Found: Om

The 1st Year is the Hardest

Om reflects on his induction into the 'non-stop startup life' of a founder

By Carleen Hawn, July 10, 2007 —  0 Comments

Just in case you missed it: On July 5, GigaOM celebrated its 1st Birthday. In Om’s humble tribute to his first 365 days as an entrepreneur, Found|READ’s indefatigable leader and muse reflected on his biggest lesson of all: that the work of a founder is non-stop; “no pauses, no breaks, no time to stop and smell the roses.” As Om now knows, a founder’s life is CONTINUE READING

Beware of Big Brother

Why startups should reconsider taking funds from a big industry peer

By Om Malik, May 14, 2007 —  2 Comments

Start-ups backed by industry peers almost never work out. The latest example being U3, a start-up that was pushing the concept of running applications off a USB flash drive. U3 was co-promoted by M-Sytems and Sandisk. CONTINUE READING

Knowing When to 'Whack It'!

Sometimes you gotta give up on an idea that ain't working

By Om Malik, April 26, 2007 —  14 Comments

The Sopranos in its last season is boring, and long in the tooth, and well has lost some of its edge. Paisans with prostrate problems, mobsters with mental disorders and Prozac-dependency, and pneumatic Russian blondes are now shticks for a show that was once must-see-TV. Watching a scene in the latest episode, when Tony started thinking of his youth when Paulie was cool I realized how trite and Hollywood-esque the show had become. It prompted me to ask myself: why is it so hard to recognize that an idea is no longer good? And when we do, why is it so hard to kill it? Why, against our better judgment, do we persist in spending precious creative and material resources CONTINUE READING

Introducing Found|READ

By Om Malik, April 13, 2007 —  54 Comments

Many of us in the reporting business, convince ourselves that we can do a better job than folks we typically write about, a malady that is often experienced during the boom years, at least in Silicon Valley. Like others, I had my visions of grandeur. Talk about being delusional, for the differential between theory and practice is that between Roger Clemens and a 12-year-old pitching in the little league games. CONTINUE READING