I checked my Google alerts today and found a nice Jangl nod from VOIP News top stories of the year and a VOIP Weblog mention in the retrospective on Q2 07. These got me thinking, it's been one hell of a year here at Jangl. Jangl really found itself this year, and that whole process was made possible by the rise of open social networks and flurry (not the company) of competitors. There's nothing better for a company than competition and new opportunity in the marketplace -- with that in mind, thanks to facebook, Opensocial and the J-clones.
In the last quarter in particular, we're finding our voice in the marketplace, recognizing our differences and playing to our strengths in deployment and customer type. And at year's end, the team here is really trying to capitalize on all of the product incarnations and partner deployments...and that means putting the 2007 success into perspective. We're not running around telling each other how great we are, and, personally, I'm not one for navel-gazing or regret.
All of that said, Kudos to Michael and Ben for recognizing that they needed distribution, audience share and a team from the new media sector in order to be different and create a long-lasting business. They took a whole year to put the building blocks in place, and they've successfully set the company up for a big shift in 2008. As an entrepreneur, it's hard to take the long view, and, as their first media-centric hire, I have seen all of the challenges of that they've had to overcome as the team around them slowly awoke to the larger vision and opportunity they first saw twelve months ago. It's been a long hard slog for those guys, but, when I sit and talk with journalists and analysts in telco and media, they're really getting Jangl's big idea. It's exciting. I'm really looking forward to 2008.
Anyway, as promised, I'm throwing stones at Lexus minivans. I've seen Edmunds and everyone else throw stones at these frigging suburban utility vehicles, but I'd never had the pleasure of driving one until my mother -in-law gave me her keys this last week. Not only was the turning radius that of a tank -- the power steering was worse than riding a donkey up the cliffs of Santorini... which is where I first realized that "donkey punch" was actually a non-sexual term for using brute strength to turn and steer an ass. No kidding. Little creepy men with huge hands beat the shit out of a poor tiny donkey that labored under my 6'4"/260lbs. Amazing when you think of it, but I digress. Not really. I think I'd rather drive a donkey than another one of those plastic tonka toys that Lexus sells almost exclusively to real estate agents.
Up next: TVGuide... it's their friggin name, and, you guest it, TVGuide's onscreen tv guide is the worst thing I've ever used.
I recently started using a premium email to phone service provider http://www.enotifyme.com - I can receive and flag urgent emails to forward to me as a text message or call me on a landline phone and playback the message by text to speech. Works smoothly and it's a hosted service so no setup on my end...
Posted by: Daniel | October 16, 2008 at 11:06 AM