By JOHN KOMINICKI // Two tiny Silicon Valley companies have vowed to tame the Earth’s surging levels of atmospheric methane, one of the most potent greenhouse gases out there and 28 times more likely to cause global warming than carbon dioxide. Their goal: An all-vegetable burger that looks, cooks and tastes like ground meat. Sort of. Now, vegetarian takeout may not sound like much of a contribution to the clean air effort, what with the…
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By J.L. KOMINICKI // Can you build a $500 million brand on flash alone? If you’re Justin Bieber, apparently so. Otherwise you need a product, and a pretty good one at that. Still, flash can give you a powerful head start, as we’re learning from the incredible success of Dollar Shave Club, the California-based men’s grooming platform that completed a $75 million raise this week, a short nine months after closing on a $50 million…
By J.L. KOMINICKI Those of us trying to scale a business got a free lesson from McDonald’s this week on the dangers of getting too big to pivot. I know, I know, we should all have such problems. But the tighter your niche, the quicker the potential of getting to a size at which market changes become a very big deal. Which is where Mickey D’s has found itself. McDonald’s, as you know, was built…
By JOHN L. KOMINICKI // With Father’s Day nigh, the Web and social media are downright distended, digitally speaking, with gift ideas for the favorite progenitor-figure in your life. No one has better stock than The New York Times’ T Store, which assaults every holiday like it’s 1940 France, with a hull-down, shock and awe deployment of ads, native content and printed supplements that tout rare coins and advertising ephemera, cuff links, even a personalized…