Author, Investor, Speaker, Mentor
I enjoyed reading a recent Fortune article that provided a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the judges at a Rice University startup competition. It didn’t hurt that my old friend Robert Winter was prominently mentioned! http://bit.ly/UffMcc However, I think it’s hard for a reporter to truly understand the dynamics of a judging team. I’ve been a competition … Continue reading What’s It Like To Judge A Pitch Competition
Humans love to be surprised (as long as the surprise isn’t a nasty shock). As thinking creatures, our ability to develop an accurate working model of the world depends on our ability to spot the unexpected. Surprise is a great mechanism for rewarding that ability. Wharton conducted a study of viral videos. They had research … Continue reading The Power of Surprise
I had breakfast with a young entrepreneur who was upset that he hadn’t won a hackathon, despite finishing an original, working product with a high degree of difficulty. I asked him to describe what his team had built. “We built an app that lets you annotate equations. Clicking on any of the factors in the … Continue reading How To Win A Hackathon (or an Oscar)
I’ve really been enjoying the pitch videos that BetaBeat has made available as part of its “The Pitch” webisodes. From what I can tell, “The Pitch” applies the classic webisode model (short I just watched a video that showed the founders of Silver Living, a super-Yelp for retirement homes, pitch to Steve Schlafman of Lerer … Continue reading BetaBeat’s “The Pitch” web series is smart marketing that should cloned for Silicon Valley