January 2012
48 posts
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2011 Goodbye, Farewell and Amen
2012 Peace, Happiness and Joy
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December 2011
82 posts
“There are now — for the first time in three decades — more young women in school...”
– http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/29/business/young-women-go-back-to-school-instead-of-work.html?src=me&ref=general (via mattmireles)
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“David!, You can do it wrong forever or right once!”
– My 3rd grade teacher Mrs. Cook.
The best advice I ever had. Thanks. Mrs. Cook!
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Should Startups Focus on Profitability or Not? →
Most companies (98+%) in the world (even tech startups) should be very profit focused.
Short answer: HELL YEAH!
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Strong Opinions @marksbirch: Twitter is the... →
marksbirch:
You could easily and credibly state that this was the year of Twitter. No story even comes close to the impact of Twitter had this year. While many stories captured our attention this year, from the epic product failures to boardroom shenanigans to IPO shadiness to game changing product releases,…
A good read
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“I don’t have ten million dollars in the bank and melting servers. I can’t...”
– Andre Torrez on why you should have a transparent business, and other learnings from MLKSHK.
notes on “the object of the game” (via amexopenforum)
Amen!
If you had a defibrillator implanted in your chest, would you want to see its source code? ow.ly/8dqSL
via @CompSciFact
Foursquare's identity crisis. →
An interesting op-ed. Not sure if it is saying foursquare has a branding problem, market-fit problem, unclear future direction, or about the extinction of less useful features?
Side note, I don’t use foursquare other than to try out new features and see if I can foretell where the company is going. Path seems to get the timeline idea better but it is way to much work to use.
I have not...
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Startup Living: Kool-Aid vs. Lemonade →
mattskilly:
What separates an employee from a founder? Is it the amount of hours one works in a week or is it how much a person cares about their work/business? My answer would be both. There’s no doubt about it that a lot of people work a ton of hours and they may even enjoy their work, but how many people…
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When a startup is more about the startup bus than starting a company that sells a product to paying customers, it’s a bubble.
frankly speaking: Making Goals More Manageable →
benwilkinson:
Setting goals this time of year has become pretty cliche. That said, very few people who don’t set goals for themselves rarely do anything of significance in their lives. With that in mind, I think we can all agree that it’s important to set some sort of goal for yourself, no matter how big or…
Follow this man. Follow him now.
BRYCE DOT VC: I Believe in Ghosts →
brycedotvc:
One of the more thought provoking pieces I’ve read recently comes from Scott Adams, of Dilbert fame, who sketches out a methodology for shaping a digital representation of ourselves:
Suppose you wanted to create your own digital ghost to live for eternity in the Internet and maybe do some…
Wow a really great post.
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“There are not enough hours in the day to generate a profit, if you are not...”
How do you give the boss feedback without sounding...
A good 30-second MBA (@30secmba) from my friend David Selinger (@daveselinger) the CEO of rich relevance.
http://www.30secondmba.com/question/how-do-you-give-boss-feedback-without-sounding-suck?video_id=3c1640a4393c9 via @fastcompany
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The Minimal Viable Team
This was one of Inc. better reads; the Minimal Viable Team.
The phrase minimum viable product’ has become part of the start-up lexicon.Its a useful term for that significant milestone in the start-up life cycle—when an entrepreneur has built a stripped-down most basic version of his or her product so he can begin to get customers and feedback.
The only two real problems that I find with the...
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Goals
From the time I was very young goal setting has been a part of my life. Thinking about the future and planning is part of the culture here. Good planning is also in the DNA of successful companies big and small. So I am taking the next 5 days and clearing my head and my desk of work and work related stuff. A clean slate if you will. To write down and clarify my ONE goal for 2012.
I set one, just...
Information Arbitrage: Message to founders: Always... →
informationarbitrage:
In Wall Street parlance, “the order” is the opportunity to do a transaction. You, the salesperson, are telling the customer in no uncertain terms that you want to do a deal given a particular set of parameters. It is part and parcel of the culture that you can (and should) educate, compare…
Continuations: Negotiating a Term Sheet →
continuations:
There have been many great posts about the various terms that go into a termsheet for a venture investment. As a result entrepreneurs are much better informed which is a good thing all around. I am still puzzled at times though at the approaches taken by both VC firms and entrepreneurs when it…
is it a startup company or a pokemon character? →
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Why Techstars →
lukehristou:
I’ve seen a lot of mainstream articles lately referencing TechStars in comparison to other startup accelerators that honestly don’t really tell me anything about anything. Funding statistics and blah blah.
But I have also read and seen so many great blog posts shared about Techstars…
Still watching for the long term success of Techstars based on exits, but I admit I like...
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Build a 10x team, not on hiring 10x people →
Google, Facebook, Twitter, Groupon, etc. are paying to keep teams together and working on the things they’ve developed expertise in. Discover the talent and build a team that produces 10X then give them the resources of a bigger company. $10 million for four people over 4 years is worth it for many acquirers, because the incoming team has to be marginally better and the result will be exponential...
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I am now quite sure that the future user interface will not be apples cocoa touch but apples Siri. It’s only a matter of time before the Siri API makes it all possible. Meanwhile everyone else is still trying to copy cocoa. It is now time to start watching the siri market and looking for disruption points. Because Siri is where the next wave of startups will emerge from. Siri IS the...
“One month later, the project would close with $942,578 pledged by 13,512 backers...”
– Such an amazing article. Gabe me goosebumps.
Kickstarter all the way!
Kickstarted: How one company is revolutionizing product development | The Verge (via david-noel)
Another awesome article about Kickstarter. (via siminoff)
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Why a pricing strategy of the low cost provider... →
“When Toyota first entered the US market, they made the most basic car possible and offered it at a low price. It was the smallest car offered – the mini of minis – and it was cheap. When Toyota raised their prices, they didn’t just take this same car and slap a new price tag on it. That little car got a reputation for being more reliable than any other car. The people driving those bigger...
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Drop Your Mask and Be Authentic. →
…we uncovered seven interdependent metaphors, four of which are outlined in this article: fire (representing ambition), snowball (accountability), mask (authenticity), and movie (self-reflection).
As familiar as these may sound, they contain useful insights about how leaders can become more effective. And their familiarity means you can recall them easily—which is helpful when trying to...
With all the social media tools available why can’t I get to know who you are before we meet?
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http://cdixon.org/2011/12/21/whats-the-job-users-hi... →
One of Clay Christensen’s favorite concepts is that instead of dividing your customers into segments and asking which features each segment would like, you should think about what “job” the customers are “hiring” you product to perform. Here is an example:
If pizza has a radius Z and a depth A, it's volume...
Math nerd jokes. Love them
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Angel vs VC investing by the numbers →
Angels invest $20 billion per year.
vs.
VCs invest $30 billion per year
Angels invested in 60,000 businesses
vs.
VCs in 4,000 businesses.
Angels invest in 10 percent of deals considered.
vs.
VCs invest in 1 percent.
Angels expect a 26 percent return
vs.
VCs expect a 25 percent average annual return.
Angels spend 3.5 months conducting due diligence
vs.
VCs 5 months...
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Commitment from investor #1. Who’s next on board? (merry Christmas to me)
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MongoDB in Numbers: Foursquare, Wordnik, Disney →
nosql:
Derrick Harris:
If you’re wondering what kind of performance and scalability requirements forced these companies to MongoDB, and then to customize it so heavily, here are some statistics:
Foursquare: 15 million users;
8 production MongoDB clusters;
8 shards of user data;
12 shards of check-in data;
~250 updates per second on user database, with maximum output of 46 MBps;
~80...
“There’s no bubble 2.0. And while I’m at it: there was never a bubble 1.0. Let me...”
– Facebook Shareholders Suck…(Or, Why This Is Not Bubble 2.0) | TechCrunch (via rafer)
“People try to get offline as much as they can, but I enjoy flipping through...”
– On Sundays, Foursquare Co-founder Goes Online, Then Out for a Walk - NYTimes.com
ditto. (via bijan)
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