SOMEWHAT FRANK

My Thoughts on the State of Entrepreneurship

Today I attended the Kauffman Foundation State of Entrepreneurship address in Washington, D.C. at the National Press Club. The event was packed with range of bootstrap entrepreneurs like myself to high ranking government officials. Kauffman President and CEO Carl Schramm addressed the crowd with a wealth of statistics on entrepreneurship which included the following:

• 36 percent of entrepreneurs reported reductions in head count in the past year; only 8 percent have added employees.
• Nearly two-thirds have seen their sales volume and their profitability decrease.
• 71 percent of entrepreneurs do not expect to add any new jobs in 2010.
• 61 percent of entrepreneurs think the economy is on the wrong track.

I covered the event on TECH cocktail (here). I also covered the event real-time on Somewhat Frank Tidbits (here).

The Best of CES: My Favorite Shiny Objects

 
   I just got back from the Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas, thanks to Intel and my participation in the Intel Insider program. It was a lot of fun and I saw lots of shiny objects and gadgets. I wrote a piece for TECH cocktail sharing the Best 13 at CES 2010. Of the list, I'd take every item on the list but if I had to pick the one I would probably purchase first, I would probably look into the new Sprint Overdrive Mobile 3G/4G hotspot made by Sierra Wireless. It leverages the Clearwire WiMax network to take advantage of the 4G unlimited speeds.I was at the Baltimore WiMax launch so I am looking forward to getting one of these devices to take advantage of it.

If I had to find the coolest gadget, it was probably the Alioscopy 3DTV at the Intel booth as it did not require 3D glasses to view in 3D. Though it has some restrictions on the content that can be turned into 3D it was a pretty impressive device. It was by far the most interesting 3D TV I saw because it was the only TV that was in 3D with the use of glasses. Check out this video of the 3DTV at the Intel booth.

Goodbye Aol. Hello Entrepreneurship In 2010!

This year my New Year's resolution is to be bold and what better way to do that than to start the year off by leaving the solid paycheck, benefits and comfort of a job at Aol. Today is my last day as an Aol employee as I have decided to move on to pursue some of my own entrepreneurial endeavors. It has been just over 3 years since I joined Aol to help bring some "Web 2.0 & social media" perspective and expertise to the Aol team. In Internet years that is about 10 years. My first task was to join the product development team responsible for the myAOL triple threat including a personalized homepage, a feed reader with bookmarking and an innovate recommendation engine. We then went on to launch it in 28+ countries before it turned one. More recently with the launch of AIM Lifestream I saw about 18 months of planning and strategy come to fruition which included work on AIM buddyupdates and the acquisition of SocialThing. I have racked up a lot of airline miles bouncing between DC and the West Coast. It has been a good run and a great learning experience working in a large organization and I have met so many great people along the way. I am proud of our accomplishments at Aol. As anyone who has ever worked at a large company can attest, it is not easy to launch a product in a big organization and I did it a few times in just three years. 

What will I be doing?