Great piece on Demand Media in Wired

Wow. I wasn't even aware that such a company existed. Sounds so obvious in retrospect.

The process is automatic, random, and endless, a Stirling engine fueled by the world’s unceasing desire to know how to grow avocado trees from pits or how to throw an Atlanta Braves-themed birthday party. It is a database of human needs, and if you haven’t stumbled on a Demand video or article yet, you soon will. By next summer, according to founder and CEO Richard Rosenblatt, Demand will be publishing 1 million items a month, the equivalent of four English-language Wikipedias a year.

Read the full article

Getting to Product/Market fit

I came across an old post from Marc Andreseen where he addresses the topic of product/market fit. The part that stroke me as both obvious and eye-opening was the following:

The only thing that matters is getting to product/market fit.

Product/market fit means being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market.

You can always feel when product/market fit isn't happening. The customers aren't quite getting value out of the product, word of mouth isn't spreading, usage isn't growing that fast, press reviews are kind of "blah", the sales cycle takes too long, and lots of deals never close.

And you can always feel product/market fit when it's happening. The customers are buying the product just as fast as you can make it -- or usage is growing just as fast as you can add more servers. Money from customers is piling up in your company checking account. You're hiring sales and customer support staff as fast as you can. Reporters are calling because they've heard about your hot new thing and they want to talk to you about it. You start getting entrepreneur of the year awards from Harvard Business School. Investment bankers are staking out your house. You could eat free for a year at Buck's.

A wide range of Apple Computers

While at the computer museum in La Défense last week I got to see a wide range of Apple computers.

My father bought a Macintosh while I was still a child. It was the first computer I ever used and my father taught me to draw amazing things with it (perfectly round things or even a formula 1 car !). At the expo I also got to see a Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh, the first one I had ever seen.

Overall I was glad to see that many old Apple computers. Now I need to find the one my father had when I was I child, it might well become a collector some day!