From the VERGE – “Samsung’s big bet: put American software startups inside its most important hardware“. Some interesting tidbits from the article:
It’s part of a big bet by the South Korean company to move outside its comfort zone and allow American entrepreneurs deep inside its hardware.
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With GIC, Samsung is hoping to absorb some of the hacker agility found in Silicon Valley and New York. This year will be the crucial test for its ability to forge successful integrations between those worlds. Three startups it brought into the fold — SmartThings, LoopPay, and Pixie — will play critical roles across Samsung’s most important consumer categories: appliances, smartphones, and televisions.
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Eun lays out the two worlds he’s trying to bridge. At one extreme is hyper-precise manufacturing at massive scale with years of R&D and billions invested before the first chip or tablet rolls off the assembly line. The second is the “move fast and break things” mentality of small software startups.
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HACKER, MEET MANUFACTURER
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SAMSUNG SELLS TWO TVS EVERY SECOND
The Samsung Accelerator provides strategic capital, product support, and independence to seasoned entrepreneurs so they can build market-driven software and services. The Accelerator delivers the resources, autonomy, and inside track to Samsung decision-makers to help products achieve critical velocity, establish new markets, engage passionate users, and set the standard for technology-enabled experiences.
On the 28th they have an open source event – Open source, open data, open minds (for real estate/rent geeks, more about the lease).