Daily

Is that outside or on TV?

Real sound

I’m an audiophile and I tend to spend more money than most people on audio equipment. Although, there are plenty people out there who spent more in the pursuit to true sound reproduction. I like to be more practical. It does mean I typically adorn the family room with larger speakers, but I don’t have […]

Not all products are treated equal

Feature vs mission

A couple of days ago, I wrote about Evernote. Once, Steve Jobs called Dropbox a “feature”. He was right in his own context. But I do belief mission trumps features. I rather use Dropbox than Apple’s iCloud, Google Drive or Microsoft’s OneDrive. Same goes for Spotify versus Apple Music or YouTube Music. I really wish […]

It’s just a feature

First they ignore you

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win Last week, the news came out that IBM was acquiring Red Hat. On some random place, I stumbled on this photo. It made me smile: Even though it’s unclear where this quote comes from and probably not from Gandhi, […]

This is what keeps me up at night

Data integrity and privacy

One of the major concerns I have with regard to privacy is data integrity. With data integrity, I mean that the correctness of the data used. Now, today much of the data is used for serving you ads, but plenty of startups are working on using the data for other purposes like issuing loans or […]

Start small, grow tall

Endless Tweaking

Regardless the kind of startup, the secret of all tech startups today is software. Marc Andreessen wrote a seminal post about it a long time ago; why software is eating the world. One of the major advantage is that software allows for endless tweaking. It’s almost impossible to tweak hardware when it’s out of the […]

Nobody gets it right

Conference calls

There are a few product categories which see constant new entrants, but never gets solved. Note taking apps is a good example. Same goes for calendar or email apps. Today, I wanted to talk about conference calls. Another category with constant new entrants. Yesterday, I had a atrocious conference call on Google Hangouts. The sound […]

Let me annoy you for a second

Every website in 2018

The video in the tweet below sums it up. It’s a mess again. The pop-ups, pop-overs and pop-unders are back! Now implemented in CSS. Every website in 2018 pic.twitter.com/Gm7jhfuuUO — Daryl Ginn (@darylginn) October 20, 2018

The platforms of the many turn into platforms of the few

Local stardom

One of the most interesting trends of the internet in the last decade, is what I like to call local stardom. Not everyone is the same on the internet and it is caused by algorithms. I call it local stardom. The amount of content we need to consume is so vast, we use algorithms to […]

A simple realization with profound insight

What Drives You

Yesterday, someone asked me what drove me. It’s a good question. Some people know from “birth” what drives them, for other people like me it takes longer. I can remember the day I realized what drove me. Let me tell you the story. Back in 2007, we started Shapeways. I worked, nurtured and grew it […]

Slow disruption

When was the last time you visited your bank?

Sometimes disruption happens fast and is very visible like the introduction of the smartphone. Other times it happens very slowly. I came across this article that HSBC put a cute robot in their flagship (who knew that’s a thing for banks?) branch on Manhattan. Obviously the idea is to increase foot traffic. It’s a good […]