Startup Whisperer Blog
TINYhr is a great startup management tool
My friend, David Niu, recently started a company called, TINYhr. David is one of the most positive guys that I know. He's a serial entrepreneur and angel investor. He previously founded NetConversions (sold to aQuantive) and BuddyTV. What I like about TINYHR and his first product TINYpulse is that he's figuring out how out how…
The Art of the Pivot
A recent Geekwire post from friend and former colleague, Kelly Smith, was very thoughtful and transparent concerning the typical reality of most startups – the pivot. In the post, Kelly articulates in detail how he had to refactor and launch his Zapd application (again). It’s a good read and I encourage all current and aspiring…
Presidential Election Sheds Four Ways To Make CEO Status In A Startup World
U.S. presidential candidates, Barak Obama and Mitt Romney, are armed with facts, stats and talking points as they complete the final stretch of their campaign trail. Both continue to echo their vision among voters on how they plan to strengthen our nation, addressing issues related to budget allocation, job creation and income growth. Regardless of…
Damn Stinking Apes – Lookout For The Small Game Developers
Our industry is clearly moving to freemium – sales of virtual goods on social networking sites, online worlds, and casual games were $9B in 2011(1) growing at 9.2% CAGR with Facebook and App Stores as the main distribution channel. Social casual games (bubble, match 3 and casino) represent more than 50 percent of Facebook’s MAUs,…
Tips To Be An 800 lb Gorilla In Social Gaming
So what does it take be an 800-pound gorilla in the social games market in 2015, and master social gaming experiences across multiple screens? Well first, we need to penetrate a wide and relatively untapped audience of mobile players with social games. Our research shows that there are just about as many players on the…
E3: The World’s Largest Anti-Social Gaming Event
Note: This is a re-post from the GameHouse blog. Console market battles it out at E3 to prove who is not the biggest market loser Like an episode from Game of Thrones, the largest kingdoms of the video game console market came together at E3 last week to proclaim their victories like a beast in…
How Do Traditional Gaming Companies Avoid Being Bugging Whip Manufacturers?
There have been a series of really good posts from VentureBeat around the legacy platform leaders (e.g, Nintendo, Sony, etc). For example, the recent posts on Sony's Vita as an example of the how it will be nearly impossible for dedicated gaming handhelds to thrive in a tablet world. The math is just plain obvious…
Online Travel Still Ripe For Entrepreneurs
I recently received an email from travel entrepreneur, Gregg Brockway, who recently left his Trip-It group that was acquired by Concur. Concur purchased Trip-It for $120M in 2011. Gregg and I crossed paths while we were at Expedia. Gregg was running the HotWire group that was acquired by Expedia. Gregg continually builds great businesses and…
The Future Of Gaming Consoles is Here (Duh)
General purpose devices are the de-facto platform for gaming. No, I am not saying that the console is going to die. The $20 billion dollar console market is going to be on a a slow steady decline over many years and its not going away overnight. But, the numbers don't lie. Here is a chart…
2012 Gaming Predictions
Here is my re-post of the gaming predictions that I made for Geekwire.com. Here are my best attempts at peering into the crystal ball for 2012: Prediction #1: Tablets are the new game consolesTablets and smartphones are already becoming the mass market console gaming platform of choice. I personally play more core games on my…
Startup Whisperer 2012 Predictions
I just recently posted my 2011 prediction recap and now its time to predict the major technology happenings for 2012. I'll be posting some games specific predictions on the GameHouse.com corporate blog this week. Here we go: Prediction #1: Wearable InternetInternet-based sensors and augmented reality overlays will show up everywhere. After recently reading about Google's…
Startup Whisperer 2011 Prediction Results
This is now the third year that I have been issuing my technology predictions. Last year I posted my predictions for 2011 and I am working on my 2012 predictions. I'll be posting those to the corporate GameHouse blog as well as doing my own on this blog. As always, I do a folksy and…
