This is another one of those posts about how to spend some money in an awesome way. You’ve been warned. I’ve written before about why I love AdventFinancial and their awesome founder, but I’ve never really told the story of what I do about it. Because I like the Advent product, there is all the normal startup stuff […]
First, read this. Second, I need to point out that this story is not true. Do you hear me, internet? NOT TRUE. The Daily Currant is like The Onion, a satirical newspaper that pokes fun at things. Third, even though it isn’t true, it is entirely believable, which is why so many people passed it […]
Double bottom line is a relatively silly name for a simple concept: businesses can be about more than just profit. Double bottom line usually means “profit and social good” and triple bottom line usually means “profit and social good and environmental sustainability”. God knows what a quadruple bottom line would be, since environmental sustainability seems […]
Recently, after giving a flurry of talks and press interviews, I started talking to colleagues from a variety of fields about the process of speaking and the somewhat bizarre rituals that occur in order to create good events. Almost everyone I talked to had some funny story about speaking, and the humor was often generated […]
Imagine people as a two by two matrix (which is pretty much how I see the world). On one axis is competence (genius, idiot) and the other is personality (awesome, asshole). The genius/awesome quadrant is easy to make intros for: they bring value to almost every situation and they make you laugh while they do […]
It is no secret that I love the active advisor role: my LinkedIn is rife with them (and let’s just appreciate that we no longer say “my resume”). What is perhaps less evident is exactly how difficult being an active advisor is. Not because of the time demands (although it can be demanding) but because […]
People love a certain kind of disaster preparation. After Hurricane Irene’s lackluster rains last year and today’s Hurricane Sandy prep, New Yorkers are now well familiar with mayoral press conferences and impressive lines at the Trader Joe’s. Twitter is abuzz with witty puns and prayers for safety (and the safety of satellite dishes, so that […]
There has been a lot of chatter in the press recently about intelligence augmentation, which can mean a variety of things but always gets instantiated for me mostly clear in the “software” of William Gibson’s Neuromancer. The basic idea is that “always on” forms of computing (like Google Glasses) will fill in the gaps of […]
I like introducing people. Whether it is romantic matchmaking or a great bizdev partnership or finding the right person to fill a job, there is a certain rush you feel when you connect the dots in just that certain way and it all fits together.* The side effect is that I spend a lot of […]
Recently, a reporter was asking me about founders and failure. Is there anything I’ve noticed about how they handle it well or badly? Are there general trends that unite how founders psychologically treat failures? My immediate reply was “Founder’s Disease”. Its a term I made up once in a conversation to describe the way that […]