enrico mattiazzi

The Professor’s point of view always helps to take a step back and think about hard facts rather than details and noise.

Loewy believed that consumers are torn between a curiosity about new things and a fear of anything too new. As a result, they gravitate to products that are bold, but instantly comprehensible. 

Loewy called his grand theory “Most Advanced Yet Acceptable”—MAYA

Kevin Slavin makes some interesting questions in his article. 

Placing human activity at the center of the design process – as opposed to a set of behaviors that must be controlled or accommodated – has become an instinctive and mandatory process. 

...the Amazon move: absolute obfuscation of labor and logistics behind a friendly buy button. The experience for a Sprig customer is super convenient, almost magical; the experience for a chef or courier…? We don’t know. We don’t get to know. We’re just here to press the button.

But as designers construct these systems, what of the systems that interact with those systems? What about systems of local commerce and the civic engagement that is predicated upon it? Or the systems of unions that emerged after generations of labor struggles? Or the systems that provided compensation for some reasonable number of artists? When designers center around the user, where do the needs and desires of the other actors in the system go? 

Every year I try to look behind me to remember all the things I went through and I make my own resolutions.

Here at United Ventures we decided to make the effort of summing up all the most relevant trends of 2015 in order to share with you our perspective. The ambition we have is to provide some interesting data to build strong investments’ thesis for 2016.

The most interesting thing of the 3+ hours of the latest Apple’s event was, without any doubt, the iPhone subscription plan.  I wanted to write something about it but then I read this article by Benedict Evans.... so I decided to make a brief summary instead.

1 - unbundling the installments from the contract has often meant that the upfront cost of the phone goes away. Shifting to a zero up front cost model makes the phone itself look cheaper than before, even if the actual cost of ownership is unchanged.

2 - The obvious change is that if you're on, say, AT&T's Next plan, your next 'free' smartphone might be an iPhone or an Android - with Apple's plan it'll be an iPhone. So where for a mobile network these installment + rapid upgrade plans are a way to stop you churning off the network, for Apple they're a way to stop you churning from iPhone to Android.

3 - Apple is explicitly entering the secondary market.

4 - this is another case of Apple moving into mobile operators' territory. 

Our latest investment, FACEIT!

They turn video games into something even more addictive. The platform organizes and manages e-sports competitions and tournaments leveraging on the ambition of players who are awarded with prizes and eternal glory.

"They’re hoping to bring design forward to strategy, because it’s such an essential tool to create competitive advantage these days" says Lunar president John Edson.

WOW. I was not expecting anything like this from McKinsey. I believe they'll might use Lunar's proposition to get a foot in the door with new, young companies where their enterprise approach might not be enough/appreciated.

Whenever leadership is concerned there are plenty of examples about orchestras and sport teams.

I love basketball and technologies (among many other things) and I really like fred-wilson view on how contributing to a team/company effort.

One thing I know for sure is that those who advise and invest in startups cannot and should not meddle in the day to day decision making. It’s harmful and hurtful to the startup and those that lead it. So operating at a higher level, helping to set the framework for decision making and then sitting down and watching the game be played, is certainly the way to go. Of course that doesn’t mean abdicating the responsibility to have the right team on the court at the right time. 

I like LoopPay approach.

If the paying experience require to swipe/tap something, I don't mind if it is a credit card or a phone. Apple Pay is not disrupting the payment, it is just another way to do it. If you are not disrupting anything I don't see the need to build new POS or get new equipments. 

LoopPay makes your phone communicate with regular POS (around 90% of them) and it allows me to chose how to pay. Fair enough.

Uber keeps raising money.

Facing overwhelming demand from institutional investors, Uber has expanded its Series E round of venture financing by $1 billion... bringing the total capacity for the round up to $2.8 billion.