Daniel Lyons Quotes
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Despite all its bluster about innovation, Apple has become a copycat, and not even a good one.
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The world of online marketing, where HubSpot operates, though, has a reputation for being kind of grubby. Our customers include people who make a living bombarding people with email offers or gaming Google's search algorithm or figuring out which kind of misleading subject line is most likely to trick someone into opening a message.
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Apple might sell a lot of watches to the faithful, and no doubt the bozos will line up outside stores again just because they love to stand outside in lines. Look at me! I'm so techie!
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Social gaming is not something Zuckerberg could have imagined back when he was creating Facebook in his Harvard dorm room in 2004. The change began in May 2007, when Facebook announced it would let outside developers create applications that run on top of Facebook.
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One way Groupon hopes to gain an edge is by using software to learn about its members so it can deliver more relevant offers: my wife will get the manicure-pedicure deal, but I'll get an offer on fly-fishing lessons. The key now is execution - delivering great customer service and keeping everybody happy on both sides of the transactions.
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If we didn't have Net neutrality, carriers could do things like penalize companies that use a lot of bandwidth or create high-speed lanes and charge Internet companies extra fees to send their stuff over them. That would give an advantage to big companies and make life harder for startups.
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I guess I always had made some assumptions about what it would be like to work in a tech company, and some were right, and some were wrong. I had a lot of, looking back on it, now naive ideas about how companies build their brands, and a lot of those notions I ended up realizing were kind of wrong.
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There are too many ways that a startup gig can go sideways. If the startup won't agree to hefty severance, pass.
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Fingerprint readers require special hardware, and a lot of people find them creepy and don't want to use them. Smart cards and tokens can be lost or stolen.
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Some law firms now use artificial intelligence software to scan and read mountains of legal documents, work that previously was performed by highly paid human lawyers.
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Content is supposed to be king. But in the world of electronic devices, Apple seems to be placing the crown on its own head, apparently believing that its iPad and iPhone are more important to customers than the books, movies, and music they store on them.
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I was drawn to journalism as a young guy because I felt like there was some purpose to it, not always but sometimes.
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Android phones are sold by dozens of hardware makers, the biggest being Samsung, Motorola, and HTC. There are lots of different form factors. Slider phones. Phones with keyboards. Big screens, small screens, midsize screens.
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Can anyone create an enduring business on the Web, where it's easy to build new companies, and when survival depends on the whims of fickle users? The big lesson of 'Digg' may be simply this: if someone offers you a ridiculous amount of money for a company that wasn't that hard to build, don't think twice. Take the money and run.
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Early on, Android phones were pitched as kind of ersatz iPhones, devices that could do most of what an iPhone did - but were available on carriers other than AT&T, a relatively horrible network that was the biggest source of complaints about Apple's transformative device.
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Carrier networks were originally built for connecting phone calls. Now they're getting swamped with bandwidth-hogging data applications. Keeping up will require huge investments. Who's going to pay for that?
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My prior stint at 'Newsweek' was a very different world. So it's what it's like to be in one of these kooky software startups as a grown up. It's not entirely pleasant! It's like, 'Oh, I don't fit.'
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Why can't modern tech companies both grow and turn a profit at the same time?
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Hubspot's leaders were not heroes but rather a pack of sales and marketing charlatans who spun a good story about magical transformation technology and got rich by selling shares in a company that still has never turned a profit.
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'Do not track' probably won't spell doom for online advertisers. But it will put the burden on them to explain to consumers what targeted advertising is and why it's good for them. They'll have to come out of the shadows; they'll have to be honest with people. What a radical concept. I'm all for it.
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Every new HubSpot employee has to go through training to learn how to use the software. That's a good idea, and it also keeps me from having to worry about what I'm supposed to be doing here or why Cranium, who hired me, still has never come by to say hello or talk about what he wants me to work on.
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Most startups flame out or just muddle along. Your chances of spotting a unicorn, pre-horn, are incalculably small. But if, knowing that, you still want to toss aside your cushy job, at least listen to corporate vets who have made the transition.
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Mesh networking is an old idea. Oddly enough, the low-cost XO Laptop built by the 'One Laptop Per Child' organization - the so-called $100 laptop - was designed with built-in mesh networking. The idea with the XO machine was that many kids using those laptops would be out in rural areas without reliable Internet access.
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There was a time when a company could not sell its shares to the public unless its revenues were growing and it was turning a profit. Companies that lost money were deemed too risky for public investors.