Author, Investor, Speaker, Mentor
Charter schools are about as good on average as public schools. But because they can fail, they provide opportunity for improvement that public schools don’t. Without failure, it’s much harder to generate improvement. The Freakonomics podcast recently featured this telling analogy: What if restaurants were run like public schools? Imagine if you were required to … Continue reading Failure = Improvement
The world is full of jerks. But it must be some kind of innate instinct, because there is no upside to being a jerk.One of the first questions I ever responded to on Quora asked if being nice was an advantage for VCs. The consensus was that success trumps affability, and that entrepreneurs would rather … Continue reading There Is No Upside In Being A Jerk
As an entrepreneur or a company, you should appreciate the underrated power of quitting. While we often glorify a never-say-die attitude, and celebrate the entrepreneurs who build great companies despite near-universal criticism, extreme persistence comes at a price. I caught up with a friend yesterday, a high-profile entrepreneur who will remain nameless (I forgot to … Continue reading Little Bets and the Power Of Quitting
The thought of the day, triggered by this Ben Casnocha post that quotes a book review by Eric Falkenstein: He states that the key factor in one’s happiness–not experiential happiness, but ‘remembered happiness’ that is more correlated with ‘life satisfaction’, see Kahneman on the difference–is ‘perceived earned success’. This is the willingness and ability to … Continue reading Happiness Cannot Be Given, It Must Be Earned
“If you decide that you’re going to do only the things you know are going to work, you’re going to leave a lot of opportunity on the table. Companies are rarely criticized for the things that they failed to try. But they are, many times, criticized for things they tried and failed at.” –Jeff Bezos