It’s become pretty cliche to talk about the declining cost of “starting up” over the last 10 years. But one area rarely mentioned is the ease at which competitive analysis can be done. With linkedin, crunchbase, angelist, you’re able to literally get real numbers behind your competitions funding, employee count, and sales. And with vimeo, youtube, and blogs, you’re able to hear your competitor openly discuss their strategical thinking.
Not so in the day of expensive gartner reports.
I was a cofounder of Attassa – a software startup started in 2007 which was acquired in 2010 by Yousendit. Along the way, we worked with Tandem entrepreneurs – our original venture partners. I recently spoke about our experience with Tandem – a summary of my discussion, as well as other entrepreneurs working with Tandem can be seen below.
I’d be happy to share my experience with any prospective Tandem company. Drop me a line at @dquail. In short though, working with Tandem was extremely advantageous for our company. They provided tremendous sweat equity, gave a very high level of commitment and dedication, and ultimately introduced us to our eventual acquirer. Their model has changed slightly since 2007 – but their basic model of common stock for sweat equity was still the same.
I recently made an observation when taking inventory of the iPhone apps I have installed.
I noted that any app I use with any regularity will provide me with value in 10 seconds or less. If it takes longer, I’d just as soon crack open the laptop and use the web/desktop version … or be distracted by some other app on my iPhone. While there’s plenty of apps installed (at least 4 pages full), the only ones I use are Shazam, Mail, Contacts, Google Maps, Tweetie, Facebook, Weather, Showtimes …. all apps that I can get data from within 10 seconds.
It seems that the iPhone has tapped into our North American attention deficit selves. I find myself busting out my iPhone any time I’m without stimulation … even when waiting for the traffic light to turn green. The iPhone and it’s apps owe a lot of their success to an ability to fill the gaps in our day to day lives – it’s candy to the attention deficit. And to me, there’s nothing better than an app that can entertain me in as little as 10 seconds.
David Quail 