I’m glad to see a bit more variety in the ventures wanting to present at this month’s NY Tech. We still have over half the ventures being related to the social web which I think is representative of the software related startups in town at the moment. Of course most software ventures are more general. Everything from stock control to trading software and it would be good to see a broader range getting in front of the VCs who attend. I was particularly heartened to see TrialX wanting to present. They are “a healthcare information technology startup that is developing a groundbreaking technology to automatically match patients to clinical trials of new treatments.”
I care about this, not because there is anything wrong with social media, but because there are opportunities for technology startups which New York is uniquely positioned to take advantage of. This is not so much in the technologies which are created in relative business isolation purely from an idea but those which are created by lighting fires under elements of the major industries of New York: advertising, publishing, pharma, health and financial services. There are many ventures in these fields which require expertise or integration into business relationships and a New York venture is in a better position to realize success than a startup in the pure technology space of The Bay Area.
In many cases these ventures also have clearer real business models even if they can’t achieve the same number of eyeballs by next Monday. At the moment I would take a plan leading to cash rather than eyeballs every time.
New York, Technology newyork startups nytech ventures
A former NYU lecturer, Jack Sandler Bloom, has published a community around a Business Strategy course. The course is an effective start (currently two classes) of a business strategy course. His vision is of a broader educational platform where participants can make available for free, educational materials. He also offers a marking and feedback process for a charge. The two current classes are of good quality offering very interesting content.
At present the content is little more than a video blog and a lot is needed to realize the goal of large scale distribution of free educational content. Several other organizations have tried. At one time CompuServe started CompuServe University and a number of national education departments make a modest amount of material available for free.
As young potential students and parents start to understand how much material is available for free and the extent to which many so called universities in the US are just teaching commoditized courses from the major educational publishers the model of paying exorbitant fees has to come into question. The social network of like minded people is something which is available online at little or no cost and accreditations in varies certification forms are available at much lower cost.
The remaining niches retained by universities are brand and the ability to sanction grants and low rate loans. The micro lending platforms could easily tie in to certification agencies as a way of providing loans to finance the team people are able to spend educating themselves. The university brands themselves are extremely over vallued but this has been a factor in education for centuries. The openness provided by technology will slowly undermine it just as the invention of printing and the translation of the bible into lay languages greatly undermined the authority of the church.
There are bigger questions about the effect of the certification style training as a substitute for education and the effect it has on stifling creativity or even thought. Moving to greater certification and a closer link to people’s future earnings through commercial loans does hamper the ability to provide a rounded eduction for the good of the individual themselves.
Society education lending strategy universities
This is unfortunately a necessary political gesture. There is going to be increasing political pressure unless we clarify that it is a bailout OF some institutions, not FOR the institutions. People want to know that tax payer money is being used to support the economy, not bonuses. So despite the fact that Goldman Sachs has honestly earned its money, doubtlessly through many hours of hard work, in the current climate it is an appropriate leadership action to be showing that we are not lining our pockets when many are suffering financial hardship and additionally having their tax dollars used to support market liquidity. If politions or regulators received bonuses we should be asking the same of them. Of course they don’t receive bonuses even in the good years.
Governance goldman bailout
NY governor, David Paterson, has release a web site showing the expected impact of the economic downturn. The budget deficit is projected to grow from $1.5B in 2008-09 to $12.5B 2009-10 which is truly staggering. Putting that in perspective though is the projected Wall Street bonus drop, a very important source of tax revenue, down from $48.2B in 2008 to $27.6B in 2009. It could easily be far below that as there are a reduced number of employees as well as drastically reduced bonuses per individual. Wall Street represents 20% of NY state tax revenue.
To give a wider perspective on the actual, rather than projected, economy the actual tax revenue from the top 20 corporate taxpayers is down 38% for the first two quarters of 2008.
New York nystate tax deficit wallstreet
With recent eddys in the world of the finance business, transitions have been even more on everybody’s mind than usual. I was recently entertaining my Sister, visiting from Vancouver. We had already done the main highlights on earlier trips so we took a trip around Manhattan on the Circle Line Ferry. There are a number of points were the architecture or the derelict water front shows the changing priorities of the city and the country over the last one hundred years. The prominent Governor’s Island with a strategic view of the harbour. The emphasis on immigration in the early years of the 20th Century with new arrivals passing the Statue of Liberty and landing at Ellis Island for processing and continuing on to the purpose built train terminus on the New Jersey Shore. The importance of shipping and the role of New York as a trading port now displaced to the container ports such as Newark by the increasing competition for space and the efficiencies of larger ships which operate under their own power and don’t require the support of the tides to dock in estuaries. The warehouses lining the shore in easy access of quays. The closure of manufacturing industries in the many Manhattan and Brooklyn factories now located in cheaper locations many in cheaper labour markets. All of these changes have brought with them wrenching pain for individuals. Abandonment of well honed skills. The break-up of friendships in work teams. Nearly all these transitions occurring at the last minute with organizations clinging valiantly to the familiar until they relented in their final gasps.
It is really the individuals who cling to the familiar though and for natural human reasons. A life has been built around the environment. A life that works in that environment and all these changes require rethinking of attitudes, beliefs expounded and the learning of unfamiliar disrespected view points. We shouldn’t necessary tell people to enjoy these changes as seems to be implied by the ‘Who moved my cheese’ school of management. We wouldn’t however want metal smelting to return to Manhattan or for sailors to be at the whim of wind in their sales but we should instead understand that the transition is painful and that sail boats did have charm and sailors their skills but that unfortunately we are compelled by our competition for capital and thirst for growth to stay ahead of change if we are to have influence in the world.
Management, New York change, New York, transition
Newspaper readership is continuing to decline. We continue to read messages directly from companies and governments while still getting news of incidents from a traditional news source for free online. Layoffs at newspapers continue a pace.
The amount of non paid add space is noticably declining in a number of publications and even on television despite it being an election year.
Jeff Jarvis has posted a presentation on the current state of the news industry here.
Marketing, Society advertising, news, print
There is an interesting description of Googles browser internals here. Each tab uses a seperate process to make the browser far more resiliant to bugs and there are some interesting comments on their testing environment which allows them to run the browser against a million web pages programatically and assess the outcomes.
Technology cartoon, chrome, google, testing
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