Jason D. Rowley

Category: Blog

  • Semantics for Startups, or, Unpacking “X for Y” Company Descriptions

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    Jason D. Rowley
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    Venture capitalists and certain technology publications love to sneer at derivative product ideas. Startup founders peddling goofy “Tinder for Cats” ideas become the butt of cruel jokes. And like all things, when it comes to joking about derivative startup ideas, there is an app for that: ItsThisForThat. Joking aside, explaining startup ideas by comparing them…

  • From Ride Sharing to the “In Real Life Transport Protocol”

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    Jason D. Rowley
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    Abstract/TLDR: The biggest opportunity for companies like Uber and Lyft is to expand their transportation services to third parties and diversify the type of objects they convey from one place to another. In doing so, the metaphor we use to describe these companies can shift from platforms to protocols. In short, these companies are building what…

  • Cloaking The Swarm

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    Jason D. Rowley
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    Analyzing the role encryption and meshnet communication platforms play in post-Arab Spring protest movements: case analyses of Hong Kong & Ferguson, MO in 2014. Note: This piece was first submitted as a paper for an academic project. I plan to expand parts of it into a much longer article. It was originally published online on…

  • A Few Things I Learned in 2014

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    Jason D. Rowley
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    Note: This is a cross-post from my Medium blog, originally published in January 2015. I included it here on my website to kick off the new blog. I’d originally intended to share this list of bullet points with a friend. Some are general, some are personal. A few are quite revealing, but I believe that…