Philippe Matthews Show Guru Advice, Author Reviews, Tech Reviews, Entertainment News

For the entrepreneur, creative capital can be the catalyst to compel investors to sign on earlier in the start-up process. In 2006, after designing products and brands for other companies for 12 years under ASTRO Studios (my design firm), I teamed up with some outstanding business partners and spun-off a separate, product producing, direct-to-consumer brand of premium video gaming products called ASTRO Gaming

If you are like me, sometimes I am so busy trying to catch up, stay even, or take the lead that I lose perspective. When things are going well, I am on top of the world.

No matter how great, it won't sell itself.

Mobile devices have come a long way in the last few years, but big advancements are coming soon. Next time you glance at your Android device or iPhone, pause for a moment and think about how far smartphones have come in the last few years

Is there anyone outside of your company challenging you to grow yourself and your business? The "Master Mind Group" I am in is celebrating its 15th anniversary this year

This evening, hours after Megaupload was busted by federal authorities, Anonymous began a massive retaliatory attack that forced the websites of the Justice Department, the U.S.

He's got funds and a name like a digital era supervillain--and the vanity plates to match on his turbo Benzo. But can the hefty dual citizen of Germany and Finland move fast and furiously enough to evade the law? Kim Dotcom is a hard man to reach.

Apple has demonstrated again and again its ability to create and reinvent content marketplaces by designing irresistible devices and platforms--will educational content be its next conquest? When I was in college 10 years ago, my biology textbook was a $300, four-pound monstrosity with a shiny CD-ROM shrink-wrapped to the front.

At a Hewlett Packard event in late October, company suits showed off the latest HP tablet: the Slate 2. The second version of the Slate 500, HP's Slate 2 is a thick, Windows 7-based device targeting the enterprise that comes with a stylus and starts at $699. It might be hard for consumers to imagine buying this tablet over the best-selling iPad 2, which starts at just $499.

They're affordable, full of start-up geeks like you, and way cooler than any office you could afford. Ready to get out of the basement and into a real office? Before you strike out on your own and get locked into a lease, consider a coworking space.

Shopping anywhere can make consumers lonely, because they keep going from online to offline searching for the same thing--relevancy. Offline offers a different reality than online and vice versa.

As technology generates more transparency, consumers will hold businesses to higher standards, with no room for flimflammery or deceit. Being proactively trustworthy requires you to watch out for your customer’s interest even when your customer isn’t paying attention. This past Christmas season Amazon stole business from brick-and-mortar retailers with its free Price Check app for iPhone and Android.

Everyone has a success story and a failure story.

Caterina Fake, Chip Conley, Dan Ariely, Susan Gregg Koger, and others on their biggest--and most brilliant--mistakes. Success is never inevitable: Seemingly smart decisions often turn out to be disastrous, and sometimes what appear to be the worst decisions turn out to be pivotal to eventual success.

Great companies use this approach to cut their cost per acquired customer in half and generate a positive return. Can it work for you too? A financial services client of ours is spending several million dollars per year on marketing to their customers.