Bill Bing

I’m already on the record with a position that, broadly speaking, lawmakers and regulators don’t know what they’re doing. But that doesn’t keep them from making rules that businesses have to contend with. Two weeks ago, I attended Cryptolina, a Bitcoin-focused conference that drew speakers and attendees from around the nation including former Director of the U.S. Mint Edmund Moy, and fourth generation venture capitalist Adam Draper. Figuring out how to deal with regulation was a recurring theme at the conference, and several different tactics were discussed. At one panel, a lawyer focused on Bitcoin-related matters advised entrepreneurs who...

What does a jewelry company have to do with Bitcoin? If you think about the industry – a store in the early days looks the same as it does today. Precious metals and gems, display cases and a person to assist you in selecting an item. Technology and innovation is how a jeweler must differentiate itself, and evolve to meet the needs of customers. Executives at Wilmington-based REEDS Jewelers Bradley Zimmer and Mitch Kahn gave us a handful of examples of this in practice, and with context over time. It all helps to explain why in June it became...

The ExitEvent team is reporting live from the Cryptolina Bitcoin Expo in downtown Raleigh. Read our preview of the event here. Here are excerpts from today’s first panel discussion on Bitcoin’s role in aiding developing nations and their people. Speakers: Greg Simon, Moderator / Elizabeth Ploshay, Bitcoin Foundation / Matthew Keneham, Bitcoin Society / Sean Dennis, Ribbit.me Greg Simon, originally from Nebraska, spent 12 years in banking but left in 2012 due to personal issues with industry. Switched to Bitcoin, what he calls the “right team”, to develop a solution to some of those problems. Involved with a number...

ask? Because most managers don’t get compensated for performance, and if they make an unpopular investment that doesn’t work out, they get fired. This 2 by 2 grid should explain their thought process. The point of the chart is that most investment managers would prefer to follow the crowd and look for brand name investments they won’t get blamed for if things go wrong, rather than try to pursue opportunities that they think will produce the best returns. Put another way, they’re incentivized to avoid personal downside, not pursue performance upside. Also relevant to the discussion is the fact...

Dear Retailers and Marketers, Please take note of the following and realize that I’m not alone in these sentiments… I hate your banner ads. Targeted, untargeted, personalized, timely, generic-it doesn’t matter. This is all garbage spam that I only click on by accident and immediately close the tab in the event that I do. I hate your emails- daily, weekly and monthly newsletters; surveys, deals, offers; spam related to my past purchases or items in an abandoned shopping cart. Leave me alone. You are not winning my loyalty by deluging me with messages. Rather, you are actually making me regret...

Amongst the constant barrage of link-bait and content marketing articles (aka “5 ways successful ____ do ___” aka SPAM) that make up my daily Twitter feed, I came across a link from Peter Diamandis, one of the founders of Singularity University (I attended SU’s 2010 graduate studies program). To summarize, Space X just announced and showed off its new spaceship, and Peter was able to go on board and hang out with Space X founder Elon Musk. The spaceship is unreal in its design and appearance—it truly is something out of a sci-fi film. In his post Peter writes...

Over the last ~20 years, we have seen a huge wave of innovation that has transitioned just about everything from analog to digital. Music, newspapers, furniture, pets, relationships, businesses and more now exist in digital format, and are marketed and sold online. I believe the majority of this shift has already occurred and we are currently in the midst of the next macro phase—a transition from the idea of asset ownership to a virtual, on-demand model. Why buy extra servers when you may only need them for a few hours a week? Why buy albums, or even individual songs,...

Over the last couple of weeks a new meme courtesy of Andreessen Horowitz venture capitalist Chris Dixon has emerged: the full stack startup. Some may view it is a new name for a slight variant on the idea of vertical integration, but there is a significant difference between the two concepts. Full stack startups (FSS) are a new breed of company that don’t attempt to correct a particular problem within a larger process or industry. Instead, they reimagine and redesign a process altogether. To be sure, there is an element of vertical integration within many of these ideas, as...