you can find of the thing, when you actually use it most of your time is spent looking up and to the right, where the data is. I call it the Google Gaze.
Only time will tell how traffic courts will come to view Google Glass, but having finally tried one I suspect it may end up on that list of things we’re supposed to drive without.
Overdependence on one computer system grounds American Airlines
This is not a big story, but I find it interesting. Last week American Airlines had its reservations computer system, called SABRE, go offline for most of a day leading to the cancellation of more than 700 flights. Details are still sketchy (here’s American’s video apology) but this is beginning to look like a classic example of a system that became too integrated and a company that was too dependent on a single technology.
To be clear, according to American the SABRE system did not itself fail, what failed was the airline’s access to its own system -- a networking problem. And for further clarification, American no longer owns SABRE, which was spun off several years ago as Sabre Holdings, but the airline is still the system’s largest customer. It’s interesting that Sabre Holdings has yet to say anything about this incident.
H-1B visa shouldn’t be granted when Americans lose jobs
There’s an old joke in which a man asks a woman if she’ll spend the night with him for $1 million? She will. Then he asks if she’ll spend the night with him for $10?
“Do you think I’m a prostitute?” she asks.
Accidental Empires, Part 21 -- Future Computing (Chapter 15)
Twenty-first in a series. The final chapter to the first edition, circa 1991, of Robert X. Cringely's Accidental Empires concludes with some predictions prophetic and others, well...
Remember Pogo? Pogo was Doonesbury in a swamp, the first political cartoon good enough to make it off the editorial page and into the high-rent district next to the horoscope. Pogo was a ‘possum who looked as if he was dressed for a Harvard class reunion and who acted as the moral conscience for the first generation of Americans who knew how to read but had decided not to.
Accidental Empires, Part 20 -- Counter-Reformation (Chapter 14)
Twentieth in a series. "Market research firms tend to serve the same function for the PC industry that a lamppost does for a drunk", writes Robert X. Cringely in this installment of 1991 classic Accidental Empires. Context is universal forecast that OS/2 would overtake MS-DOS. Analysts were wrong then, much as they are today making predictions about smartphones, tablets and PCs. The insightful chapter also explains vaporware and product leak tactics IBM pioneered, Microsoft refined and Apple later adopted.
In Prudhoe Bay, in the oilfields of Alaska’s North Slope, the sun goes down sometime in late November and doesn’t appear again until January, and even then the days are so short that you can celebrate sunrise, high noon, and sunset all with the same cup of coffee. The whole day looks like that sliver of white at the base of your thumbnail.
Accidental Empires, Part 19 -- Economics of Scale (Chapter 13)
Nineteenth in a series. "Computer companies don’t go public to raise money; they go public to make real the wealth of their founders", Robert X. Cringely explains in this chapter from 1991 tome Accidental Empires. Other organizations do IPOs to fund future investments, whereas many tech firms already sit on mountains of cash when going public.
We’re at the ballpark, now, and while you and I are taking a second bite from our chilidogs, this is what’s happening in the outfield, according to Rick Miller, a former Gold Glove center fielder for the Bosox and the Angels. When the pitcher’s winding up, and we figure the center fielder’s just stooped over out there, waiting for the photon torpedoes to load and thinking about T-bills or jock itch endorsements, he’s really watching the pitcher and getting ready to catch the ball that has yet to be thrown. Exceptional center fielders use three main factors in judging where the ball will land: what kind of pitch is thrown where in the hitter’s zone, the first six inches of the batter’s swing, and the sound of the ball coming off the bat.
Accidental Empires, Part 18 -- On the Beach (Chapter 12)
Eighteenth in a series. The true test of a good writer is time. Chapter 12 of Robert X. Cringely's 1991 classic Accidental Empires passes easily. His observations about what makes, or breaks, high-tech start-ups is as relevant today as 22 years ago. Every entrepreneur should use this installment as a manual for what to do (or not).
America’s advantage in the PC business doesn’t come from our education system, from our fluoridated water, or, Lord knows, from our tax structure. And it doesn’t come from some innate ability we have to run big companies with thousands of employees and billions in sales. The main thing America has had going for it is the high-tech start-up, and, of course, our incredible willingness to fail.
Accidental Empires, Part 17 -- Font Wars (Chapter 11)
Seventeenth in a series. Love triangles were commonplace during the early days of the PC. Adobe, Apple and Microsoft engaged in such a relationship during the 1980s, and allegiances shifted -- oh did they. This installment of Robert X. Cringely's 1991 classic Accidental Empires shows how important is controlling a standard and getting others to adopt it.
Of the 5 billion people in the world, there are only four who I’m pretty sure have stayed consistently on the good side of Steve Jobs. Three of them -- Bill Atkinson, Rich Page, and Bud Tribble -- all worked with Jobs at Apple Computer. Atkinson and Tribble are code gods, and Page is a hardware god. Page and Tribble left Apple with Jobs in 1985 to found NeXT Inc., their follow-on computer company, where they remain in charge of hardware and software development, respectively.
Accidental Empires, Part 16 -- The Prophet (Chapter 10)
Sixteenth in a series. Robert X. Cringely's tome Accidental Empires takes on a startling prescient tone in this next installment. Remember as you read that the book published in 1991. Much he writes here about Apple cofounder Steve Jobs is remarkably insightful from the context of looking back. Some portions foreshadow the future -- or one possible outcome -- when looking at Apple following Jobs' ouster in 1985 and the company now following his death.
The most dangerous man in Silicon Valley sits alone on many weekday mornings, drinking coffee at II Fornaio, an Italian restaurant on Cowper Street in Palo Alto. He’s not the richest guy around or the smartest, but under a haircut that looks as if someone put a bowl on his head and trimmed around the edges, Steve Jobs holds an idea that keeps some grown men and women of the Valley awake at night. Unlike these insomniacs, Jobs isn’t in this business for the money, and that’s what makes him dangerous.
Accidental Empires, Part 15 -- Clones (Chapter 9)
Fifteenth in a series. The next chapter in Robert X.Cringely's 1991 classic, Accidental Empires, looks at the real rise of Microsoft. IBM established the standard hardware, which Compaq successfully "cloned", and for which developers created software. Cringely explains how standards evolve, using vinyl records as metaphor.
It was in the clay room, a closet filled with plastic bags of gray muck at the back of Mr. Ziska’s art room, where I made my move. For the first time ever, I found myself standing alone with Nancy Wilkins, the love of my life, the girl of my dreams. She was a vision in her green and black plaid skirt and white blouse, with little flecks of clay dusted across her glasses. Her blonde hair was in a ponytail, her teeth were in braces, and I was sure -- well, pretty sure -- that she was wearing a bra.
Accidental Empires, Part 14 -- Software Envy (Chapter 8)
Fourteenth in a series. We resume Robert X. Cringely's serialization of his 1991 tech-industry classic Accidental Empires after short repast during a period of rapid-fire news.
This installment reveals much about copying -- a hot topic in lawsuits today -- and how copyrights and patents apply to software and why the latter for a long time didn't.
Accidental Empires, Part 13 -- All IBM Stories are True (Chapter 7)
Thirteenth in a series. If you ever wondered about the real story behind the IBM PC, this chapter of Robert X. Cringely's 1991 classic is the one for you.
I live in California in a house that I can’t really afford in a neighborhood filled with blue-haired widows and with two-earner couples who have already made the jump from BMW to Acura and in their hearts are flirting with voting Republican.
Accidental Empires, Part 12 -- Chairman Bill Leads the Happy Workers in Song (Chapter 6)
Twelfth in a series. No look at the rise of the personal computing industry would be complete without a hard look at Bill Gates. Microsoft's cofounder set out to put a PC on every desktop, and pretty much succeeded. "How?" is the question.
Chapter 6 of Robert X. Cringely's 1991 classic Accidental Empires is fascinating reading in context of where Gates and Microsoft are today and what their success might foreshadow for companies leading the charge into the next computing era.