Once in a while, a seminal startup (let’s call them “category busters”) would appear to magically birth a whole new market category while engendering a legion of copycats and derivatives companies across multiple adjacent markets. The category busters often do so with some form of meteoric rise – some do so with incredible adoption metrics […]

Patrick Vlaskovits (Go Falcons!) was over at MuckerLab the other day talking to our companies about customer development which reminded me of the most important (only?) skill I took away in business school – segmentation. While “strategy” is the most over used word in business, “segmentation” is probably the most underutilized. It’s certainly not as

Before Eric Ries, and even before Clay Christensen, there was Geoffrey Moore. Moore’s Crossing the Chasm was a seminal book at the time it was published in 1991, and should still be one of the very first book any entrepreneur reads. Back in those days, before the “internet” became an ubiquitous medium, the majority of

Was feeling a bit left out by all the smart and daring people putting forth their forecasts for the coming year, so I decided to join the party. While most people are afraid of being wrong; we, at MuckerLab, are not afraid of being right. In no particular order, here are MuckerLab’s fearless predictions for

Since the founding of Facebook and Twitter; pundits, VC’s and entrepreneurs have been predicting the second tidal wave innovation to transform the e-commerce business as we had known it. “Social Commerce” was supposed to be the biggest thing since Jeff Bezos turned the web from a replacement for brochures & collaterals into a virtual store

Below is an editorial I wrote for MediaPost a few weeks back.  It was published today. It may be premature to talk about the “second act” of a company that just went public a few weeks ago and is the “fastest growing company in history.” But the data supports the theory that Groupon’s core local

Mobile Payment is quickly becoming as useless of a term as Cloud Computing. Companies across a wide spectrum of use cases and industries are quickly re-positioning themselves as a player in “mobile payments” in order to (re)capture some pixie dust. What exactly is mobile payments? Is it payment using a phone? Is it payments without

I did a lot of complaining last week on the hurdles of selling products and services to SMB’s. Typically, I hate people who spent most of their days trying to tell entrepreneurs why their business won’t work (“cause I’m so smart”) rather than working with entrepreneur on calibrating and sometime overhauling their strategies (“honest but

We are proud to announce our partnership with the team at Dreamhost. Together, we strive make it easier, faster; and dare we say it, cheaper to turn your ideas into reality. DreamHost, a global full-service web hosting company, has today announced its partnership with Los Angeles-based start-up accelerator, MuckerLab.  DreamHost will serve as the official

By my count, around 100 startups focused on local were launched between Q2 and Q3 of 2011. there are mobile apps, deals/offers companies, social relationship management dashboards, ad networks, merchant acquiring/ processing solutions and more. (Although the slow down in the last 30-60 days has been seriously alarming). By 2013, I doubt no more than