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Paul Graham: The advantages of doing things in software on a single device are so great that everything that can get turned into software will. So for the next couple years, a good recipe for startups will be to look around you for things that people haven't realized yet can be made unnecessary by a tablet app.

In 1938 Buckminster Fuller coined the term ephemeralization to describe the increasing tendency of physical machinery to be replaced by what we would now call software. The reason tablets are going to take over the world is ... they have this force behind them. The iPhone and the iPad have effectively drilled a hole that will allow ephemeralization to flow into a lot of new areas. No one who has studied the history of technology would want to underestimate the power of that force.

At startup #4 we developed a product, and we went to a trade show. We had a willing buyer who wanted a quantity of tens of thousands to equip all of the ministry employees in their country. We had a manufacturing facility producing hundreds per week and aching to ramp-up to thousands. What did the CEO / sales guy do? nothing. He didn't return the buyer's calls, didn't send 10 samples as promised in person (right in front of me), never had an explanation of why that sale wasn't happening, why we weren't signing a contract. What he did do was interrupt meetings with his mobile phone, make bad jokes, never write down what the founders agreed needed to be done; and he always asked when the next version of the product would be ready to sell. A business cannot exist with salespeople who neglect to take money from buyers for available merchandise. The sales guy was not listening to the market.