Block That Cliche
People have told me that I speak in aphorisms. Maybe it’s a compliment, or maybe it means that, like a VC, I speak in cliches.

That’s why I found this article so entertaining–The Smithsonian tackles classic business cliches that involve the animal kingdom, and show why they’re dead wrong.
http://www.smithsonianmag.si.edu/smithsonian/issues05/nov05/last.html

Here’s a good excerpt to whet your appetite:
“You don’t want to be an 800-pound gorilla. No such animal has ever existed. The average big daddy silverback tops out at about half that weight. And gorillas are not predators, but vegans, with an almost unlimited appetite for fruit and bamboo shoots. I once worked on a TV documentary about lowland gorillas; on an average day the dramatic episodes consisted of the alpha male passing gas, picking his nose and yawning. Then he did the same things, the other way around. Over and over. This is probably not the image a hard-charging executive wants to present to the public.”