Apparently still alive and well in some circles (agree with below that most uses are financial/credit/legacy apps). I worked at one of the largest developers of ISP modem infrastructure in the late 90's called Ascend. Company was purchased by Lucent. Just a few years ago I ran into a friend still with the company and mentioned that, globally, carriers were still installing new dial-up infrastructure to the tune of a few $100-million annually. Amazing.
This unfairly generalizes and vilifies early stage investors. There are plenty of proper, professional VC's who are sufficiently patient and not focused on faux success. Remember, a typical VC fund has a life of 7-10 years. That's plenty of time to develop a company properly and focus on the things which build REAL value.
Perhaps the devil is in the details here, but OP implies that he took accelerator/angel money -- that's potentially a very different thing than a professionally managed institutional investment.
Dealers are still integral to the makers (faux) success.
The manufacturers take revenue on shipments to the dealer, not the sell-thru to the end consumer. This allows them to stuff the channel to hit their numbers. Of course, this becomes unsustainable once the effectiveness of discounts & incentives hits the wall and they can't clear the inventory in time for the next stuff job. See 2008 Big-3 explosion, the dealer channel had YEARS worth of inventory of some makes/models.
It's very fair to assume this is a fundamental reason the manufacturers will defend the dealer network to the death. Without it, sales numbers would, by necessity, become a reflection of true demand... Short-term thinking for sure, but very hard to unwind.
That implies the same people who architected this are responsible for the damage control... highly doubtful. The press releases & language reeks of one thing... Lawyers.
I still use it (was originally called paymybills.com) before the Paytrust/Intuit absorption. It's a great service, and well worth the fee of $11/month.
Honestly, I'm surprised we haven't seen more a modern mobile/tablet version of Paytrust come around.
working on one now. http://cloudbill.com - would love you to sign up for the beta and would love to chat in the meantime if you have feedback for what you'd like to see :)
Happy to help, have used Paytrust for something like ~7 years can share plenty of positives & opportunities for improvement. Just signed-up @ your landing page, marty@ feel free to contact.
Jobs was analytical? Brilliant, sure. But, perhaps more instinctual than analytical. Witness the endless tales of him not asking for input, not listening, not taking the advice of (undoubtedly analytical) others. Add killer instinct & stubbornness and you have something entirely different than either of the CEO's at breakfast.
Why so defensive? This post was great and merely pointed out stylistic differences between "sales-y" and "tech-y" leaders. I don't think anyone suggested "corning the market" with ANY skill.
For the record, great salespeople are very often also "deeply analytical." In fact, having hired & managed lot's of salespeople, I'd suggest listening, observation & analytical skills are the differentiating factor between the good and the great.
PS - the unfair judgements regarding arrogance is a two-way street.
Of course it's a problem. That's what happens when you create expectations that 100% of fully funded projects are going to go on to completion (leaving along the murky middle ground of completed but sucking terribly.)
VC's, who are professional investors and certainly better versed than the general public on how to triage projects going sideways probably have ~5% of projects totally fail, where the product never reaches production.
Kickstarter needs to manage expectations and have a solid policy on how to deal with situations like this... else, they'll be the next failure.
