Phillip Jackson
I'm building a startup called ServiceVines. I live far out from civilization and like it. I get really too excited over tech, economics, and food.
The No's have it
Why People say no.
The “no” is your friend, the “no” is usually right, the “no” is easy. It’s incredibly easy to be negative, it’s what comes natural to us. Coming up with reasons something won’t work isn’t hard. Ask if founder’s harebrained idea will work and it will be met with “no because....”. No because it’s just like this, no because no one uses that . . .
So Long I.T. Department
It was nice knowing you, you were a needed, misunderstood and much maligned part of most all organizations. You helped to answer questions about GHZ, megabytes, processors and things no one else seemed to want or could understand, you were the repair department, you made sure that things kept ticking along with as little downtime as possible . . .
You get what you pay for
Why Apple can’t innovate
People love to repeat the old adage, you get what you pay for. The saying implies that if you pick something low cost it’s not going to last, is sub par quality or is not very nice. Other people think you are stupid for paying so much for whatever you just bought. Why did you pay so much for your thingy, didn’t you know there’s the other . . .
Will it work
Apple’s Unknown Watch Announcement
Apple has a knack for releasing products which future success is largely unknown. The iPod took more than 4 years before taking off, the iPhone was generally thought to be a moonshot given it’s price and blackberry and Nokia’s dominance in the market, the iPad was nothing more than a “Big iPod Touch” and now the apple watch.
There’ . . .
Transportation
What will do we do with more time we'll be given
This won’t come as a secret to many people but uber wants to be much, much more than a replacement for a taxi service. Amazon aspires to be more than a place you order replacement toothbrush heads. And Google wants to be more than a place you search for how to cure your cold.
All these companies are reinventing the way we think of . . .
I'll have my computer call yours..
When Machines talk to each other.
It was a great week at ServiceVines as we launched our credit card processing. We do that through a service called Stripe. Stripe makes it easy to do something that was formerly hard, store, validate, charge, and refund credit cards. This is done transparent to user via an API (application programming interface) the the user doesn't know . . .
Believing in the Internet
How Andy Grove's comments stick with me 12 years later
I have been quoted saying that, in the future, all companies will be Internet companies. I still believe that. More than ever, really. wired June 2001
Andy Grove former CEO of intel said this more than 13 years ago. Before mobile phones, before mass adoption of broadband, before you could get wifi at every coffee shop, he said the . . .
