Author, Investor, Speaker, Mentor
Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir recently published their book, “Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much.” I even wrote about them when I pointed out that busy professionals, like the working poor, face a scarcity–but of time, rather than money. http://bit.ly/1g1Pnod I wish I could say that I’ve already read their book, but alas, … Continue reading Escaping the Scarcity Trap
The great Eric Barker does a fantastic job of illuminating the difference between management and leadership in his post, “Qualities Of A Leader”:http://bit.ly/1bnDaYc Eric quotes theorist John Kotter on the fundamental distinction: “Management controls people by pushing them in the right direction; leadership motivates them by satisfying basic human needs.” For entrepreneurs, the implications aren’t … Continue reading Leadership is Emotional, Not Rational
The startup world is full of people with strong opinions. We value people who can articulate a clear point of view. Yet the constant focus on advocacy can lead us down argumentative ratholes, and cause us to miss the contributions of the less assertive. Rather than focusing on simply arguing for our own point of … Continue reading The Power of Assertive Inquiry
One of the reasons that VCs and angel investors often get swelled heads is the fact that people kiss our asses all day. It feels good to have smart, talented people speak glowingly of your wisdom and plead for your help. But the dark side of having money is the doubt it creates. If entrepreneurs … Continue reading The problem with having money
I’m always proud of my two alma maters, but I’m especially proud when they lead the way toward change in the world. For example, Stanford recently became the first college with an African-American Athletic Director, head football coach, and head men’s basketball coach…a fact which is even more powerful because nobody at Stanford bothered to … Continue reading Change is Hard: Women at HBS
The myth of Silicon Valley is that it is a perfect meritocracy where things like wealth and class are irrelevant. The truth is that while Silicon Valley and the startup world are better than most other institutions, wealth and class still play a role. The vast majority of entrepreneurs are young, well-educated, well-off men, who … Continue reading Wealth, Class, and the Startup World
One of the things I do to maintain some semblance of familiarity with modern technology is to read articles on Hacker News. This recent piece about the programming language Go is a good example:http://bit.ly/GzvGai I will almost certainly never find myself programming in Go. Heck, the last time I took a CS class, I was … Continue reading Do you think less is more, or less is less?
I enjoyed Bilal Zuberi’s post on avoiding a lazy VC/CEO relationship”:http://bit.ly/16ZJEZf Bilal’s point is that entrepreneurs are just as much to blame for the fact that many VCs don’t add that much value to their investments. I think it’s useful to introduce an analogy that might resonate with young entrepreneurs, so that they can have … Continue reading Entrepreneurs Need To Take The Initiative In The Investor Relationship
I am a product guy, dating back to my days as a design student at Stanford. I’ve been a fan of Clay Christensen ever since “The Innovator’s Dilemma,” and even interviewed him for the student newspaper when I was a Harvard Business School student. Which is why I’m shocked that I hadn’t heard of Clay’s … Continue reading What job are people hiring your product to do?
I enjoyed reading Natalie Downe’s post detailing the story of her startup, Lanyrd: http://bit.ly/18wX4zs It’s a great story and (spoiler alert!) it has a happy ending. But the part I’d like to focus on is her advice on how to make sure you’re doing your startup for the right reasons: Build something you care about.Build … Continue reading What Should I Build?