Author, Investor, Speaker, Mentor
I love Boston. I lived there for five of the best years of my life, when I was working at D. E. Shaw & Co., and then when I attended Harvard Business School. If anyone asks, I always tell them, “if Boston had the same weather and career opportunities for me as Silicon Valley, I’d … Continue reading Silicon Valley > Boston (The Data)
My friend and HBS classmate, Lindsey Mead Russell wrote a great article for the Princeton Alumni Weekly last year. In it, she meditates on one of the fundamental dilemmas that faces women: Job or Family? Lindsey followed a path that many would envy or consider the ideal–she worked part-time managing recruiting for a private equity … Continue reading How Do *You* Choose Between Job and Family?
If you liked my recent post on How To Avoid Getting Fired From Your Own Company, you’ll love my upcoming panel on founder/CEO succession issues, What Color Is Your Parachute? The good folks at Orrick and I have assembled an All-Star panel with three founders and three VCs for a frank discussion of when/why/how founders … Continue reading Free Event Thursday: Founder/CEO Succession
(apologies for startup fans–the following blog post is all about basketball stat-geekery) One of the major revolutions in basketball fandom over the past decade is the rise of advanced statistical analysis, similar to Sabermetrics for baseball. Thanks to folks like John Hollinger and David Berri, NBA fans now have a plethora of stats. My personal … Continue reading Why Not Combine WP48 and Usage Rate?
I went to Ravi Belani and Michelle Gonzalez‘s Influencer Series event tonight. I’m a bit too tired to write a formal review, so I thought I’d just share my raw notes and quotes (taken with my iPod Touch) and let you judge for yourself if the event was worthwhile: Consumer electronics is swinging away from … Continue reading Influencer Series Notes
The realization struck me as I was listening to Darryl “DMC” McDaniels of Run-DMC tell the story of when he sat in his hotel room while on tour and thought about killing himself. McDaniels thought back over his life and his runaway success and realized that he still wasn’t happy. Many of us go through … Continue reading The Reason The Rich & Famous Commit Suicide
This morning, my friend Erica Douglass wrote about why Silicon Valley is broken, and why she moved away: This conversation was a microcosm of the reason I left the Valley. No doubt, this guy had a good-looking website, and two co-founders who had signed on to the idea. That part was great. The part I … Continue reading Silicon Valley Posers And The Inevitable Bust
Every personal productivity guru preaches the importance of goal-setting. But of you’re like me, your problem isn’t a lack of goals. It’s a lack of time. I often feel like I have too many goals, all clamoring for my time. Setting all those goals becomes counterproductive. Rather than wasting my time drawing up yet more … Continue reading Time Allocation > Goal Setting
Over my vacation, I read “Game Change,” which tells the story of the 2008 US presidential election. Not only was it a compelling page-turner (it really was an incredible narrative), the book is also instructive in how important private strength is to public success. Of the main characters in the drama–Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and … Continue reading Self Awareness & The 2008 Election
In case you didn’t catch this last week, the Wall Street Journal ran a great interview with Bill Draper, one of the fathers of the VC industry (and incidentally, the father of VC Tim Draper). Here is some of the wit and wisdom of this living legend: On working with entrepreneurs: “When an entrepreneur has … Continue reading The Wisdom of Bill Draper