Thau: OpenWave built the first mobile browser 10 years too early
Kevin Thau · 20VC: Why VC Is A Game of Maximising Serendipity, How VCs Can Characterise Their Approach To Working & Product Lessons from Jack Dorsey & Sonos' John MacFarlane with Kevin Thau, General Partner @ Spark Capital · Jan 3, 2018 · at 8:30
Kevin Thau, General Partner at Spark Capital, reflects on his time at OpenWave to illustrate how premature market timing can ruin venture-backed technology companies.
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“OpenWave, and we created the first mobile browser, and really we're selling the promise of the mobile internet. Well, that was a company that got a lot of hype at the time, but the market for, you know, true mobile data and mobile internet didn't come till much, much later. It came like 10 years later, and OpenWave had already boomed and busted by the time the market was there.”
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