Fair use is important to innovators as well as consumers. It’s fair use that allowed the VCR to innovate on top of the television.
The cost of hiring someone bad is so much greater than missing out on someone good.
Any time you build a company designed to be sold, you ultimately get less value if it’s sold.
Don’t forget to balance optimism with fact and belief with reality.
Set measurable goals, measure relative to competition.
Media companies, under the guise of piracy, are asking congress to give them more control over fair use. Hollywood wants to control innovation.
Fight piracy; don’t squash innovation.
We are creating and encouraging a culture of distraction where we are increasingly disconnected from the people and events around us, and increasingly unable to engage in long-form thinking. People now feel anxious when their brains are unstimulated.
So my advice to startups in this particular category is if you’re going to put your product in beta – put your business model in beta with it. Far too often we are too product focused and not business-model focused. That’s one thing I definitely would have done differently with JotSpot.