Herb & Dorothy
Sunday, June 28th, 2009Today, I was out with a friend, shopping for furnishings for her new apartment. While at CB2, it suddenly started to rain, which has been annoyingly typical these past few weeks. But we were hungry, so I used the Yelp iPhone app to find restaurants nearby. We settled on a cheap burger place called Soho Park, on Lafayette and Prince, and we sprinted over through the rain. The burgers were great, a solid 7 out of 10, The highlight was the endless bucket of fries, which came with a choice of two “speciality” dips. The service was shoddy, but the cheap price, good food, and easygoing company made up for it.
Afterwards, we wanted to see a movie, but we had already seen the good movies currently out, including Up and The Hangover. So I pulled up the Now Playing app on my iPhone, and it told me which movies were playing in which theaters nearby, and their Rotten Tomatoes rating. Given that we were in the SoHo/Greenwich Village area, we were able to find the nearby Cinema Village, a 3-screen cinema specializing in foreign and independent films. We quickly honed in on the documentary Herb & Dorothy, mainly because of its 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
I’ve only had my new iPhone 3GS for a week now, and I’m really enjoying the fact that I can access the internet anywhere. Location-based services add a lot to the experience of going out and figuring out what to do. Rather than sit around wondering what is going on in the big and daunting city, location-based apps on the iPhone help me parse what I can do nearby, to certain broad or specific parameters. I firmly believe in planning in advance, but sometimes it’s nice to let the spur of the moment carry the day. I had read the hype about location-based services through blogs, but until last week, I had not had the opportunity to really experience it for myself.
Eric Schmidt Commencement Speech
Sunday, May 24th, 2009“You cannot plan innovation. You cannot plan invention. All you can do is try very hard to be at the right place and be ready.”
In Praise of Dullness
Thursday, May 21st, 2009David Brooks has an interesting Op-Ed in the NYTimes about the characteristics most highly correlated with successful CEOs. The results surprised me, since at first glance they are counterintuitive.
What mattered, it turned out, were execution and organizational skills. The traits that correlated most powerfully with success were attention to detail, persistence, efficiency, analytic thoroughness and the ability to work long hours.
In other words, warm, flexible, team-oriented and empathetic people are less likely to thrive as C.E.O.’s. Organized, dogged, anal-retentive and slightly boring people are more likely to thrive.
They, too, found that extroversion, agreeableness and openness to new experience did not correlate well with C.E.O. success. Instead, what mattered was emotional stability and, most of all, conscientiousness — which means being dependable, making plans and following through on them.
via Marquis.
Confessions of an Entrepreneur’s Wife
Friday, May 8th, 2009There is a very poignant story in Inc. of the effects of an entrepreneur’s drive and lifestyle on his family, from the perspective of his wife. It shows that there is a very human aspect to startup companies that simply cannot be ignored. There are the glamorous moments of success, where you feel like you’re on the top of the world, but there are also the opposite, and I think that it is how you act during the worst times that defines who you are as a person.
The Value of Income
Wednesday, April 29th, 2009Income has no value without time. Income is just some wampum that you exchange for experience.
– Tim Ferriss, from a talk given to ELE/ORF 491 High-Tech Entrepreneurship at Princeton University, 4/28/09
12 Examples of Lazy Registration
Wednesday, April 29th, 2009Web Jackalope has a good post about the importance of lazy registration. Lazy registration allows users to interact with the site and try out some of the features before signing up for the service. Putting all of the functionality behind a pay wall deters a good percentage of potential users, and you want to make the barrier of entry as low as possible. It’s kind of like the freemium model, but at an even earlier stage.
Women Like to Share, Men Like to Hoard
Thursday, April 16th, 2009I haven’t been able to devote as much time to this blog as I would have liked to, since the end of the school year looms and I have several final projects to finish.
However, my class on High-Tech Entrepreneurship has consistently been very good, and I want to post about the first of a series of four guest lectures over the next two weeks.
Today, Dany Levy from DailyCandy gave a guest lecture about her experiences at DailyCandy. A little background: DailyCandy is a free email newsletter that gives a personal, insider guide to the new and undiscovered. It has newsletters devoted to major cities including NYC, Chicago, LA, SF, Boston, and many more.
It was inspiring to hear Dany’s story, starting in print journalism at New York and Lucky, getting frustrated with the slow print publication process, and seizing the opportunity to use email to instantly send out information. This way, she was able to disrupt the way information was delivered. Oftentimes, Dany was able to beat the big name magazines to publishing scoops.
I took some notes, and this is a compilation of some of the more interesting take away messages that I got from the talk.
- Know what you can and can’t do, and find the right people to complement you. Trust in your team. Don’t be pigheaded about your beliefs.
- Don’t completely associate your company’s brand with one person. Spread the success among your team. A good example is Steve Jobs, who has long been associated with Apple’s success and innovation. When he left on medical leave at the beginning of this year, it was uncertain whether Apple would continue to be successful without him at the helm. However, we now know that the team at Apple is extremely competent and innovative, even without Steve at the head of day to day decisions.
- Embrace change, but stay true to what you believe in. Figure out what you believe in if you haven’t already.
- Dany didn’t like the idea of investing in a DailyCandy for men (Thrillist): It wouldn’t work because “Women like to share things. Men like to hoard.”
- There are differing opinions on this, but Levy believes that the idea should come first, and the money will follow.
I’m looking forward to the next three lectures in the series:
- Tuesday, April 21: Frank P. Slattery, Jr. ’59, President, Quintus Corp.
- Tuesday, April 28: Tim Ferriss, Angel Investor; Founder, BrainQuicken; Author: The 4-Hour Work Week
- Thursday, April 30: Professor Ed Zschau
I will try to post similar recaps of these talks as well. Until next time…
Jurvetson’s first shotgun ride in Tesla S
Saturday, April 4th, 2009First person video of Steve Jurvetson’s first shotgun ride in the new Tesla S. The huge touchscreen is crazy – people are already developing apps for it. Best line: “I see 5 cops…” “Yes, they’re hired.”
Kevin Rose and Tim Ferriss Discuss Angel Investing and Naming Companies
Tuesday, March 31st, 2009Interesting discussion about building a brand, naming your company, and angel investing. There is an interesting part about 4 minutes in where Tim talks about how he used Google AdWords as a way to perform market research on potential company or product names. He also printed out fake book covers on blank books and set them out on actual Borders book shelves to record pick up rates. Apparently the best position for the book is just below eye level to the left of the new nonfiction or face out on the table behind the rack. The whole video is worth a watch. Looking forward to future episodes. (via Tim Ferriss)
Another reaction to Doug Bowman’s departure from Google
Friday, March 20th, 2009“Apple Is a Design Company With Engineers; Google Is an Engineering Company With Designers” Source: Sci-Fi Hi-Fi: Weblog
