High Tech in the Hub

There is a truism about all disruptive innovations: when they are first introduced to the market, they almost always appear like their predecessor technology. It is only after a disruptive innovation has fully matured and customers are familiar with it that we see its true form. It is then that

In spite of the fact the Red Sox are playing like they're in spring training, I'm glad to have baseball back in my life. My interest in baseball and technology have been intertwined since I wrote my first serious software at age 11: a simulator to predict how Babe Ruth

I re-listened to Reid Hoffman’s Masters of Scale episode 4 (Imperfect Is Perfect) on the walk from the office to North Station last night. This episode highlights the criticality of putting your product in front of customers early and often. The topic is an obvious one for Reid, who

I was on Cape Cod with my family when my CEO called to tell me the time had come to make a decision. In the anatomy of a deal, there are many points at which you can safely safely hit the eject button, but this perhaps was the most important

A year ago I made my Last Post to my blog. Over the previous eight years I had made 325 posts on topics that ranged from the cloud to product management to software development. But last March I decided to make it official: I was tapped out. I’m sure

Over the years I’ve observed one common trait across all high performance teams: they have high context. Context is one of those traits that you know when you see it. A high context team knows their customer, what problems they solve for them, how they use the product, what

After 8 years and 325 posts, Joe Kinsella has decided to hang up his blogging cleats and move on from High Tech in the Hub.

Last weekend I decided to add a webcam to my vacation house. I went to Best Buy thinking this would be an easy and inexpensive project, and found myself looking in the security camera section at prices that ranged from $170 (single Arlo camera) to $499 (four node Lorex system)

I received a back reference check this week from an entrepreneur looking to hire a former colleague of mine. I had many positive things to say about him: he was smart, analytic, had strong skills for the role, and very relevant experience. But I had one concern: he had a

It's official: Boston submitted a 218 page bid to be considered for Amazon's second headquarters. I'll confess to having mixed feelings from the start. On one hand, an Amazon headquarters with 50K new jobs would be transformative for the city. On the other hand, I'm not sure we're ready support

When I moved from Upstate New York to Boston after college I brought with me my passion for history. What follows is my personal historic walking tour of Boston, which I have given to friends and family who visit from out of town. This post has nothing to do with

Several years ago I invited a key champion at an early customer to go to lunch with me. This person was an IT director who always provided me good feedback on the early product I was building. While my company in those days had closed some early customers, we were

I’m a big fan of all things tech and Boston. So in a chocolate meets peanut butter moment, I decided to create my own personal Boston Nerd Tour. For out of towners, this will be an intro to Boston from the geek point of view. For locals, this is

I despise story points. Not dislike: despise. I’ve tried to like them, almost always driven an internal evangelist who’s convinced a team cannot truly adopt agile without story points. I’ve used story point poker, fibonacci sequences, and burndown charts in more teams than I care to admit.

Last summer over lunch with the CTO & co-founder of Care.com, Dave Krupinski, we got to talked about the challenge of managing new products innovation inside an existing growing business. Dave, a former colleague from Easel days, had done what every entrepreneur dreams of doing: building his idea into

I like to think you can simplify the building of products in our industry into the management of four things: people, projects, process and content. The people are the engineers, designers and product managers who produce the product. The projects are the initiatives being executed in support of the creation

The big news of the week is the massive DDoS attack against the US internet, which impacted several major cloud providers. The attack was reportedly executed by supporters of WikiLeaks in response to the government of Ecuador taking away Julian Assange's internet link. Yes, you read that right: our internet

Watching the election this year has been like passing a car crash on Route 93. I don’t want to slow down and look, but I can’t stop myself. It has been a year of political firsts: the first time a presidential candidate has singled out a religious group;

Last year on a long drive from New York, my wife and I found the Tech in Boston podcast. If you are in Boston technology and haven't listened to Dave Gerhardt's podcast, you are missing out on one of the best channels for startup shop talk in the area. At

I once tried recruiting an employee from a large tech company who had a great background but one noticeable flaw: he'd only worked in big companies. While this is usually a red flag for me, I thought it was worth a Hangout to see if he might have crossover potential.

I had a couple meetings with entrepreneurs this week, which I occasionally do as a pay-it-forward approach to the support I’ve received over the years. In both cases the hot topic on the entrepreneurs' minds was raising early stage venture capital. I always start by telling my story from

Last summer I did a blog post titled My Startup Anniversary: 3 Years In Blog Posts. The goal of the post was to provide a journey through my personal blog as written while starting and growing CloudHealth Technologies. I thought I'd update this post for my 4th year. And So

In April this year CloudHealth hosted a NewCo Boston presentation called Agility Experienced. Success Realized. Our VP of marketing had signed me up for the session, which I prompting forgot about until I had to scramble to figure out what to present the day before. Below are the slides, which

I sometimes hear the name of a new company and can’t help but appreciate its simplicity and power. For example: Cloudera, Docker, Pinterest, Uber. I like to think that these names came from an HBO Silicon Valley-esque vision quest by its founder, mushrooms optional of course. But in truth

If I were a large tech company that missed the disruption in the cloud, I’d be looking for a fast way to make my business relevant again. The obvious solution is to leverage my size and brand to launch new products that are valued by my customers. Unfortunately the