This post about competitive dynamics has been stewing in my mind for months now and it’s still a work in progress.  At its heart is a framework for thinking about a common type of tech company:  the aggregator.   The aggregator takes disparate items, gathers them, and presents them as a unified front. Aggregators can exist [...]

(This is the first in a two part post. Part one contains a profile of a startup.  Part two contains numbers and analysis related to that startup.) Mobile Spinach is a small and ambitious Bay Area startup focused on the mobile coupon space.  The company is still at a very early stage — seed funded [...]

This brilliant advertisement for Travelers Insurance recently appeared on Inc Magazine’s back cover. The tagline is “Just when you’ve prepared for a million-and-one insurance risks, in walks a million-and-two.”  In case the picture of the ad isn’t clear, a ceiling fan business is about to be visited by an abnormally tall customer.  I really love [...]

I recently saw a Dove advertisement on Hulu which compared dove soap to normal soap: If you could see the difference, you’d see soap leaves an invisible layer of scum on your skin… Dove leaves no soap scum Then, the scene suddenly switches to ultraviolet-murder-scene-lighting to reveals a woman covered with soap scum.  The ad [...]