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For the last 20 years, the annual Gartner Hype Cycle has presented its picks for the most important technologies and trends of the year along with its prediction for where the technology lay in its adoption cycle. How have its predictions held up? Not that well. That’s one of eight observations we made from our […]

The last five years have seen a flurry of B2B companies coming to market with bottom-up adoption strategies. Many of these companies now face saturation in their original low end market segment and they’re attempting to go up market, to  “Enterprise” purchasers. But “Going Enterprise” looks a lot easier than it actually is, and there are lots […]

Docker container technology has become a genuine developer phenomenon over the last two years. But other developer technologies have experienced initial bursts of extreme success, only to quickly hit an adoption ceiling. Over the last year and a half, we’ve tracked the real world adoption of container technology using LinkedIN profile data. Read on to […]

Having been around the block in the venture capital business for some time, like many of us, I look forward to reading the Forbes Midas List that Alex Konrad puts together of the 100 greatest venture capitalists of the past year.  If nothing else we are all curious; who will be on it, what are […]

At every stage of a company’s growth journey, there are always many potential customers who cannot be persuaded to trust that a company will deliver its claimed value proposition. Early adopters want to see working product. The early majority wants to see customer proof points. The late majority want multiple independent customer validations. Some companies […]

Almost all B2B growth companies have to change up their go to market mix regularly in order to keep scaling. Many times, that requires a change in marketing (and sales) leadership. But in my experience, startup CEO’s tend to have great difficulty creating and hiring to a marketing head spec that ends up working for them.  I encourage […]

It’s been almost a decade since Marc Andreessen introduced the concept of “Product Market Fit.” Since then, PMF has become ubiquitous in startup vernacular.  Seed stage entrepreneurs say they’re working toward product market fit. Later stage entrepreneurs claim they have it. Entrepreneurs in a pivot claim they lost it but now they’re getting it back.  The concept is so universally used that it’s become tautological. […]

For seasoned venture capitalists, the last few years have been hard to watch. Much as we love boom markets and the positive impact they have on our portfolios, we’ve had to bear witness to the erosion of some core principles that are at the essence of the value creation process. Sadly, during periods of excessive […]

Almost all B2B growth companies have to change up their go to market mix regularly in order to keep scaling. Many times, that requires a change in marketing (and sales) leadership. But in my experience, startup CEO’s tend to have great difficulty creating and hiring to a marketing head spec that ends up working for them.  I encourage […]

VC Joe Horowitz says investors should dial back their excitement a few pegs. As a 30-year veteran of the venture capital business in Silicon Valley, the cycle of our world has become all too familiar. During times of recession the economy is stimulated with low interest rates and once they get low enough, the yield […]