business

I went to Forbes.com to read the article on Glock's pricing plan that I posted here. It's a great read, and I had sent it around to a couple clients who enjoy reading case studies (I hope).

I had originally found the story through my iPhone's Flipboard app, (which if you don't use go get it this minute for your iOS device). The UI is much different on Flipboard than Forbes.com, or any other site not specifically set up to look like, well... Flipboard.

You have a new version of an old product, and it’s great: better functionality for most users and lower production costs than previous models. You’ve hit a technological home run. But how do you price it?

This is a nice problem to have, but it’s definitely a problem. Set your price low and you earn moderate profit margins on large volume—if the low price doesn’t spook buyers into thinking it’s a low-quality product. Price high and you earn high profit margins on low volume, as most users are slow to adopt new technology.

NEW YORK (AP) — Investors thinking of buying a piece of Facebook after it goes public are hoping it will perform like Google, whose stock has risen 500 percent since its debut seven and a half years ago.

But they may want to spare a thought for companies slightly less exciting — a truck leasing company, perhaps, or a manufacturer of ball bearings.

Stocks of those two have left Google, and the investors who didn't get into it early, in the dust in the past several years. So have more than half the companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 index.

Two thousand years before smartphones, Plato suggested that excessive democracy would lead directly to tyranny, because sooner or later the majority will choose to trample the rights of the minority.

A Deutsche Bank analyst has circulated a research note claiming that — if you lump iPad sales in with PCs — Apple is now the world’s top vendor.
What’s more, Apple’s ascendance occurred not too long after the iPad’s release in 2010. As the company’s market share rose, all of its rivals — HP, Dell, Lenovo and Acer — started falling. They haven’t stopped since.

The analyst, Chris Whitmore, sent the note after concluding that none of Apple’s rivals has yet hit on a viable alternative to the iPad.

I’m often asked by people what investment areas interest me.

It’s true that I have a functional focus on three areas: Performance-based marketing, digital television and mobile computing. I try to invest in things that I know and that I believe I might have better knowledge and relationships than the masses of VCs.

I have other areas of interest & competence such as cloud computing and document management given my background.