Showing posts with label Boston. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Boston. Show all posts

Sunday, July 26, 2015

Giant Tech Companies Should Give Money To Individuals And Local Governments

Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Big tech companies like Google should pay money to individuals whose data they cash on, and to governments in whose jurisdictions they make money in. It should be sane amounts and sane percentages, but it can't be zero.

Empire of the geeks
Silicon Valley should be celebrated. But its insularity risks a backlash .... THE English have Silicon Fen and Silicon Roundabout, the Scots have Silicon Glen. Berlin boasts Silicon Allee, New York Silicon Alley. But the brain of the tech world is the ecosystem in and around San Francisco. ...... Airbnb, a seven-year-old firm that helps people turn their homes into hotels, operates in 34,000 towns and cities around the world. ..... American capitalism has a new hub in the west. Wall Street used to be the place to seek fortunes and make deals; now it is increasingly the Valley.

The area’s tech companies are worth over $3 trillion

...... The enormous, disruptive creativity of Silicon Valley is unlike anything since the genius of the great 19th-century inventors. Its triumph is to be celebrated. ....... insularity. The geeks live in a bubble that seals off their empire from the world they are doing so much to change. ..... Many denizens of the Valley believe that tech is the solution to all ills and that government is just an annoyance that still lacks an algorithm.
Silicon rally





Monday, February 16, 2015

The Valley, Or Not, To Be

Silicon Valley is still the best place for your startup
Every city now seems to have a silicon something or other – whether it be London’s Silicon Roundabout, Berlin’s Silicon Allee or the Silicon Slopes of Salt Lake City....... My own experience with Zendesk, however, leaves me convinced that, at present at least, the original Silicon Valley remains the best place for budding tech startups looking to take their business to the next level. ..... there are deeply rooted cultural issues. Take Denmark’s famous law of Jante – an aversion to seeking or celebrating individual success ..... European startups raised more than $2.8bn in the last quarter of 2014 and are just as likely as their American counterparts to reach the hallowed ground of the Initial Public Offering (IPO). ..... Venture capital invested in US tech reached $8.67bn in 2013 compared with just $1.44bn in Europe. ..... There is still a perception of Europe as being overly bureaucratic, a perception that Europe sometimes reinforces. Take the EU’s tech-hub in San Francisco, catchily named the European Institute of Innovation and Technology Information and Communication Technology Labs (EIT ICT labs to friends). ..... Another thing holding Europe back is the persistent idea that failure is something to be ashamed of. This flies in the face of Silicon Valley’s fail fast, fail often mantra. Speaking from experience, failure has been a necessary and useful step on the road to success. For Americans, failure is a rite of passage. ...... Take SongKick – a great live music startup based in London. London is the world’s biggest live music hub, so why would they want to move?
Goodbye Silicon Valley: why tech startups are flocking to megacities
tech businesses now need the energy, talent and diversity of the world’s megacities to thrive ...... Not a week goes by in the world of tech without someone heralding the globe’s next Silicon Valley – from New York City to Norwich, London to Lagos, the list goes on....... But the real story here is not the next Valley, it’s the death of the tech cluster as we know it...... started with the founders; a concentration of white, middle-class, socially awkward geeks, inseparable from their Macbooks. ....... If you have ever tried to visit the likes of Apple or Google in the heart of Silicon Valley you will know it is not an easy place to get to.... Back in its heyday, the Valley’s isolation from the rest of the status-quo of banks, big business and city life allowed it to thrive, think bigger and build world-changing companies. ...... In the new wave of tech centres no other city has raced ahead of the pack with this trend like New York. ...... In the Far East many look to Hong Kong which draws upon decades of experience as a world financial capital. It also boasts unbeatable access to China, the world’s biggest market. ....... This new generation of tech companies outside the Valley are less fixated with first-world problems like taking a selfie that looks like it has been taken with a vintage camera. These companies are disrupting centuries-old systems put in place by the establishment........ The key here is existing industries. ...... 6.5% of the world’s billion-dollar exits between 2005–12 were companies from Sweden. Again the majority of these success stories draw upon the city’s existing strengths in music, the arts and gaming. ....... Despite being on the doorstep of the Valley, San Francisco has fast become a magnet for tech talent drawn to the big city. The shift away from the Valley has become so strong that the likes of Google and Yahoo based over 30 miles away operate shuttle buses to move employees back and forth to their campuses each day. ...... Isolated clusters cannot fight the tide of talent flocking towards the bright lights of cities. San Francisco’s expensive and unpopular commuter buses are perhaps the best sign of the times, while pundits obsess over the next Silicon Valley, the world’s megacities are marching ahead.


Saturday, February 07, 2015

The Ultimate Megacity: 100 Million People



  • 100 million people: the biggest Megacity in the world. 
  • A mini earth in terms of cultural diversity. 
  • Everyone who lives in the city boundaries votes in the city boundaries. 
  • DC to Boston.
  • The backbone: a bullet train. You could live in downtown Baltimore and work in Manhattan and not even think about the commute. 


  • JFK to Penn Station and Newark to Penn Station: short distance bullet trains. To get you there in minutes. 
  • Dedicated Caribbean organic farming to feed the Megacity. I don't know about you but I like mangoes. 
  • 100% electric vehicles in the territory. By law. 
  • A next generation industrialization in the entire Eastern half of the US that is 100% feeding on Clean Energy. 
  • WiFi in every inch of the territory through the TV spectrum. Free. Telecommuting should be the norm in the workplace, partially or fully. 
  • The NYC Subway will have to be reimagined. Levitate it. Extend it. WiFi 100% everywhere. People will be having business meetings in there. No coffee though. 



Wednesday, October 22, 2014

New York To DC In An Hour



Makes total sense. Boston to NYC to Philly to Baltimore to DC totally deserves this. So it would not matter where you worked and where you live. It would take the Northeast economy to a whole new level. The whole of Northeast would become one mega city.

Maglev Train Seen Making Washington-to-Baltimore Trip at 311 MPH
a $10 billion Japanese magnetic-levitation train line to the 40-mile (64 kilometer) Washington-Baltimore corridor for 15-minute trips ..... Japan is looking for an overseas customer for maglev technology as the country works toward opening its first line in 2027. ...... Maglev trains rely on magnetic power to float the cars above the ground, eliminating the friction of steel tracks. The trains start off running on wheels, the same as used on F-15 fighter jets, until they’re going fast enough for the magnets to kick in and create lift. ..... A Washington-Baltimore starter line eventually may be extended to New York, putting the biggest U.S. city within reach of the capital in 60 minutes by train ..... proposed line could carry about 9.2 million passengers a year

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Urban Centers And Tech Innovation

New York City
New York City (Photo credit: kaysha)
Facebook Opens First International Engineering Office In London
The company currently has over 901 million monthly active numbers and estimates that over 80% of those users are outside the U.S. and Canada.
What is it about big cities? Most Silicon Valley engineers prefer to live in San Francisco, the city. They commute. The number one place for tech startups in America today is San Francisco, not Silicon Valley. And I intend to differentiate between the two. The number two place is not Boston or Seattle. It is New York City. Google has a major engineering presence in NYC. Many big tech companies do.

Big cities are attractive because that is where engineers want to live. Broadband is everywhere. So other than quality of life it is about the ecosystem. And the tech ecosystem is easier to build in a big city.

Frankly I think NYC is on its way to become number one by the end of the decade.



Does Geography Matter?


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Monday, August 15, 2011

Boston Tweets (2)

Statue of John Harvard, founder of Harvard Uni...Image via WikipediaBoston Tweets

https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/101717986829811712
https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/101731393108852736
https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/101735508740276224
https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/101817817317388288
https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/102032675770077184
https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/102078862145495040
https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/102091819906646016
https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/102113899905687552
https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/102119050850734080
https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/102158617893011456
https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/102163090820440064
https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/102193382822117376
https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/102194420358725632
https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/102317772041752576
https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/102367856158715904
https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/102522961461915648
https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/102524644472532993
https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/102524837347598337
https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/102576597013495809
https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/102585201607196674
https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/102585948885356544
https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/102728342683402240
https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/102741653537820673
https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/102841163349893120
https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/102852167169351680
https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/102903535087255552

Facebook Photo Albums: Trip To Boston, Harvard (1), Harvard (2), Harvard (3), MIT, Cambridge, MA.

Bits And Pieces
Raksha Bandhan 2011 In Boston
Happy Rakchha Bandhan
The White Male Conundrum
More On Traffic
Unexplained Spike
At MIT
New Business Card On The Way
Thanks Nick Bilton

Thursday, August 11, 2011

Boston Tweets

Boston SkylineImage by brentdanley via Flickrhttps://twitter.com/paramendra/status/99505913160933377
https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/99602534775263232
https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/99640689633144832
https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/99673161720795136
https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/99957309068951552
https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/100016518221402112
https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/100217035019128833
https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/100217901654605827
https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/100261546655096833
https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/100345549542268928
https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/100562634163752960
https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/100566774461898752
https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/100592155873128449
https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/100598704062480384
https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/100619837558112256
https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/100638571110731777
https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/100655716192370689
https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/100693416995852288
https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/100701277838774272
https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/100701277838774272
https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/100701846871613441
https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/100703861437763584
https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/100715833927532544
https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/100715879989383169
https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/100719416437772288
https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/101061862875078656
https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/101063231484854272
https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/101064168391716864
https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/101100313511067648
https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/101138499109007360
https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/101142235084623872
https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/101143667468812289
https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/101345958482284545
https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/101462296651509760
https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/101472670322925568
https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/101473095067512833
https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/101481222370361344
https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/101484082856333312
https://twitter.com/paramendra/status/101503027759951872
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Thursday, June 02, 2011

The Mind Of An Entrepreneur

Map of Austin, TexasImage via WikipediaIn search of a consulting gig I am in talks with an early stage entrepreneur in Texas. It is amazing to watch his mind work. He has been active in the space he wants to build his tech startup in for almost a decade. The guy has been immersed. That is a good sign. He has a wonderful slide deck. It really spells out the vision. And he has raised some angel money from his brother.

The passion comes through. The knowledge comes through.

One thing I also noted was the dude is suspicious of VC money. He'd rather not take VC money. That thought process was amusing to me. If you end up facing a situation where you are having to decide if you want to take VC money or not, that is a swell situation to be in. Of course he is just starting, he is not there. But it was something to hear him say that.

Friday, April 30, 2010

Dropio's Indian Cofounder Darshan


Me: I just found out you cofounded Dropio http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drop.io Why did you leave?
Darshan: yup! helped build out the tech team there, and then hopped to a startup i began in high school - http://bit.ly/4DLylg

In case you did not realize, the Indians are statistically significant.

Darshan Somashekar - LinkedIn
Video Interview With The Founders of Drop.io
somashekar.com
Darshan Somashekar| Facebook
Darshan Somashekar| Guest of a Guest
Darshan Somashekar (darshan) on Twitter
Darshan Somashekar| CrunchBase Profile
Darshan Somashekar, Associate Consultant, Bain Company, Boston..
Darshan Somashekar's Profile - Indaba Music
drop.io pr
RRE Ventures – Drop.io Completes Second Round of Investment Led by...
LWALA artist auction event - Jacob Robbins, Darshan Somashekar...
ImagineEasy Solutions: A tiny company with big ideas.
EasyBib.com - American Libraries Buyers Guide
Credo Reference and EasyBib join forces to simplify student research
2009 Finalists: America's Best Young Entrepreneurs: Drop.io...
Drop.io File Sharing and Collaboration Portal Review from AppVita...
Easybib.com, Comprehensive Information About Easybib | Quarkbase


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