Welcome to the professional site for Marc Colando, serial entrepreneur in Seattle, WA
Google’s brain teaser interview questions have gotten lots of press in the blogosphere lately. But mid- to high-level hires are almost certainly better off building a network to hiring advocates within Google to land a job with the search giant. Inspirational reading for the brainy geeks who still love the Google challenges is Micromotives and Macrobehavior by Thomas C. Schelling.
Big exit events can be a great reality-check for entrepreneurs. I personally have paid a price for believing unrealistic rumors about how well an entrepreneur should do when they exit. This post offers a semi-educated guess about who makes what in the Google-AdMob acquisition, with exit percentages that can be adjusted or scaled to fit any company as it raises valuation and investment rounds.
AdMob deserves all the kudos they’re getting for their acquisition by Google. They beat significant odds — a great idea or product isn’t enough — to get funded in the first place back in late-2006. This post looks at the Series A funding odds a startup typically faces. Next week, I’ll try to guess how the big Google paycheck works out for the startup AdMob team.
Socialnomics by long-time friend and client Erik Qualman is a great overview of where social media is headed. Erik packs the book with loads of data and relevant case studies that can help social media entrepreneurs make the pitch that social networks aren’t just a fad.
I like to think every entrepreneur has a bit of attention deficit disorder. I certainly do. It’s what keep me excited about new innovations and trying to change the world. But harnessing this energy is key to converting potential to actual. Three particularly good blog posts are pinned to my wall as a reminder of how to focus.
A former freelance designer to my first startuphad the seeds of an idea. What if a bit torrent TV download/streaming site got mashed-up with social networking? Find shows you like, share them with friends and discover new stuff from people like you.
Good idea. You can see the intro video on YouTube.
I took the idea through to reality with legal and content partners and the core technical team. The site launched to rave reviews and attracted more than one million unique users in the first 30-days after launch. TIOTI was acquired in late-2008.
I’ve always been a huge music fan. I mean, it has to count for something that my library has LCD Soundsystem, Too $hort, Arvo Part and Katy Perry (among others.) Reverb® is a framework that attempts to keep downloadable content free to users, profitable for content owners and powerful for brands. The Reverb architecture inject real-time suppressible advertising into content streams to enable what we called a “freemium” business model back in 2001/2.
Glue™ and ChannelCart™ were the first products to go all the through to issuance by the US Patent Office.
The patent covers “Systems and Methods for Extracting and Adapting Data” from disparate Websites. For curious fellow entrepreneurs, the time from filing to issuance was about 4 years, mid-2005 to mid-2009.
Good user experience doesn’t happen by accident. It’s the product of careful thought about how an online or mobile experience looks from the user perspective.
I’ve created dozens of diagrams like the one shown here for client engagements of all shapes and sizes. Additional samples are available upon request.
Online banking + payroll services + services that vary depending on your industry, all in one Web application. Landscapers,for example, get a calendar and weather widget that lets them plan crew deployments. Restaurants get an alert widget that shows them when someone reviews them, or a competitor, online.
Heady stuff for 2001 … 9+ years ago now!