Disqus - Latest Comments for jongos

Re: Creating a new generation of technology entrepreneurs Part 1: Changing the Value Proposition for Urban Youth

jongos — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 22:40:14 -0000

@Mike Great comments. I agree that there need to be more examples, but I don't think that means 'making examples' out of people. I mean there are a lot of successful Asians (of all types but particularly Indians) in the tech industry and rarely do I see them being presented in a way that spotlights their race or ethnicity over their ideas. As the founder of my own tech startup, I don't particularly want to be introduce as 'the black guy'. IT should be more organic. This was something Corvida, Angela and some other people touched upon last year at SXSW. I think in the long term, truly successful black and minority entrepreneurs will need to remove race and culture from the picture, and let that take a backseat to the stuff they are doing. No offense to 'Black'Web2.0, of course. =)

Re: Black Media, Instead of Mimicking Blogs Why not just Acquire?

jongos — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 22:30:26 -0000

@elbert, I agree to an extent. I do think a lot of these media companies undervalue what makes a good blog good. Sometimes there's just a certain 'it' factor of a personality or writer, sometimes they build credibility that's hard to recreate, and sometimes they just have more passion and tenacity than someone who's hired to do something similar.

It's the person (or people), their ideas, and their passion that make a good product good, not just the technology or content alone and certainly not just a solid business plan alone. In my mind, all those are the things are worth paying for.

Re: Black Media, Instead of Mimicking Blogs Why not just Acquire?

jongos — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 22:21:04 -0000

Technology or IP Asset acquisitions in this arena are definitely lacking. Black or Urban corporates (or whatever) not only have trouble when it comes to M&A from upcoming bloggers and startups, but they also don't even bother attempting to acquire startups period. Why leave the Twitters and the Facebooks of the world to the usual suspects, there are a lot of interesting things that could be done with properties like that, if the right people make the right offers early enough. Not enough risk taking if you ask me.

At the same time, I think most of the black tech startups that have been attempted (*cough*BlockSavvy*cough*) fail because they try so hard to authentically 'black', 'urban' or 'hip'. You know why people use web apps? Because they're useful, not because of the 'swagger' of whoever made them.

Re: Hahlo or Twitterific To Follow Summize Acquisition

jongos — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 17:45:32 -0000

@Matt I see where you're coming from but have you seen the Mobile version of Twitter? It's awful! I think eventually they'll have to offer something native and if they were to buy Twitterrific, it'd be a great way to do that quickly. I don't think it would hurt their relationship with developers too much, I mean look at Pownce, just because they have their desktop version of PownceAIR, doesn't mean PownceMonkey doesn't kick its ass! I think there's room in the market for both.

Re: Google Just Bought Jaiku

jongos — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 12:40:08 -0000

Once again late to the party but too drunk to care.