Tech Strategy

I host this blog on AWS with S3 and cloudfront. It’s built using Hugo a fun open-source static site generator. I picked this setup originally after reading reddit threads recommending various static site generators, like this one. It was an excuse to learn some new tech, but I also wanted to pick something that was simple to learn and easy to deploy. For the past few months I’ve been using Cursor for my side projects. It completely changes the experience of writing code. Instead of the OODA loop of googling, reading docs, writing code, testing, reading reddit, checking stackoverflow, googling again, you ask an AI. You live in the IDE. And you notice that Cursor, using LLMs, is much better at writing code in popular languages and frameworks. I assume this is because the models are trained on open-source code and documentation, and the more that exists the better the LLMs are. ...

Rise of Windows & Enterprise Licensed Products The first wave of enterprise products built for mass adoption by office workers were built largely on top of the desktop computing platform of Windows (which of course Microsoft was able to build because of IBM’s decision to let them own the OS). Windows allowed developers to build products for the entire enterprise market regardless of the hardware they purchased. Developers could build for one platform and have a major market immediately open up to them. Domain expert products covered areas like computer aided design (AutoCAD), graphic design (Adobe), and financial analysis (Peachtree, etc…). ...

This post covers two axis in product positioning - product vs platform and licensed vs service. My goal is to help product leaders and companies think about where their offering really competes and what it means to win there. Horizontal Axis: Product vs Platform Products are discrete offerings where the key relationship is between the provider and the customer. Think Dropbox, Gmail, Excel. Innovation: Products win through profound understanding of the end-user persona (I just want all files to sync without ever thinking about it) and building the most seamless user experience for them. Products build moats around their existing user base, via data network effects or skill-set (e.g Excel as first spreadsheet reliant on GUI and a mouse) Distribution Channel: Products are distributed by a platform - Operating System, browser, app stores, public cloud. This is how users will discover and sign-up for the product. Deciding which platforms to support is key to balance distribution with trade-offs in customer relationship, cost, user experience. Platforms are distribution channels where the economic value generated by participants in the ecosystem is higher than the value generated by the owner of the platform. Platforms enable partners to build entire business atop of them, only taking a tax. Think AWS, iOS, Browsers. ...

Update on this post in 2022… This is a cool post to read later. I had forgotten I wrote this and also forgotten that the iPad ever had the numeric moniker. According to this article on iPad history there was an iPad 3 and iPad 4 but then they dropped the numbers. And Apple actually started the differentiation I advocated by introducing the iPad Mini the following year (2012), and iPad Air (2013) and finally an iPad Pro 4 years (2015). ...

In early 1999, two students raised $100,000 to turn a research idea into a company. Young and risk-averse, they approached the market leader asking to be bought for $1 Million. They were negotiated down to $750,000 before the market leader finally decided not to make the purchase. The small startup asking to be acquired? Google, which IPO’d in 2004 and currently has a market cap of $192 Billion. The market leader that turned down the acquisition? Excite, which would merge with @Home Network before filing for bankruptcy in 2001.1 ...