Confession time. Wheel in the single light bulb recreating a scene from “Deutschland 83.” Let’s add an interrogator to left of the bulb who is gifted in non-verbal communications. OK, I’m ready. I had never voted in a public election — casting my ballot to get Stanley Telson elected as our fifth grade homeroom rep …more
In this era of mega venture rounds — think SoftBank feeding $535M to DoorDash to make sure you can receive that dish of soft-serve yogurt without ever leaving your lazy boy chair — one can become cavalier about a startup securing a measly $100M in venture funding. Fortune even wrote a story in August called …more
OK, it’s more than a few. This question came my way last week: Here goes. I moved to Silicon Valley in 1981 two years out of college. You’ve heard the saying, “It’s better to be lucky than good?” I was lucky in the sense that I moved to Silicon Valley because of the vibrant culture, …more
I wrote an opinion piece in VentureBeat a few years back titled, “Attention U.S. Startups, Don’t Ignore China.” The punchline — Virtually every startup should have a China strategy. Fast forwarding to today, startups in the U.S. are starting to back off in China. This assessment isn’t based on data; it’s more anecdotal and a …more
I’ve written several posts on how organizations select communication services. Even after 30+ years, I’m still thinking there’s got to be a better way. In cases in which Procurement leads the charge, the process feels more like a tussle than a process of getting to know each other. Speaking of a better way, …more
Steve Jursa (EVP in the San Jose office) recently attended a presentation called “The Mind of the Engineer” by Aspen Core, the company that owns EE Times. They surveyed over 4,000 engineers around the world to better understand their day-to-day jobs, how they gather information and what their guilty pleasure on Netflix is (just kidding …more
Implementing a media relations campaign in Japan is not an exercise for the squeamish. It requires on-the-ground experience and relationships. In the U.S., PR cold-calls journalists on a daily basis. In comparison, PR in Japan would rarely reach out to a journalist without a proper introduction. I remember years ago working with our Japan …more
I made my first trip overseas in 1994, supporting press conferences in Tokyo, Seoul, Hong Kong, Taipei and Singapore in one week. Talk about a PR hustle. As you might expect, things didn’t always go according to plan. At our first press conference in Tokyo, no one had bothered to mention that the format …more
Virtually all innovation traces back to the semiconductor industry and the roughly $463B that will be spent on chips this year. It stands to reason that the trade publications serving such a critical industry and one perpetually in the throes of change would thrive. Yet, like their trade brothers and the overall media …more
