The impending Age Of Abundance was prophesied in the scriptures thousands of years ago.
Wednesday, April 06, 2011
Tuesday, April 05, 2011
Five Books
Image via WikipediaAutobiographyMe: Author
I have talked about writing a 50-100 page autobiography, and I am going to do it, I have already started work on it. But I have come to realize I would not want that to be my first book to go public.
Instead I have decided on putting out five volumes of Topics In Tech based on my posts at this blog. Going to Amazon Kindle Self Publishing. Price $2.99. I think I get two bucks, Amazon keeps the other buck.
This is tempting. I already got the material ready.
This is tempting. The question you find asking yourself is, will the books sell? If they do, I could take bootstrapping to a whole new level.
Jessica Mah, Mark Zuckerberg
Both Jessica Mah and Mark Zuckerberg were 19 when they launched their respective companies. The difference though is that Mark dropped out of college, Jessica had already finished college.
Jessica Mah: The Most Promising 19 Year Old Tech Entrepreneur In America
Greplin: The First Y Combinator Company To Get Me Excited
Paul Graham: Disrupt
NYTM Mailing List Continued Controversy
Scott 2.0, MeetUp.com 2.0
Jessica Mah: The Most Promising 19 Year Old Tech Entrepreneur In America
Greplin: The First Y Combinator Company To Get Me Excited
Paul Graham: Disrupt
NYTM Mailing List Continued Controversy
Scott 2.0, MeetUp.com 2.0
2,000 Squats
Image via WikipediaI just did 2,000 squats. Don't get too impressed. I did it 50 at a time. But do get impressed. I think I could have done 1,000 more. This is my way of getting into the mood for StartUp Week. I did not even know it existed. I was aware of Social Media Week. I was aware of Internet Week. But StartUp Week? Well, it exists. And I am going to all events. I am showing up in my ninja outfit.
StartUp Week At NYU April 6-15
April 6, Wednesday, 6-9 PM, NYU Stern, Kaufman Management Center (44 W 4th St), Room 2-60
April 7, Thursday, 6-8:30 PM, NYU Law School (Vanderbilt Hall), Tishman Auditorium, 40 Washington Square South
April 11, Monday, 5-9 PM, Kaufman Management Center Room M1-100
April 12, Tuesday, 6-8:30 PM, Room M1-100
April 13, Wednesday, 5-7 PM, The Courant Institute 251 Mercer Street, Room 109
April 14, Thursday, 6-8 PM, NYU Tisch Hall, Paulson Auditorium (UC-50), 40 W. 4th Street
A Social Graph For When Everyone Is Connected
Image via WikipediaBill Gates thinks the world population will stabilize around nine billion people. Let's say he is right. Already two out of six billion people are connected to the internet. Say the penetration goes above 90% by the time world population hits seven billion people. Would that have implications for the social graph? You bet. The Color Social Graph Might Work Better For Books, Movies, Music
There is an old saying that everyone is connected to everyone else through six degrees of separation. Every random person out there knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows you. That magic number - six - might be lesser if the group size were smaller.
Monday, April 04, 2011
The Color Social Graph Might Work Better For Books, Movies, Music
Especially music. I don't think picture taking is overdone at all. Once Fred Wilson dismissed Facebook as "a photo sharing site." It was said at a major conference, and the comment sent a lot of pigeons flying, but he did point out a basic truth, which is that photo sharing is the primary activity on Facebook.
Google Images, Facebook Photos, Twitpic, Instagram, FoodSpotting
India Win
Image via WikipediaAnup Kaphle: Cricket Is Not Baseball, Stop Comparing India Beats Sri Lanka To Win Cricket World Cup
New York Times: Cricket Victory Brings Relief From Scandal in India: cricket, a sport that permeates life here the way monsoon rains seep into the soil ..... Indians erupted in delirious celebration. Fireworks exploded in city after city and village after village, as throngs of people poured into the streets, beating drums, shouting and cheering. ...... “There is a national kind of mood, or zeitgeist, that cricket brings in,” said Anand Mahindra, managing director of one of India’s largest business conglomerates, Mahindra & Mahindra. “Can it have a disproportionate impact on people’s sense of self and general well-being and confidence? I think yes.” ..... In this country of 1.2 billion people, the national cricket team is treated like a group of rock stars and regarded by some as a metaphor for the country as a whole: young, increasingly confident and slowly moving forward, if sometimes tripping itself in the process. ....... especially gratifying for Indian fans because the national team has failed to win big matches in recent years, even though it was regarded as one of the world’s best teams. On Sunday morning, Indian newspapers carried euphoric headlines. “The World at Our Feet,” shouted The Times of India, the country’s biggest English-language daily. “Windia,” proclaimed The Indian Express. ...... a majority of India’s 138 million television households tuned into the tournament, with many tens of millions watching from elsewhere in the world. ...... In India’s biggest cities, fans congregated around outdoor screens or watched in restaurants and coffee shops. During key Indian matches, pilots on some domestic flights offered midair updates on the score. One 20-year-old model with a flair for self-promotion asked permission to perform a striptease for the team, calling it her patriotic duty. On Sunday, India’s politicians hailed the team, with the chief minister of Delhi announcing cash bonuses for Mr. Dhoni, the team captain, and the four team members from Delhi. ....... Then India was rocked by a telecommunications scandal over the allocation of cellphone licenses, as a government auditor concluded that the government might have lost about $40 billion in fees because officials gave licenses to favored bidders at bargain prices. On Saturday, as the cricket match was under way in Mumbai, the Indian Central Bureau of Investigation filed charges against a former communications minister, his aides and several high-profile business executives in that case. They were accused of cheating, forgery and corruption. ........ In India, cricket is no longer regarded as a leisurely sport of gentlemen in white trousers but has instead become a sexy symbol of the “new” India. The stars of the Indian team are wealthy and ubiquitous. They are covered feverishly in the news media and endorse countless products. India Today, a weekly magazine, recently listed India’s 50 most powerful people, placing the country’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, at the top. But ranked second, ahead of several billionaires, was the country’s most revered cricketer, Sachin Tendulkar. ........ Mr. Dhoni comes from one of India’s poorest regions, and his rags-to-riches story embodies the hopes of many Indians on the margins. After the match, Mr. Dhoni and other players said they were inspired to win for Mr. Tendulkar, a batter who has hit more runs than any player in the sport’s history and is often referred to in India as simply “God.” ...... Even Saturday night, e-mails were making the rounds in India charging that the World Cup match was fixed by bookies. Similar accusations were made after India beat Pakistan in a politically charged semifinal last Wednesday. ..... But as India awoke on Sunday, there was joy, a salve to a bitter political season. Even Sonia Gandhi, the president of the governing Indian National Congress Party, stepped into the streets of New Delhi to celebrate — perhaps not only the victory but the distraction it offered. .... “Sachin Tendulkar and company has done Dr. Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi a huge favor,” said Ramachandra Guha, a historian and authority on cricket, “by redirecting popular sentiment away from corruption and toward cricket.”
Sunday, April 03, 2011
Jessica Mah: The Most Promising 19 Year Old Tech Entrepreneur In America
Or maybe she is 20 now. But still. Daniel Gross and Jessica Mah you have you to watch out for. Jessica's InDinero, the Mint.com for businesses, is headed for a hundred million plus kind of exit in a few years. Daniel will be swimming in the billion dollar range, if only because his product, Greplin, is just more fundamental. But Jessica has started by monetizing from day one. Three years from now they will not be by the roadside, a has been. They will be bigger than anything we can imagine right now.
Mike Yavonditte: An Hour Of Video
Okay so it is not an hour of Mike. When you have Jason Calacanis doing the interviewing, the guy feels like he is half the guest himself, and so this is 30 minutes of Jason and 30 minutes of Mike. But it's a good interview. Jason being an entrepreneur himself has really been able to bring out the story from Mike. It was an hour well spent for me.
Anup Kaphle: Cricket Is Not Baseball, Stop Comparing
"Understanding cricket is not that difficult — just stop comparing it to baseball."
- Anup Kaphle
India Beats Sri Lanka To Win Cricket World Cup
- Anup Kaphle
India Beats Sri Lanka To Win Cricket World Cup
Technology And Social Justice
Technology, on its own, ends up magnifying the status quo of social inequality. That was a comment I made to a post by The Gotham Gal a few days back.
Owning Equity, Owning House
Image via CrunchBaseChris Dixon: Eric Ries: a downturn will come in the next few years (most likely not a true revenue/profit downturn but early stage valuation + coolness downturn) ..... one of the worst things happening now is that companies lie to employees and only tell them the # of shares they own and not the % they own ...... the 21st century will be about convincing people that they should think about owning part of their employer the same way people in the 20th century wanted to own their house ...... the idea of creating a stock exchange where when you bought stocks you were force to hold them 4-5 years ...... he was probably the smartest and most interesting person I've heard in years ...... us "liberals" (me, Eric, Fred Wilson) who believe that hedge fund managers should pay the same tax rate as firefighters who run into burning buildings are in radical agreement about increasing the carried interest tax. Unfortunately every other VC seems to disagree with us. Looks like we lost this one and so need to move on. +1 for aristocrats. ..... ) being more scientific about how to help these companies succeed on less capitalChris Dixon does not think we are in a bubble. Neither do I. But I was surprised to learn he also thinks we are a few years from a downturn, what I have called a mini bubble burst. It will not be like 2000 when it looked like the entire industry collapsed. But there will be plenty of winnowing out.
A Surprising Blog Post From Fred Wilson
Image via WikipediaFred Wilson: Going Out On Top: Then, at the top of their game, LCD decided to call it quits. They played four shows this past week at Terminal 5, and then played their last show ever at The Garden last night. It's over now. As we watched the band put on a fantastic show last night, I was thinking about going out on top. So few manage to do it. Shaq is warming the bench in Boston. ..... The money and the burning desire to "win another one" drives the great ones to stick around too long. ..... I look at Warren Buffett and Rupert Murdoch and I see individuals still enjoying the work and delivering for their shareholders and investors into their 80s. ..... But I also look around the venture capital business and I see investors who were at the top of their games in the 90s struggling to remain relevant. ...... How do you know when you've done your last great startup? How do you know when you've done your last great investment? How do you know when you don't have the drive, hunger, and insights to keep delivering top performance? ...... Right now, coming off two weeks of totally relaxing vacation with my family, I find myself up early, thinking, writing, and planning. I don't sense it is yet time to hang up my cleats or walk of the stage like James Murphy did last night. But the thought is in my mind and I want it to stay there. The investment business is not easy. You are only as good as your last trade, fund, or year. And the venture capital business is particulary tricky. All the returns in the business accrue to the top ten or, at best, twenty percent of investors. When you lose your edge, your performance suffers, often badly. But it can take a decade for the rest of the world to notice because there is so much latency in the venture capital business.My favorite solo blogger just surprised me like never before. The thought of "going out on top" seems to have crossed his mind.
Saturday, April 02, 2011
India Beats Sri Lanka To Win Cricket World Cup
In India everything has a tendency to get mixed up with Bollywood. Sachin was named after a Bollywood musician. That should tell you.
One way you know I grew up in Nepal and not India is I don't "get" cricket. I tend to only watch the highlights. Even then I pay as much attention to the background music as to the game. But I hear cricket has also taken over Nepal since I left. My thing is soccer. Note Sachin's Maradona hair. Sachin wears the number 10 shirt, just like Pele and Maradona.
Cricket is to India what soccer is to Brazil. I grew up watching people glued to their radio sets following audio commentaries of ongoing cricket matches.
StartUp Week At NYU April 6-15
April 6, Wed, Mark Suster (@msuster) NYU 6-9 PM
April 7, Thu, Brad Feld (@bfeld), Adam Rich, and Nate Westheimer (@innonate) 6:00 PM - 8:30 PM NYU Law School (Vanderbilt Hall), Tishman Auditorium, 40 Washington Square South
Monday, 4/11: Develop, Design, Pitch Series mongoDB (@mongodb) Kevin Kearney (@kkearney) and Courtney Lewis of Hard Candy Shell Eric Friedman (@EricFriedman) 5:00 PM - 9:00 PM Kaufman Management Center Room M1-100 44 W 4th St
Tuesday, 4/12: Variety of Tech Entrepreneurs Panel 6:00 PM - 8:30 PM Room M1-100 Spencer Fry (@spencerfry), Carbonmade Hilary Mason (@hmason) bit.ly Vin Vacanti (@vacanti), Yipit Yasser Ansari (@trisomy21), Project Noah Seth Frader-Thompson (@fraderT), EnergyHub Colin Freund (@Swimmingloaf), Agennix AG James McChullouhgh, Exosome Diagnostics
Wednesday, 4/13: Online Communities 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM The Courant Institute 251 Mercer Street, Room 109 Kyle Bragger (@kylebragger), Forrst Chris Maguire (@revolvingdork), Postling Joe Alminawi, OMGPOP Anthony De Rosa (@AntDeRosa), Neighborhoodr Vanessa Bertozzi (@Van_Bertozzi), Etsy Peter Rojas (@peterrojas), gdgt
Thursday, 4/14: Fundraising: VCs, Angels and Accelerators Chris Dixon (@cdixon), Albert Wenger (@albertwenger), Lawrence Lenihan (@lawrencelenihan), Firstmark Capital, Hilary Gosher (@hilbil175), Insite Venture Partners, David Tisch (@davetisch), TechStars
The Organizers of StartUp Week
Friday, April 01, 2011
April Fool A Few Weeks Early?
Image via WikipediaTechCrunch: ‘Rachel Sequoia’ And ‘Share The Air’ Were A Prank, But The Pitch Event Wasn’t: 5-6 real start-ups pitched there, hoping to practice in front of an audience of 80 people before they pitched VCs. ..... The whole thing was orchestrated by Trademarkia founder Raj Abhyankar and Spiralmoon’s Dan Carlson for two purposes, a) To give young startups a place to practice their pitches b) To add some levity to the mix with Rachel Sequoia/’Share The Air’ parody of Silicon Valley. ...... Actress Rachel Cherones was paid a $100 for the unorthodox gig and was given two hours to come up with the character after being given slides created by Carlson. She too was surprised by how much pickup the YouTube video, initially uploaded as a personal record of the presentation, received...... The fake Rachel Sequoia account now has over 2,000 followers on Twitter, the video has over 200,000 views on YouTube and people have approached SpiralMoon, who is now working on a feature length film, with acquisition offers.What I have to say is her $100 pay was too low. She should have been paid $1,000. And she deserves a great acting gig after this. And thanks for the Nepal mentions. Mount Everest rules. It is the background image of this blog.
How To Pitch: The Rachel Sequoia Way
Grameen Miracles
Image by Getty Images via @daylifeNew York Times: Grameen Bank and the Public Good: it’s important to protect successful social institutions from political maneuvers that could be damaging to them, and that an abrupt and forced removal of Yunus could damage confidence in the bank, which has 8.4 million mostly women borrowers and holds $1.5 billion in villagers’ savings. ...... Yunus was being targeted for political reasons. ....... others said that there were people within the government, as well as across Bangladeshi society, who opposed the work of the Grameen Bank on principled, if ideological, grounds. Simply put, many people don’t think that microfinance helps the poor and they believe that socially-minded businesses, like the Grameen Bank, undermine the work of government. ....... The question: ‘Does microfinance work?’ has been posed increasingly in recent years — sometimes in accusatory tones because microfinance, and its leading practitioner, Grameen, have received so much praise. ....... microfinance — including both loans and savings services — is, in fact, good for microbusinesses ....... microfinance is not, itself, one simple thing. It may involve loans, or savings, or a combination of the two, plus training, insurance or other services ...... the way poor people manage their households is far more complex than anyone had previously understood. ........ If microfinance doesn’t accomplish anything positive, then why are 128 million poor families busy taking loans? ....... what it really means for most people to be poor: to live with perpetual uncertainty. ....... the problem of living on $1 or $2 a day is that you don’t actually earn $1 or $2 every day ...... Some days you receive $5 and then nothing for two weeks. Life is unreliable ...... what we saw microfinance was doing for people was offering them a reliable source of money. With microfinance, you get a sum of money that’s promised on the day it’s promised in the amount that’s promised. It’s often the only reliable service that poor people have — and that’s incredibly powerful. ........ contrary to the depiction of poor people as passive victims of microlenders — as the field is often portrayed by its critics — Morduch and his colleagues found that the families they followed were “strategic” in their use of credit, often mingling a variety of formal and informal sources. “They weren’t always making the best choices — some did well, some didn’t — but they were very actively managing their affairs,” he said. “Our view is that there’s a lot more going on with microfinance — that it’s helping people keep an income flow, deal with health problems, keep their kids in school, get food on the table every day, and perhaps invest in businesses.” .......... self-employed women in Kenya were able to invest more in their businesses and increase household spending when they had access to savings accounts ...... “extending basic banking services could have large effects at relatively small cost.” ....... a middle path: the social business — the business that seeks not to maximize profits but to maximize some form of social impact. ...... Social businesses seek to harness market forces to provide essential goods and services to people who are typically underserved. ...... social businesses provide things like loans to small farmers, rural electricity and access to potable water. They also supply health services like ambulance care or cataract surgery. In addition to microfinance, Grameen has helped establish an array of for- and not-for-profit companies such as Grameen Danone, a joint venture with Danone (known to us as Dannon), which markets an affordable fortified yogurt product to address micronutrient deficiencies among the poor and Grameen Shakti, a renewable energy company. ....... Social businesses have evolved to address both the operational weaknesses of many government agencies and the lack of affordable products and services available to the poor through the market. By and large, they are a new invention .......... , it appears that social businesses can bring things like renewable energy, mobile technologies and affordable housing to poor people faster and more efficiently than governments ...... However, ongoing access to safe water for all is not something that can be guaranteed without the leadership of governments.
Grameen Under Attack At Home
Image via WikipediaNew York Times: Opinionator: Microfinance Under Fire: Both the bank and Yunus, have come under attack by the government of Bangladesh and its prime minister, Sheikh Hasina Wazed. It has taken 35 years of painstaking effort to build Grameen into a world-class institution that serves millions of poor people. That progress could be lost if the country’s leaders fail to appreciate what makes the Grameen Bank work........ The Grameen Bank is not just the largest microlender in the world, with 8.4 million borrowers (most of them women villagers) who received more than $1 billion in loans last year, it is the flagship enterprise in an industry that, in 2009, served 128 million of the world’s poorest families. ...... Yunus, the founder of the bank, is an entrepreneurial figure cut from the same cloth as Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple. He has devoted himself since the 1970s to demonstrating, institutionalizing and spreading microfinance. ...... Legally, the government owns 25 percent of Grameen and has the right to appoint a quarter of its board members, including its chairperson. In practical terms, however, the government has little justification to intercede in the bank’s operations. Today, of the Grameen Bank’s paid-up share capital, only 3.5 percent comes from the Bangladeshi government. It is the bank’s borrowers who are its majority owners. They control 75 percent of the board seats and they have supplied 96.5 percent of the paid up share capital. And it’s the savings of villagers — about $1.5 billion — that now finances the bank’s activities and growth. ......... Nevertheless, the government is proceeding to remove Yunus against the objections of its majority owners and will probably succeed. ...... Yunus is being punished for criticizing the government and making a bid to start a political party in 2007. ......... The Grameen Bank is a strong, well-managed institution with 25,000 employees. It could probably withstand his departure. Indeed, given Yunus’s age, it’s critical to pave the way for a successor. But if he is replaced in a manner that diminishes confidence, the bank could face problems. ........ the Grameen Bank depends on unusually high levels of motivation among its staff and high levels of trust among its borrowers. A forced removal of Yunus that is seen as illegitimate, politically-motivated, or vindictive could alienate thousands of employees and trigger a run on savings or loan defaults. ......... The state-owned banks have regularly extended loans to elite borrowers (who default at high rates) as a form of patronage. Unlike Grameen, which is financially self-sufficient, the state banks are perpetually in need of cash infusions from the government. ........ The Prime Minister has made it clear that she believes the interest rates are too high. ...... if the government installed a bureaucratic manager who failed to appreciate the bank’s
Image via Wikipediaentrepreneurial culture, it could suck the life out of the bank. ....... Before Grameen Bank workers get hired, for example, they spend close to a year demonstrating their interest in serving the poor. They have to do things like write detailed case studies about the lives of village women to show that they genuinely care about, and understand, their clients. Managing this workforce is nothing like managing a run-of-the-mill bank. ........ Over the past few months, officials have sought to damage Yunus’s reputation, claiming without evidence that he has enriched himself at the expense of the poor, intentionally harmed borrowers, and engaged in fraud. The prime minister has called microlenders loan sharks “sucking the blood of the poor.” Her son circulated a letter which contained a litany of unfounded accusations against Yunus — the most outrageous being that the government created the Grameen Bank, not Yunus. ......... It’s not as if Bangladesh is lacking real problems that require government attention. There can be no sense in destabilizing the leading institution in an industry that provides financing to more than half of the households in the country. ........ On March 15, the Bangladeshi Supreme Court postponed ruling on Yunus’s case for two weeks........ Given that Yunus understands Grameen’s culture better than anyone, he should have a key say in any leadership change. ........ Wise governments should view microfinance programs not as adversaries, but as partners in furthering public goals — organizations that need to be regulated, but not controlled. ...... Foreign governments and multi-lateral institutions have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the Grameen Bank and other large microfinance organizations in Bangladesh, and elsewhere, with the goal of alleviating poverty. They also need to remember that it’s not enough to finance development organizations. They need to protect them, too.
Google Is Messing Up Google With Social
Image via CrunchBaseI don't want to get into the details. But I liked it much better that Google dealt with the content farms than I am liking Google's clumsy efforts to add social to search. Those two don't go together. The best information, by definition, will be with people I don't know. Facebook has not grown at Google's expense. Facebook's rise has been to fill the social void. Most people most of the time just want to talk soap. They don't want to be educating themselves all day. And that's Facebook.
Scaling Instagram Out Of A Coworking Space
Instagram Magic
Instagram Wave
Twitter ---> Instagram ---> FoodSpotting
Image by exoskeletoncabaret via FlickrI was reading this story on Mashable, and the paragraph that most got my attention was this one:
Instagram Wave
Twitter ---> Instagram ---> FoodSpotting
Image by exoskeletoncabaret via FlickrI was reading this story on Mashable, and the paragraph that most got my attention was this one:So, Krieger, a former UX designer at Meebo with admittedly no experience scaling a startup, walked around the Dogpatch Labs coworking space in San Francisco — the locale of Instagram’s first office — and queried other startup founders about what to do. Officemates suggested that Instagram move its service to Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2).Instagram was in a General Assembly like place. Wow. That should not surprise me. But that part of the story is really inspiring. All those startup folks laboring in all those many coworking spaces should take heart. Big things are possible out of crowded coworking spaces.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Arugula
Image via WikipediaArugula has knocked off Brazil as the top searched term at this blog. As in most people who search for something and end up at this blog search for the wonderful "arugula." When "Brazil" took the crown I am like, wait a minute, I love soccer, but this is not a sports blog. Now I am alarmed all over again. I don't want this to end up a food blog.
This is a tech blog. Technology and business. How do I steer it back in that direction?
In Brazil's case I took care of the "problem" by writing many many posts about Brazil's economy. And I did some country study posts on Brazil as a potential country to go into for my microfinance venture.
But I don't know what to do with arugula. Houston, we have a problem.
Arugula And Location Patents
Brazil: Sao Paulo: Photos
I think I need to blog about FoodSpotting less often. Google by now thinks I have a food blog.
Is Square A Microfinance Company?
I am watching this video and I am thinking, is Square a microfinance company? Is Square like microfinance for white people?
Think about it. People use Square for micro transactions. I have lost count of how many times I have heard Jack Dorsey make his cappuccino example.
Square just made my list of Stuff White People Like.
Jack Dorsey And I Were At Columbia Yesterday Evening
Jack Dorsey Also Has A FinTech StartUp
Think about it. People use Square for micro transactions. I have lost count of how many times I have heard Jack Dorsey make his cappuccino example.
Square just made my list of Stuff White People Like.
Jack Dorsey And I Were At Columbia Yesterday Evening
Jack Dorsey Also Has A FinTech StartUp
Jack Dorsey And I Were At Columbia Yesterday Evening
To You I Offer Buddhism And Yoga
Image via WikipediaMinority Majority Nation? Gender Talk And Pragmatism
TechCrunch: What’s The Most Difficult CEO Skill? Managing Your Own Psychology.: By far the most difficult skill for me to learn as CEO was the ability to manage my own psychology. Organizational design, process design, metrics, hiring and firing were all relatively straightforward skills to master compared to keeping my mind in check. Over the years, I’ve spoken to hundreds of CEOs all with the same experience. Nonetheless, very few people talk about it, and I have never read anything on the topic. It’s like the fight club of management: The first rule of the CEO psychological meltdown is don’t talk about the psychological meltdown. ....... this is the most personal and important battle that any CEO will face. ..... no CEO ever has a smooth path to a great company. Along the way, many things go wrong and all of them could have and should have been avoided. ..... If CEOs were graded on a curve, the mean on the test would be 22 out of a 100. This kind of mean can be psychologically challenging for a straight A student. It is particularly challenging, because nobody tells you that the mean is 22. ...... At a certain size, your company will do things that are so bad that you never imagined that you’d be associated with that kind of incompetence. Seeing people fritter away money, waste each other’s time, and do sloppy work can make you feel bad. If you are the CEO, it may well make you sick. ....... Every problem in the company was indeed my fault. ....... Being responsible for everything and getting a 22 on the test starts to weigh on your consciousness. ....... CEOs often make the one of the following two mistakes: 1. They take things too personally 2. They do not take things personally enough ...... Ideally, the CEO will be urgent yet not insane. She will move aggressively and decisively without feeling emotionally culpable. If she can separate the importance of the issues from how she feels about them, she will avoid demonizing her employees or herself. ...... In your darkest moments as CEO, discussing fundamental questions about the viability of your company with your employees can have obvious negative consequences. On the other hand, talking to your board and outside advisors can be fruitless. The knowledge gap between you and them is so vast that you cannot actually bring them fully up to speed in a manner that’s useful in making the decision. You are all alone. ....... asking oneself anything 3,000 times turns out to be a bad idea ...... if you don’t like choosing between horrible and cataclysmic, don’t become CEO ...... Make some friends ..... it is extremely useful from a psychological perspective to talk to people who have been through similarly challenging decisions. ...... Get it out of your head and onto paper ..... I wrote down a detailed explanation of my logic ...... Focus on the road not the wall—When they train racecar drivers, one of the first lessons is when you are going around a curve at 200 MPH, do not focus on the wall; focus on the road. ........ A Final Word of Advice – Don’t Punk Out and Don’t Quit As CEO, there will be many times when you feel like quitting. I have seen CEOs try to cope with the stress by drinking heavily, checking out, and even quitting. In each case, the CEO has a marvelous rationalization why it was OK for him to punk out or quit, but none them will every be great CEOs. Great CEOs face the pain. They deal with the sleepless nights, the cold sweat, and what my friend the great Alfred Chuang (legendary founder and CEO of BEA Systems) calls “the torture.” Whenever I meet a successful CEO, I ask them how they did it. Mediocre CEOs point to their brilliant strategic moves or their intuitive business sense or a variety of other self-congratulatory explanations. The great CEOs tend to be remarkably consistent in their answers. They all say: “I didn’t quit.”
Kassidy Brown: No April Fool Joke
Curry In A Hurry
Lexington + 28th
I announced yesterday that Kassidy Brown of Journey Of Action is going to be there for the FoodSpotting First Friday dinner in Little India. Because that happens to be on April 1 there might be speculation the whole thing is a joke, a trick I am pulling upon the FoodSpotting enthusiasts.
I want to say that is not so, although I have a track record. In middle school I imitated the headmaster's handwriting and signature and got a teacher to rush over to the headmaster's bungalow.
But this is real. Kassidy Brown really is coming on Friday. Be there.
Journey Of Action: Connecting The Dots: Social Activism: Social Media
Splitting A Platter With Kassidy Brown
Inviting Charlie O'Donnell To A Pillow Fight
Journey Of Action
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Barack's Positivity
Image via WikipediaAt first I thought he was being naive. That was in 2007. I loved the guy. I was his first full time volunteer in the city. He will get knocked around a few times, and then he will come around to it, I thought. He will learn.
And then he started winning. Big. And I am like, wait a minute, whatever he is doing is working. I declared myself a student of his new kind of politics, his positivity.
First I thought it was naive. Then I thought it was maybe weakness. Then I saw it was pragmatism. I mean, it was working wildly.
Rudiments Of A Corporate Culture
Image via WikipediaPassion For MicrofinancePassion For Social Media
Passion For Tech
Passion For People
Post-ISMs Individual: No Sexist/Racist/Homophobic/Classist Jokes/Comments
Passion For Profits: Work Hard, Play By The Rules, Innovate
Passion For Microfinance
We are a microfinance outfit. We are not a political party. We are not in education. We are not health people. We don't do bio tech.
Passion For Social Media
Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, LinkedIn: You need to be active on these platforms.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Jacob Barnett: Boy Genius?
The Daily Mail: Autistic boy,12, with higher IQ than Einstein develops his own theory of relativity: A 12-year-old child prodigy has astounded university professors after grappling with some of the most advanced concepts in mathematics. Jacob Barnett has an IQ of 170 - higher than Albert Einstein - and is now so far advanced in his Indiana university studies that professors are lining him up for a PHD research role. The boy wonder, who taught himself calculus, algebra, geometry and trigonometry in a week, is now tutoring fellow college classmates after hours. And now Jake has embarked on his most ambitious project yet - his own 'expanded version of Einstein's theory of relativity'. His mother, not sure if her child was talking nonsense or genius, sent a video of his theory to the renowned Institute for Advanced Study near Princeton University. According to the Indiana Star, Institute astrophysics professor Scott Tremaine -himself a world renowned expert - confirmed the authenticity of Jake's theory. ...... 'The theory that he's working on involves several of the toughest problems in astrophysics and theoretical physics. .....
Image via Wikipedia'Anyone who solves these will be in line for a Nobel Prize.' ...... 'Whenever I try talking about math with anyone in my family they just stare blankly.' ... Jake was diagnosed with Aspergers syndrome, a mild form of autism, from an early age. ..... he didn't talk until the age of two ...... He would fill up note pads of paper with drawings of complex geometrical shapes and calculations, before picking up felt tip pens and writing equations on windows. ..... By the age of three he was solving 5,000-piece puzzles and he even studied a state road map, reciting every highway and license plate prefix from memory. ..... By the age of eight he had left high school and was attending Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis advanced astrophysics classes. .... Jake has trouble sleeping at night as he constantly sees numbers in his head..... Jake has turned the sleepless nights to his advantage - debunking the big bang theory. ..... The next step, according to professor Ross, is for Jake to leave class altogether and take up a paid research role.
Journey Of Action: Connecting The Dots: Social Activism: Social Media
The Journey Of Action siblings Kassidy and Ryan have caught the imagination of many a techie in New York City. What gives? What are they up to?
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