February 2013
1 post
5 tags
Consumer Isn't Dead and Enterprise Isn't Hot
There is a herd mentality shift that “consumer is dead” and “enterprise is in.” I believe that this mentality is an overreaction, oversimplification, and a lagging indicator of the real important trends.
There is some merit to the argument that “consumer is dead.” I believe that there are too many me-too startups trying to raise venture funding that aim to...
3 tags
Technology Platforms Emerge from Information...
The arrival of a new technology brings with it a rising tide of benefits. These picks and shovels create step functions of platforms that enable new innovations:
Google indexed the vast majority of information on the internet so that it is always easily accessible.
Facebook organized the people we know in a graph that enables a new level of interpersonal interaction.
Twitter enables a new...
January 2013
3 posts
3 tags
Pretty Design Isn't Always Effective Design
The Design Stack: A Framework for Effective Design
“In most people’s vocabularies, design means veneer. It’s interior decorating. It’s the fabric of the curtains of the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a human-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service.”
– Steve...
“There are different species of laziness: Eastern and Western.
The Eastern...”
– Sogyal Rinpoche
December 2012
4 posts
4 tags
4 tags
Shockingly Happy
I’m fascinated by Nassim Taleb’s concept of “antifragility,” that the opposite of “fragile,” something that breaks easily under stress, isn’t something that is strong; rather, it is something that heals and learns quickly in response to stress.
Ever since I learned about this concept, the more I see it in everyday life and the more I believe that it is a...
2 tags
Decisiveness, Trusting Your Gut, and Hacking...
I believe a key trait of a good entrepreneur or investor is the ability to make quick decisions in the face of unknown uncertainty, acting with decisiveness and conviction, trusting your gut.
So, then, developing your gut is the work you can invest in beforehand, and experience is the thing that trains and calibrates your gut to be better.
If you don’t have much experience, you need to...
3 tags
5 Rules to Land Your Dream Startup Job
In my experience as both an operator and an investor, I’ve found that there are 5 common rules of thumb to land your dream startup job.
This isn’t a step-by-step guide to finding a startup job because you will find from talking to people that there is no standard path to get a startup job. However, these rules of thumb are a strategic framework that you can use to determine the...
July 2012
1 post
4 tags
The Danger of Binary Outcomes and How to Avoid...
A common theme in running a startup or building a product is optimal time allocation. Since time is the only truly immutable resource, the most precious and scarce resources are your:
development (engineering/design) cycles
sales/biz dev cycles
marketing (user/customer acquisition/retention/virality) cycles
Each of these cycles are iterative processes with inputs and outputs, and the outputs...
June 2012
3 posts
3 tags
Frankenstein Products
One of the biggest challenges in building a product is prioritization.
When you have 1,000 things bombarding you and demanding your attention, it’s hard to figure out what is most important. You have your customers telling you one thing (vocal minority), your team and investors telling you another (selection bias), and your data telling you another (confirmation bias).
Everyone is an armchair...
3 tags
Building successful consumer apps in The Age of...
We live in a creator economy.
Facebook has 900 million users with 125 billion friend connections, uploading more than 300 million photos and liking and commenting on 3.2 billion things in a single day.
Meanwhile, Instagram has 30 million registered users, 1 billion photos uploaded (5 million photos per day), 575 likes per second, and 81 comments per second.
We all contribute to this firehose...
4 tags
1 + 1 = 11: The Value of Bundling Products
One of the prevalent trends in startups recently is the bundling of products into one, with a combined value greater than the sum of its parts.
This is not a new concept; product bundling is a strategy that has historically been effective in selling products and maximizing economic value.
Product bundling is most effective when bundling high volume, high margin products, commoditizing the...
April 2012
3 posts
5 tags
Fooled By Randomness in Product Design and...
“Fail fast.”
You hear this all the time. In entrepreneurship, there is a big emphasis on the mantra of “failing fast” and learning from your mistakes. It’s important to understand why you failed, but I think it’s even more important to understand why you’re successful.
You almost always know why you failed because you’re forced to confront it...
3 tags
Wherever You Go, There You Are
“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”
— John Lennon
I have a tendency to be a micromanager. I think a lot of entrepreneurs are. One of the biggest challenges as an entrepreneur is to be able to delegate. But this post isn’t about delegating; it’s about luck and happiness.
One of the greatest advantages as an entrepreneur is that...
4 tags
The Arrogance and Luxury of Scale
The luxury of scale is a double-edged sword. While scale can bring huge network effects you can leverage for fast user growth of new products, it can also mislead a big company to go after the wrong opportunities and paralyze a small company.
So when developing a new product, make sure you build a compelling first time user experience (FTUE) that does not rely on the benefits of network effects....
March 2012
2 posts
3 tags
Structured Serendipity in Online Communities
One of the more fascinating patterns in online communities is the emergence of highly engaged communities and behavioral patterns built on old, and many times, bad technology.
The classic example is Craigslist. Despite the old and sub-optimal design, people continue to use Craigslist and have created behaviors of their own to meet their needs. Check out this excellent diagram by Andrew Parker...
2 tags
Armchair Critics
In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so....
