John McArthur’s New Venture Blog

A Google search on “Top 10″ will get you all kinds of interesting results.  When I did the search this afternoon, the first listing was “Top 10 Naked People on Google Earth.” Sorry, but I’m providing no hyperlink, and for the record, no, I did not go there.  Next is Time Magazine’s  50 Top 10 Lists for 2007, which shows a surprising lack of appreciation for symmetry.  Then comes The Late Show with David Letterman, which I thought should have come up higher on the list.  There’s also the Top 10 Dunks and Top 10 Women Drivers of the Year available courtesy of YouTube. I’m just going in order here.  No offense intended. 

For any startup or new technology, it’s difficult to get the door opened long enough to allow the first presentation of a product, company or concept to a potential customer or partner.  It’s not that customers don’t want to look at new stuff.  It’s just that there’s so much new stuff, and who’s got the time to look at everybody. So whether it’s analysts, or bloggers, or the press, it’s nice to have a little bit of focused attention on new companies and new technologies, and have them do some filtering.  Thus the creation of Top 10 lists that say, “Hey, pay attention to this.  It could be big.” (more…)

At the very kind invitation of my former IBM rep (I mean former as in two companies and 13 years ago, when I was an IT buyer spending multiple tens of millions of dollars on mainframe computers and storage each year and her youngest son wasn’t yet riding a bicycle, much less driving a car), I went to a seminar today hosted by Mainline.  I’ve been told Mainline is IBM’s largest value-added reseller.  I think it was someone at Mainline who told me that.  Anyway, the topic was VMWare’s Virtual Desktop. 

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By the title, you might be wondering how this post could be in keeping with the stated goal of this blog: to be “A business resource for entrepreneurs and inventors. ” But I thought it might be useful to prompt a discussion around the definition of an “analyst.” Perhaps more accurately, I should say “types” of analysts. The reason this is important is that, if you have an idea or an invention, and you decide to seek outside investment to build a company around your idea, at some point in the conversation you will be asked the question, “How big is the market for your solution?” So who do you ask? Sorry: “Whom do you ask?” The only logical answer, in my opinion, is a “market analyst.” By the way, that’s what I was for eleven years, so you need to consider that, when you evaluate the credibility of my statements.

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