Tag: Trybe

Crowdsourcing: Pros and Cons

The term “crowdsourcing” always reminds me of the book title, “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds” (which has been on my reading list for years). A Wired writer coined the term in 2006 by combining “crowd” and “outsourcing.” Wikipedia (probably the best example of crowdsourcing) defines crowdsourcing as “the act of outsourcing tasks, traditionally […]

A.B.C.

I was having breakfast with a prominent VC a while back and happened to mention that my two partners had done some work for another startup that had gone belly up. “You’ll need a letter from your attorney stating that there are no issues with the code,” he said sternly, adding, “When you meet a […]

Skate to where the puck will be…

Recently I was having lunch with two tech entrepreneurs and we ended up in a debate about the right target market for startup web sites. I said I was aiming for affluent, well-educated users, not early adopters. I’ve watched plenty of “cool,” “hip” sites go out of business because they couldn’t attract a big enough […]

Matching vs Recommendations

I spoke to someone who described themselves as a CFO-for-hire a while back. After hearing my description of Trybe’s mission, she commented that “there are a ton of recommendation sites out there.” I couldn’t deny that but felt that this didn’t adequately describe our concept. It inspired some thinking about how we are different. I […]

Convenience

I used to manage a group of very talented people at AOL that was named “Convenience” by someone more senior than me, likely in a fit of wry humor. It was somewhat embarrassing to hand out my business card at places like Citibank and watch the reaction of senior bankers in blue suits. They immediately sized […]