As I sit here at Palantir’s Govcon 5 conference at the lavish Ritz Carlton in Tyson’s Corner (Virgina), I can’t help but think about the recent “fit or fat” startup debate that hit the blogosphere a few weeks back. The debate started with a post by VC Ben Horowitz of Andreessen Horowitz entitled The Case [...]
Entries Tagged as 'strategy'
The Fit or Fat Startup
April 7th, 2010 · No Comments
Tags: Uncategorized · Venture Capital · strategy
Five Rules for Competing with Giants
March 24th, 2010 · 7 Comments
I’ve spent my career competing, for the most part successfully, against companies from 10 to 1,000 times bigger than my own. Thus, over the years, I’ve developed some rules that can help maximize your odds of success when competing against giants. Concentrate force. The easiest way to be bigger than your competitor is to focus. [...]
Tags: Marketing · autonomy · endeca · startups · strategy
A Few Quick Takeaways From A Speech By Morgan Stanley’s Jim Rosenthal
March 18th, 2010 · No Comments
I had the privilege of hearing an after-dinner speech by Jim Rosenthal, COO of Morgan Stanley Smith Barney and Head of Corporate Strategy for Morgan Stanley overall. The speech was particularly interesting because of Jim’s almost accidental IT experience; Jim’s background is in strategy, not IT, but he nevertheless served for two years as Head [...]
Tags: Kryder's Law · Moore's Law · Technology laws · financial services · strategy
Open Text Snags Nstein
February 22nd, 2010 · 2 Comments
Open Text Corp. today announced that it was acquiring Montreal-based text mining and publishing solutions vendor Nstein Technologies for CDN $0.65 per share, or CDN $35M, equivalent to US $33.5M, a 100% premium over the trailing 30-day average closing price of Nstein’s common shares which are traded publicly on the Toronto Stock Venture Exchange (TSXV). [...]
Tags: Uncategorized · strategy · text analytics
Does Benihana Mean Birthday or Teppanyaki?
January 5th, 2010 · 2 Comments
On the face of it, Benihana is a pretty simple restaurant which ought to mean just one thing in the mind of its customers: teppanyaki, the form of tableside cooking/entertainment for which they are famous. I like the notion of businesses owning one word in the mind of the customer. While I’m not sure where [...]
Tags: Marketing · positioning · strategy
