Author Archives: Matt Collins
Mary Meeker And The (Non) Death Of Industries
Over the last 25 years, governments all over the world have banned or severely restricted the production and use of chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs. Once the refrigerant of choice for air conditioners, CFCs were discovered to threaten the planet’s protective ozone layer. Less damaging hydrochlorofluorocarbons soon replaced CFCs in nearly every use case. Production of CFCs ended, […]
Windows Phone: What Might Have Been
A week ago, my two-year old Lumia Icon fell out of my pocket. Though gravity had only about seven inches with which to wreak havoc, the phone landed screen-side down on a bump on my slate patio, sending a spider web of cracks through the glass. Cracked screen on my Lumia Icon My phone’s demise […]
Nokia Phones Redux: An Ultra-Safe Return
Nokia is a shape-shifter of a company that has transformed itself many times in its 151-year history. It has been in forestry, lumber and pulp production; rubber, cable, radio, and electronics. It made mobile phones from 1982 to 2014, and while that’s a lifetime in the tech world, it accounts for just 21 percent of the […]
The App Store And iTunes: Growth Drivers And Drags
43.62% 9.55% 7.24% 28.22% This is the growth rate in Apple’s revenues over the last four years, for an annual average of 21.7%. In 2015, the company racked up more than $231 billion in sales. High rates of growth aren’t typically associated with such a large revenue base, yet Apple has defied convention. That’s what makes what […]
Facebook vs. Alphabet After 15 Quarters As Publicly-Traded Companies: Neck And Neck
Advertising on Facebook is big business. Look no further than its Q1 2016 earnings announcement, which blew past analyst expectations. Facebook’s results were even more striking amid disappointing reports from Alphabet/Google, Apple and Microsoft. Alphabet’s Google and Facebook are widely regarded as the two most valuable digital advertising businesses in the world. Comparing the revenues […]
Free Food Is Nice But Not Enough: The Key To Retaining Millennial (And All Other) Employees
Dan Lyons’ recent book about his misadventures at HubSpot describes the culture clash that ensued when Lyons, a 50-something journalist, tried working at a tech company staffed largely by 20-something Millennials. Looked at another way, though, the story is also about the lengths to which companies will go to keep Millennials from leaving their jobs. Scene from […]
My First Encounter With A Facebook Messenger Chat Bot Has Me Convinced: It’s The Next Big Thing
Facebook’s annual F8 developer conference took place last week, and of all the headlines the event created, none has generated more buzz than its push to encourage marketers to embrace Facebook Messenger. As I predicted about a year ago, it’s time for businesses to embrace this platform. With over 900 million users, the scale is […]
My Journey From A Fortune Five Giant To A Startup, One Year Later
A year ago this week, I left my job at Microsoft, currently one of the five largest companies by market capitalization, to join a start up, Ampush. Lots of people decide to leave big companies for small ones. For some, it doesn’t work out, as Dan Lyons describes of his “hellish” experience at HubSpot. Sandi MacPherson, […]
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