Pages tagged: 'Ecosystem'
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Why Investing Isn’t One Dimensional
Investors usually focus on buy price, exit price and perhaps how long in-between the two. But we may be looking in the wrong direction altogether. Earlier this year, Forbes magazine ran a headline declaring that we’ve come to a pivotal moment for investors, particularly for those in innovative businesses. The article pointed out that some events stand out as watershed moments such as Bill Gates writing his “Tidalwave of the Internet” memo in 1995 or Steve Jobs holding up the iPhone in 2007. So what was this earth changing event?
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Post Brexit – Tech Blues or Blue Sky?
UK tech is the best in Europe, but does Brexit pose a threat or opportunity? In recent years the team at London’s Tech City has produced a healthcheck of technology across the country, called the Tech Nation report. Even if you take some of the findings with a pinch of political salt (Theresa May wrote the Foreward), there does seem to be good news for the UK tech investors.
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Worn Out Wearables?
Ever since we realised that computers were really getting smaller, pioneers and visionaries have been trying to make them wearable. As far back as the 1975 Pulsar produced the first watch calculator and in the mid 1980’s these devices were in their heyday. Of course more recently, there has been a surge of smart watches but even Apple has failed to make a device that has really caught public interest.
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Why Some Bubbles Burst
Nick Woodman is one of those rare breed of golden geese that have made more than $1bn through a technology innovation. In Nick’s case (he founded GoPro in 2002 to take action surfing shots) it wasn’t that he even made a technical breakthrough – he simply took existing technologies (firstly 35mm film and then digital cameras) and used them in a new and disruptive way. GoPro was once the darling of investors but why did this tech hit a bad wave?
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How Startups Can Avoid Failure
Startups and small companies are the engine room of the economy. In a report commissioned by Santander, SME’s also proved the most resilient during the recession and were by far the biggest job creators in the private sector, accounting for a full two-thirds of new UK employment. Yet, with so much replying on startups, why is it that 90% of tech startups fail? After years of work, real data is now becoming available.
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Connectivity and Contentment
Indonesia is the latest country to announce an ambitious Fibre To The Premises rollout, promising 10Gb down and 2.5Gb upload speeds. Even with a budget of $100bn, it’s a daunting task, particularly that Indonesia is targeting 20 million homes spread over 900 inhabited islands. Indonesia is also in the news as it has topped another poll for apparently being the happiest country to live in, according to a survey from Ipsos. Connectivity beings many benefits, but is contentment one of them?
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Making Seeds Grow
This week the UK Chancellor announced that the Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS) is going to be made permanent. You might be wondering why there’s been so much interest in simply continuing with something that’s already set up. The reason is that whilst the big brother Enterprise Investment Scheme had been going for a while, the Seed version was a bit of an experiment. So has it worked and what can be learnt for other aspiring tech sectors?
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Is Surge Replacing Hype?
Many years ago, Gartner created it’s Hype cycle – a seminal model that describes how every technology innovation from printing to bitcoins goes through an initial period of interest and hype, then falls into a trough as disillusionment kicks in, only for enlightenment to bring recovery. The problem facing the tech investor is knowing just where you are on the hype cycle and how deep the trough might be. But this week, respected tech veterans have described a new phenomenon: the Surge cycle. Is it time for a new model for tech?
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