NEW INC. MAGAZINE COLUMN FROM HOWARD TULLMAN

 

Xfinity Is Turning WiFi Into Home Security. ADT and Brinks Should Pay Attention

Disruptive innovation and competition can come from anyone and anywhere.

EXPERT OPINION BY HOWARD TULLMAN, GENERAL MANAGING PARTNER, G2T3V AND CHICAGO HIGH TECH INVESTORS @TULLMAN

Sep 22, 2026

Every time I pay a bill for my home security service, I find myself wondering exactly what the value is that I’m allegedly receiving. It’s been a few decades and there hasn’t been a single instance of activity—our pets don’t even trigger any alarms. I’m pretty sure we’re among the millions of families who’ve gone for months if not longer without ever even turning the systems on. We do replace the batteries in our smoke alarms on a regular basis, but they don’t really depend on paying Brinks or ADT in order to operate.

If my insurance company didn’t offer me some modest home insurance discount for having the service, I’m pretty sure we would have bagged the whole thing by now. I guess we’d keep the signs and window stickers, as those are probably the major deterrents in the whole deal. I’m sure there are folks who can recite hair-raising and instructive instances of the benefit of these services, but it’s certainly not me. It feels a little like buying flood insurance when you live in the middle of the desert, although with climate change these days, I guess even those folks can’t be sure of what’s coming down the pipe. They can be certain, however, that if they suffer a loss, their gigantic deductible will make sure that they feel some significant portion of the pain.

All of which brings me to a new offer by Xfinity that seems to raise a serious competitive threat to the firms protecting us against home invasions, break-ins and burglaries. It’s called Xfinity Shield, which is described as an “always-on” home protection and security platform. I want to give them immediate props for recognizing that we lazy civilians can’t really be trusted to turn our own systems on and off on a daily basis. Their new basic program is free and relies on your existing WiFi and certain other equipment in order to work. Don’t get me started on how often my WiFi and cable connections go down, but it happens more often than you’d expect.

In any event, while I often talk about the many benefits of riding someone else’s rails, which means to partner or rev share so you can utilize their existing channels and infrastructure in order to avoid the costs of building your own, it’s even smarter and cheaper to double down and add, extend or bolster your existing offerings and infrastructure to create new products and services that you can provide to your existing customer base. But the Shield service is a great example of another important competitive strategy which is moving into adjacent markets where there are substantial opportunities. Frankly, I would guess that the major security firms—even with the advent of Ring doorbells and similar offerings—wouldn’t ever have imagined that entities like Xfinity would move directly into their space.

The WiFi Shield service provides in-house movement alerts and nighttime monitoring without incremental hardware. The claim (which I’m not vouching for) is that enhancements to their WiFi services will detect changes in the radio frequency signals that are being constantly passed between their Gateway head device and WiFi-connected devices in the home and then send a signal to you through their phone app when there are unfamiliar or unexpected changes. As long as you sleep with your phone nearby, I guess this works if the notifications are audible, although the one thing I don’t love about my current system is the absolutely deafening sirens that go off inside and outside the house, which aren’t part of the basic Xfinity deal. Needless to say, for additional fees, there’s a full menu of additional equipment, cameras, services, and upcharges which will let you build a system that more closely resembles the typical home platforms and packages.

The simple morale of this whole story is that disruptive innovation and competition can come from anyone and anywhere including the players we regard as laggards and last generation performers who are stuck in the hardware business while software rules the world. But the Xfinity Shield is a very important example of how new technology and advanced software and signaling can take existing rails and connections and re-energize and update them to support and offer new competitive services at price points (including free) that will give the big guys in security like Brinks and ADT plenty of headaches beyond wondering about Ring and its doorbells.

 

GOLLUM J.

 

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Chat with me on SELFIE I get really busy, self absorbed and text messages pile up along with social media messages. On top of my message pile up, I have pages of journals, and digital notes of my plays and poetry and books like Dreams of a Used Pickup Truck - The struggle of Art, that I simply write down and find in various places. It’s hard to organize all this and create constantly. In the somewhat scary age of AI, I wonder do I want something to speak and answer like me and now it even uses my own voice to reply to fans. But it’s really handy and I cannot wait to explore the diary section since I love archiving everything… Chat with me selfie.com/jylbonaguro Create your profile, download the app

Dykes Doing CC Dirty

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 Watch the Kimmel Interview

SCUM OF THE EARTH

 

HOWARD TULLMAN JOINS LISA DENT ON WGN RADIO TO DISCUSS HIS INC. MAGAZINE ARTICLE ON SERIAL ENTREPRENEURS

 LISTEN TO THE SHOW HERE

LISTEN TO THE SHOW HERE

OUR OLDEST AND BEST FRIEND HAS PASSED AWAY - R.I.P. GERTIE TULLMAN

                                     R.I.P.

SHE WAS ALWAYS UP FOR A PARTY ... OR A MEAL.

NEW INC. MAGAZINE COLUMN FROM HOWARD TULLMAN

 

Successful Serial Entrepreneurs Share 4 Habits That Make Their Next Startup More Likely to Work

These aren’t innate attributes—they’re learned skills and boundaries.

EXPERT OPINION BY HOWARD TULLMAN, GENERAL MANAGING PARTNER, G2T3V AND CHICAGO HIGH TECH INVESTORS @TULLMAN

Sep 7, 2026

Having invested in several dozen startups over the last decade and read hundreds of business plans, I’ve been pitched by individuals with a broad range of experience and credentials, including some of the most interesting men and women who were previously successful entrepreneurs. These folks were anxiously getting ready to jump back on the merry-go-round and take another shot at the brass ring. Once you get the fever, it can be hard to get over the adrenaline and hurry-up disease and go back to trying to find a day job and live a relatively normal life. Interestingly enough, the one thing that’s almost immediately obvious in these cases is that—regardless of the degree of their prior financial rewards—they have little or no interest in funding their next new ventures with their own funds. It’s the rarest kind of new business builder and true believer who’s interested in putting his or her butt on the line twice.

But, say what you will, trying again is a lot better and healthier choice than retiring or thinking that you’re qualified and temperamentally fit to become a venture capitalist or professor of whatever. Entrepreneurs are congenital optimists who fall in love with every new idea they see and are often miserable investors, while the best VCs are grim and constipated naysayers who reject 95 percent of the deals they are shown. They say “No” all day long with big smiles on their faces and send you off with a hearty pat on the back. 

Many college profs teaching entrepreneurship are either indifferent and burned-out oldsters who have a thick enough skin to be told by their students that they don’t “get it” or don’t know what the new A.I. world is all about. Or they’re folks whose past ventures almost made it across the finish line but never put enough cash in their pockets to free them from needing a paycheck. They eventually figure out that teaching a bunch of kids is easier and less time-consuming than working a 9-to-5 job with a boss who’s paying attention and paying the bills. So, they spend their days swanning about among a host of bureaucrats who are largely paid to not upset the apple cart, offend the student snowflakes and their parents, or fail to placate the omnipresent corporate donors who pay for their buildings and labs.

When you run into successful serial entrepreneurs and have a chance to examine what makes them successful, there are a few characteristics that they all seem to share. These aren’t innate attributes—they’re learned skills and boundaries.

I’m looking at a prime example now, which is a new business launching a juvenile stationary “bike” called Tovie that helps struggling kids manage various nervous system conditions and sensitivities. The entrepreneurs behind Tovie, Arnav Dalmia and Shivani Jain, were two of the founders of Cubii, a pedal-driven, under-desk, elliptical trainer for adults that attracted nearly 1 million users after a record-breaking Kickstarter launch. Full disclosure: My venture firm invested early in Cubii more than 12 years ago, and the company had a very successful and lucrative $100 million exit in 2020 that made us a lot of money.

Tovie is a smart product. It plays entirely to the strengths and experience of the enhanced management team, and they’re managing the launch, development and funding steps in a manner which worked extremely well for them in the past–walking before they run and iterating all along the way. This is exactly what I’ve seen work successfully for a number of successful serial entrepreneurs in a wide variety of markets.

First, the smartest entrepreneurs recognize that, while many of their skills and strengths are readily transferable and applicable in diverse cases and circumstances, this isn’t the case for accumulated knowledge, experience and expertise in any given area or vertical. Even the best entrepreneurs fail regularly when they embark on new adventures outside of their own skill sets and knowledge–building new businesses really isn’t a great place in the new digital and A.I.-infused marketplaces for on-the-job training–there’s just not enough time or tolerance for anything other than forward motion. Pick your spots carefully, stick to your knitting, and go deep with what you know. Or, simply stated, if you want to beat Jannik Sinner, don’t play tennis. 

Second, the ones who are going to get things done and done well admit and acknowledge from the start what they don’t know. They make it their business to find and onboard the talent, expertise and experience required for their offering. In the case of Tovie, the requisite science needs, educational components, and occupational therapy training weren’t as simple as developing and providing a cost-effective exercise solution for a sedentary and deskbound working population. Mechanical skills were certainly within their prior wheelhouse, and the new prototype is thoughtfully and beautifully built with smooth and curved edges, etc. But the science, technology, programming and gamification that drives Tovie—and which is so critical to making the device responsive to and therapeutic for a specific segment and selection of conditions, needs and sensitivities—were almost exclusively the responsibility of teams of children’s health care experts, clinicians, therapists and educators. Parents were also recruited and incorporated into the design and development process. This was especially valuable and insightful because Tovie is actually designed to be a double blessing—calmer and regulated kids make for calmer and happier parents whose anxiety and angst can otherwise be easily communicated to their children.

Third, it’s critical to understand and control the initial scope of your venture. There are zillions of childhood ailments and thousands of kids in need of cures. But you can’t try to be all things to all people and solve the entire world’s problems.

The Tovie team isn’t trying to eat the whole elephant in one bite–they’re entirely focused on the science of regulation–and they’re proving out the premise that measured and controlled movement helps the nervous system self-regulate. Specifically, steering and pedaling are motions and movements that have calming effect. Their pedaling-to-play approach, which turns screen time into active play time, helps kids feel safe, focused, and regulated—even if they don’t exactly understand the methodology involved. And their systems are loaded with parental controls and tools to adjust, limit, and direct their children’s activities at all times. The Cubii venture made clear that there’s always iterative upside and brand and product expansion opportunities once you’ve established a basic product and a solid foundation.

Finally, most people fail to appreciate just how risk-averse true entrepreneurs are and how careful and conservative they are with other people’s money. This is why the Tovie team is so smart to again be pursuing the Kickstarter route, which worked so well for them in the past and which offers a built-in, step-by-step pre-sale measurement tool to get a handle on likely interest and demand before you bet the ranch. New business builders will all tell you that everything costs more and takes longer than you expect, and the only cardinal sin is to run out of money.

Repeaters are also remarkably grateful because they know how lucky they were to have succeeded in the past. This is the non-paralyzing upside of impostor syndrome. They know that they may have worked their butts off and established an entirely new product category, but it was still a major gamble. and there were plenty of bumps and ups and downs on the road to success, as well as folks providing guidance and helping hands along the way. No one does anything material and important all by themselves.