Author, Investor, Speaker, Mentor
It’s all about the mackerel. In the American prison system, prisoners use packages of mackerel as a medium of exchange because 1) the supply is inherently limited because prisoners can only buy 14 “macks” per week, and 2) no one wants to eat it. In other words, prisoners collectively decided to use a useless item … Continue reading Bye Bye Bitcoin Bubble
I read Nathan Heller’s latest New Yorker piece, “Bay Watched,” with great interest: http://nyr.kr/17s8pwi Heller writes about the “new” entrepreneurial culture of San Francisco, incorporating interviews with friends like Ben Casnocha, Tyler Willis, Hunter Walk, and more. Heller, who grew up in San Francisco, returns to his home town to examine the results of the … Continue reading San Francisco’s New (Old) Entrepreneurial Culture
It’s fashionable these days to lament the fact that Silicon Valley doesn’t think big. Instead, entrepreneurs are focused on building apps that will experience explosive growth and be sold for a billion dollars before ever having to discover a business model (sound familiar?). I was at the 40th birthday party of one of my friends, … Continue reading Stop thinking big and start thinking small
Of course there’s a social media bubble. All over the map, everyone ranging from seed-stage investors to the public markets are paying inflated prices for social media assets. But while the current frenzy is a bubble, it doesn’t even come close to the magnitude and madness of the Dot-Com bubble. Back in those days, “eyeballs” … Continue reading Is There A Social Media Bubble?
I’ve been saying quite a bit privately, but I think it’s time to say it publicly: If you are an entrepreneur, raise money now. It’s never easy to raise money. People who say, “It’s easy to raise money,” usually neglect to mention the second half of the sentence, which is “if you are in a … Continue reading Raise Money Now!
My recent post on the diatom bloom in the startup ecosystem prompted calls for me to dig deeper and provide more data. Far be it from me to disappoint! Chris Tacy asked, are we seeing too many startups? It’s a loaded question, but a good one. My instinctive reaction is that it’s always good to … Continue reading Can We Ever Have Too Many Startups?
You can think of the startup ecosystem as a food chain, with different species fulfilling different ecological niches. Angel Investors feed on tiny early-stage deals, while VCs gobble up bigger deals. Private equity, corporate buyers, and the public markets make up the higher reaches of the chain. What we’re going through now is the equivalent … Continue reading The Diatom Bloom in Investing
It’s not nice to say “I told you so,” but I told you so. The housing bubble is bursting with a vengeance, even in the Bay Area. Almost 50% of home sales are from forclosures, up from 10% last year. Last month 47.6 percent of all homes that resold in the Bay Area had been … Continue reading Almost 50% of Bay Area home sales are foreclosures
My first set of questions and answers are now up on AskTheHarvardMBA.com. Here’s a quick preview: Should an aspiring entrepreneur take a part-time job? The danger in keeping your job, or taking a part-time job, is that you’ll end up neglecting your startup, but in my experience, an aspiring entrepreneur who can’t maintain his or … Continue reading 3 Questions, 3 Answers on AskTheHarvardMBA.com