{"id":518858,"date":"2010-04-07T06:20:21","date_gmt":"2010-04-07T10:20:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.xconomy.com\/?p=72242"},"modified":"2010-04-07T06:20:21","modified_gmt":"2010-04-07T10:20:21","slug":"big-ideas-need-work-amazon-isn%e2%80%99t-too-late-in-mobile-apps-and-more-from-vc-tom-huseby","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/518858","title":{"rendered":"Big Ideas Need Work, Amazon Isn\u2019t Too Late in Mobile Apps, and More from VC Tom Huseby"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Mobile<\/a>, VC<\/a>, trends<\/a><\/div>\n

\t\t\"Tom<\/a>
\n\t\tGregory T. Huang wrote:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Breakthrough ideas and management \u201cdream teams\u201d by themselves are overblown. What really counts is hard work and the ability to adapt. That\u2019s one of my main takeaways after chatting with Seattle-area venture capitalist and mobile guru Tom Huseby. He also shed new light on the dynamics between Apple, Google, and Amazon in the mobile sector—and explained why he has had to raise his game as the playing field in mobile has become more level.<\/p>\n

Huseby, a prominent VC with SeaPoint Ventures<\/a>, Oak Investment Partners, Covera Ventures, and Voyager Capital, spoke with me recently on a wide range of topics—sort of a state of the union for the Seattle-area mobile industry. First, I wanted to get his take on the importance of thinking big and working on breakthrough ideas—ones that could truly change the world—as that was the theme of our Xconomy Forum<\/a> last week.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of the big ideas are just negative energy,\u201d Huseby said—until they get worked on. That\u2019s because most entrepreneurs tend to sit on big ideas; either they don\u2019t tell people about them for fear of revealing too much to competitors, or they\u2019re too busy with other things. \u201cA good idea that isn’t acted on is just negative energy—a sinkhole—it sits there and draws your attention,\u201d he said. He stressed that the key is what people do<\/em> with their ideas. \u201cYou can make a bad idea happen if you work on it. Good ideas won’t work if you don’t work on them. At big companies, they usually don’t work,\u201d he said. \u201cGood ideas have to morph.\u201d<\/p>\n

In particular, to make a breakthrough in the mobile sector, he said, \u201cyou have to have an almost unbelievable value proposition.\u201d As for Web companies, Huseby said giants like Google and Amazon are examples of \u201cmassive vision,\u201d followed up with smart execution and thorough analyses of what it would take to carve out large slices of their respective markets in search and retail.<\/p>\n

Given all that Apple, and now Google, have done to change the landscape of mobile software with their applications platforms, I asked whether Amazon is getting into the game too late. Huseby doesn\u2019t think so.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can’t be too late to an app store,\u201d he said. \u201cYou could be too late to a music store. [iTunes] gave Apple a huge advantage on the app business.\u201d But right now, mobile applications are still restricted to specific devices, which means there is opportunity for more big players. Huseby added that he thinks the Amazon Kindle e-book reader will eventually carry voice signals using a microphone attachment; even though he said Amazon\u2019s revenue from that would be zero, I took this to mean the move could make the firm more competitive in the mobile sector.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Huseby thinks Google\u2019s Nexus One phone was a bit of a surprise, because Google could make so much money from its Android operating system and running its services on other companies\u2019 phones—why bother having its own phone? He thinks the answer probably has …Next Page »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

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Mobile, VC, trends Gregory T. Huang wrote: Breakthrough ideas and management \u201cdream teams\u201d by themselves are overblown. What really counts is hard work and the ability to adapt. That\u2019s one of my main takeaways after chatting with Seattle-area venture capitalist and mobile guru Tom Huseby. He also shed new light on the dynamics between Apple, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1747,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,7,10,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-518858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mobile","category-news","category-software","category-wireless"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1747"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=518858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518858\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=518858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=518858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=518858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}