Jan Bosch
Most of the companies I’ve worked with tended to plateau at different sizes. At that point, their growth tapered off and typically there was a general concern in the company that we had hit the peak of the business. Although there are many reasons why a company may plateau, there are three patterns I’ve seen … Read more
One of the largest frustrations of startups trying to work with big enterprises is the enormous amount of false positives. Many startup founders have fallen into the trap of getting promising feedback from individuals from large companies and believe that they’re close to getting a deal in place. This positive feedback may continue for a … Read more
Entrepreneurs are, by definition, irrational optimists who have strong confidence in what they’re pursuing. Even if all of us can have bouts of doubt, entrepreneurs are managing these doubts and focus on executing on their convictions. The risk, however, is that you start to believe in your own convictions so hard that you fail to … Read more
My grandparents from my maternal side were farmers and had cows. Their mature milking cows were put in fields with lots of lush grass and could eat what they wanted. The young cows that hadn’t yet been bred were put in the fields that had already been cleaned out by the milking cows or on … Read more
Over thirty years ago, I started my first company. Since then, I’ve started more companies, acted as an angel investor in more than ten ventures and as a board member or advisor in several others, and interacted with numerous founders and entrepreneurs. In addition, I’ve collaborated with intrapreneurs inside large organizations trying to get innovations … Read more
After decades in the industry, I have yet to meet the first company that doesn’t claim they’re customer centric. There remains a widely held belief that if we focus all our energy on the customer and build what the customer tells us to build, we’re going to continue to be successful. Still, the quote from … Read more
Embedded systems, by their definition, contain mechanical and electronic components and, through that, interact with the real world. Many of these systems may cause harm to humans if they act in erroneous ways. This is, of course, the case for aeronautical and automotive applications as well as for medical equipment. But also most systems that … Read more
In the online world of software as a service (SaaS), A/B testing in some form is used continuously for virtually any type of development. For an A/B test, two alternative realizations of a feature or some functionality are developed and presented to a test group (alternative B) and a control group (alternative A). Some outcome … Read more
A few decades ago, the first reports were published on software errors resulting in financial losses exceeding 1 billion euros. Since then, many more accounts of software errors costing hundreds of millions or more have been in the news. The response in the larger community was twofold. First, test the heck out of every piece … Read more
Digitalization is concerned with the three key enabling digital technologies software, data and artificial intelligence. These build on each other as it typically is software that generates the data from systems in the field and it’s this data (preferably labeled) that forms the basis for machine learning and deep learning. The software-intensive systems industry, as … Read more
