Living in Silicon Valley really distorts one’s perspective of technology. I was reminded of this from two recent incidents.

The first reminder was a travel conference that I attended recently. Of the 2000 attendees, it seemed that I was the only one that was astounded that there was no Internet access at the conference. Evidently, it is possible to have a conference without the Internet. Who knew?

The second reminder was a news article on broadband acceptance in Iowa. Iowa has made great progress in getting basic broadband accessible to 95% of the state’s population. Even with this large buildout, 45% are not interested in getting broadband. Even more interesting is that 31% of the population did not have a computer at all.

Today’s mobile tech quiz question: How much does it cost to license a closed mobile OS? According to sources at Microsoft, it costs OEMs $15/device to use their new Windows Mobile 7 OS. This person does his/her best to explain that $15/device is much cheaper than Android open source model, but it sounds a little desperate. The bigger question is why publish this info. There are only a limited number of phone manufactures in the world. Why not talk directly to them about it? What is the point of sharing this info with the tech world? Strange marketing indeed! 

Read about a brilliant way to combine location-based apps and customer rewards and brand marketing. Yesterday, Loopt and Virgin America rewarded users who checked in at the SF or Cancun International Airports between the hours of 11AM to 3PM PST with 2 for 1 tickets to Cancun. The only problem was that I did not hear about it until it was far to late. Bummer!

In a few hours, the SoC Summit in Taipei, Taiwan will turn to the topic of combining Android will SoC (Systems on a Chip). The conference will be providing up-to-date info on this important area of device design. It will also give manufacturers a better understanding of where the mobile phone market is currently and will be heading in the next year. The one this that I expect this summit to highlight is how rapidly the mobile industry is changing and the growth opportunities that are available to all players in the industry.

Hope to see you at the SoC Summit!

I recently returned from a trip to NYC. The trip went well and included a bit of networking with the local Silicon Alley community. The nice part about plane travel is that during some legs of the trip, you are forced to disconnect from the Internet and get info the old fashion way, by reading paper docs.

While reading through a few mags, I read a great article that directly answered some issues that have been plaguing some local startup founders that I know. If founders get only one thing out of the article by Jeffrey Bussgang titled “The Insider’s Guide to Venture Capital Financing“, they should get this: know your numbers cold.

You are talking to numbers guys and asking for their money. They may not be able to tell if you are an expert on tech since that is not their strength, but they will be able to tell if you are an expert on your numbers. If you are not, why would they want to invest with someone who does not understand the importance of numbers in business?

If you can’t understand or learn your numbers cold, you MUST bring in a partner that does and can present this critical part of your pitch to the investors.