Musings on the Importance of Hustle (and How Lack of it Kills)

This blog post is not about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, but she does provide the perfect example of what I’ll be talking about. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently pulled off a shocking political primary election win in a district that was believed to heavily favor her opponent, established and well-financed 10-term incumbent Rep. Joe Crowley. Just to provide some context … [Read more…]

We Have An Ethical Issue With “Evangelist”-Driven Marketing

Hey, did you hear? LeBron James is transferring to the Lakers. Then again even if you don’t follow basketball like me nothing short of solitary confinement in Siberia would stop this news from reaching you. I’m not here to talk about that, though. I’m here to talk about the almost frighteningly visceral reaction from some … [Read more…]

Musings on the Messy Divorce of Facebook and WhatsApp

I still remember the overall tenor of astonishment when Facebook announced in 2014 that it was acquiring messenger app WhatsApp for a staggering $19 billion, blowing away other notable acquisitions such as Apple’s $3 billion purchase of Beats. This was generally viewed as a coup for Facebook, with some going as far as to call … [Read more…]

Websites Definitely Not Dead As Wix Valued At $4 Billion

It’s time for one of my patented “Pat myself on the back for calling it” posts! Last time we were here I correctly predicted that Pokemon Go wasn’t going to revolutionize small business marketing. This time I’ve got some hard data refuting the claim that websites are somehow dead, obsolete, or not a central part of … [Read more…]

A Postmortem of the Bodega Debacle

What do you get when you take a dash of the empty “disruption” philosophy that permeates Silicon Valley, add in the trend that absolutely everything that needs to be a “smart” device and mix in just a hint of racial insensitivity? You get Bodega, a startup that had a disastrous rollout late last year as … [Read more…]

The Curious Case Of Wix Using WordPress

I made a curious discovery courtesy of Nate Hoffelder, and it involves Wix. Wix is in the vanguard of the “do it yourself” web design builders that have sprung up in the past decade. I’ve never been a fan of this business model because it’s somewhat misleading; Wix, Squarespace and other services don’t offer websites … [Read more…]