Author, Investor, Speaker, Mentor
I’ve written before about ageism in Silicon Valley: It’s a well-known fact that VCs prefer to fund young founders. In its summary of a recent Churchill Club talk by Vinod Khosla, Business Insider writes: “[Khosla] explained that the older a person gets, the longer it takes to adjust to change. People over 45, he says, … Continue reading Take Heart, Over-30 Entrepreneurs
A quick follow-up to my post on trust from earlier this morning. Nick O’Neill wrote a post this morning with the provocative title, “Silicon Valley Is Filled With Liars“ I don’t mind the provocative title one bit–after all, that’s a technique I use all the time. In the post, O’Neill calls out the common lies … Continue reading Telling the truth is the best long-term strategy in Silicon Valley
There have been a lot of words spilled recently about a specific individual in Silicon Valley who appears to have fabricated data to appear well-connected and influential. Since the discussion has descended into flame wars about that individual and the media outlets who covered the story, I’m deliberately not linking to any of that content. … Continue reading The OS for Silicon Valley is Trust (and we have to protect it)
I had the good fortune to attend Stanford’s most recent “Engineering Hero” lecture, featuring Andy Bechtolsheim, the legendary entrepreneur and investor. You know that you’re pretty darn amazing when founding and selling Granite Systems to Cisco Systems is only *third* on your career highlight reel, behind founding Sun Microsystems and making $1.7 billion as the … Continue reading The Great Andy Bechtolsheim
It’s funny to be called “successful” in Silicon Valley. So often, we think of success as being measured by liquidity events or other markers of worldly success. The reason I think I’m successful is that I have everything that money can’t buy: love, family, friends, health. Yet these are things that we rarely hear about … Continue reading Successful in Silicon Valley
Sometimes people ask me why I’m always writing blog posts and speaking at events. “Simple,” I say. “Silicon Valley has a short attention span. If I don’t keep my name in front of people, they’ll forget who I am.” If they don’t believe me, I respond with what I like to call the Yahoo test. … Continue reading Silicon Valley Has A Short Attention Span
I had an interesting experience at Mega Startup Weekend. I was lucky enough to be invited to help judge the startup pitches at the end of the weekend. It’s remarkable how much a dedicated team can accomplish in just 54 hours. But my most interesting experience took just a few seconds. During one of the … Continue reading Speak Up, Silicon Valley
A history lesson on startup geography, inspired by this post by Michael Arrington: The South Bay / Peninsula / San Francisco tango is a long tradition in the tech industry. Silicon Valley famously started in downton Palo Alto, with the famed HP garage (which I’ve walked past many times). During the chip-dominated era (there’s a … Continue reading San Francisco vs. Palo Alto vs. South Bay
Jeremy Lin is the talk of the NBA. Sportswriters everywhere are busy cranking out column inches on what people have called the ultimate Cinderella story: The emergence of an Asian-American Harvard graduate, seemingly from nowhere, as one of the NBA’s biggest stars. On February 3, Jeremy Lin was the Knicks’ third-string point guard. Less than … Continue reading Jeremy Lin, Women in VC, and the Bigotry of Pattern Matching
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)