January 2012
6 posts
Jan 29th
17 notes
A serious productivity question
A serious poll: Are you more productive (and able to finish everything you need to finish) when you have your day scheduled completely or when you leave your schedule open for free time throughout the day? For instance, I have the following I need/want to complete on any given day: Respond to emails. Contact current users for feedback. Contact potential users. Write code. Read and digest...
Jan 22nd
1 note
“What is Detroit‘s Brand? If you’re not from there, you might only think of...”
– Detroit’s Brand Is More Than The Sum Of Its Advertising Yes. YES. YES!
Jan 19th
1 note
How you know you have great investors
I’m extremely lucky. I have great investors. Every day, I learn a ton about every topic imaginable from an active, experienced, smart, humble, and just plain awesome Chris DeVore. He’s not in some posh corner office or playing golf; he sits out in the same open space approximately 4 feet from where I sit. Chris just closed an $8M fund for Founder’s Co-op. When the news was...
Jan 7th
1 note
Stale code
Developers talk often of code smells: cues that might mean your code isn’t written as well as it should be. There’s also a general notion that the best code never needs to be touched after being written. It’s so perfect that there are no bugs and it works for years without intervention. I assert that, in a living and growing application, code which never needs to be touched...
Jan 4th
3 simple rules for 2012
I decided to come up with 3 simple rules to live by in 2012. Be a good person (have a strong moral compass). Work hard. Don’t take life too seriously. (You’ll never get out alive… thanks, Van Wilder.)
Jan 4th
December 2011
2 posts
“The 2000 purchase of KB Toys, then one of the country’s largest toy retailers,...”
– Buyout Profits Keep Flowing to Romney. I know lots of interesting things go on in LBOs/private equity deals, but this seems to me to be the pinnacle of Bain playing “who’s the bigger idiot” with banks… and winning.
Dec 28th
3 notes
Dec 2nd
November 2011
7 posts
Nov 22nd
Nov 18th
Nov 12th
1 note
Nov 11th
Nov 10th
On role models
I’m not perfect. Far from it. Morally, ethically, athletically, and any other way I could be perfect, I am not. But, I grew up with parents who tried to instill a strong sense of right versus wrong in me. Because of them, I try to live life with the goal of “explicitly do right” rather than just “don’t do wrong.” And, for better or worse, I — along...
Nov 10th
1 note
Nov 10th
October 2011
4 posts
Oct 31st
Oct 31st
1 note
“Student question. Growing disparity in wealth and income. Money concentrated in...”
– Geekwire: Gates to students: Don’t try to be a billionaire, it’s overrated. This seems like a smart, pragmatic, and reasonable opinion about balancing capitalism and wealth disparities.
Oct 28th
1 tag
“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round...”
– Apple’s “Think Different” Campaign (via ladimcbeth)
Oct 6th
19 notes
September 2011
1 post
What the Health is Happening? Trying to be a...
habitlabs: He’s taught me, over the past 6 months, an invaluable lesson: Competitive advantage doesn’t arise from ideation or the ‘unique’ view you have of the market. It arises from building the sh*t out of something people love (PG also tried to teach me this one, but I was infinitely more stubborn last summer). It arises from being proactive.  It arises from knowing the problem intimately,...
Sep 6th
3 notes
August 2011
2 posts
Aug 23rd
Aug 23rd
July 2011
6 posts
Jul 30th
Jul 30th
Jul 30th
Jul 13th
132 notes
“There was a point in the late ’90s where all the graduating M.B.A.’s wanted to...”
– Marc Andreessen, Bubble? What Bubble?
Jul 10th
1 note
“So who will head the next generation of multibillion dollar start-ups? The...”
– The New Start-Ups at Sun Valley
Jul 8th
June 2011
8 posts
betashop: Flash Sales - Literally →
betashop: They’re called Flash Sales for a reason. Each day, emails go out to Fab.com subscribers at 10:45 a.m. Eastern / 7:45 Pacific, and then our sales start 15 minutes later. Quantities are limited and prices are far below market. A rush ensues. Here is a chart of hourly revenue. This picture is… The data these guys (fab.com) are sharing is amazing. Go read their other posts for...
Jun 22nd
3 notes
Jun 21st
1 note
“…credit unions explored how they could blend the excitement of the lottery...”
– Fascinating use of gamification in personal savings. Credit unions launch a savings lottery, and everyone hits the jackpot
Jun 19th
3 notes
It's the Apps, Stupid!
appstorehq: This week we pulled the data for app installs for a randomly-selected set of 5,000 anonymized users of AppESP. These users had installed a total of 246,458 apps on their Android phones, or 49.3 apps per user. We wanted to understand how many distinct apps were installed by these Android users, as well as the distribution of number of installations per app. The results were pretty...
Jun 17th
6 notes
Jun 13th
Jun 8th
A slightly different Memorial Day
Those who know me know I love the fact that I come from a family with one side of New York Jews and the other side of Brits. My Mom was born in England and moved to the states (after a stint in Canada) around the time she was entering high school. While much of my Dad’s side’s history is somewhat lost (through likely name changes, language barriers, the Holocaust, etc), it’s a...
Jun 2nd
2 tags
Jun 2nd
1 note
May 2011
1 post
May 23rd
1 note
April 2011
3 posts
Keep The Ride Alive Day: A Day to Recognize Your...
On April 18, 1775, Paul Revere and other riders set out to warn farmers and villagers throughout America that the time had come to fight for freedom. As individuals, these riders combined to help launch the American quest for independence- an independence that gave each of us the opportunity and the freedom to engage in our own individual rides to make a difference. So on April 18th, we...
Apr 18th
“I am supposed to think that [Tiger Wood is] a poor role model — that...”
– Bill Simmons, The Gift of Tiger Woods. (emphasis mine.)
Apr 15th
Apr 7th
March 2011
2 posts
Mar 14th
Mar 10th
February 2011
8 posts
Feb 26th
22 notes
Feb 25th
Feb 19th
Feb 19th
Feb 15th
Feb 12th
“Today, Americans still don’t love Washington, but they do want it to work....”
– What Politicians Can Learn From Chrysler Ads - The Note (via apsies)
Feb 8th
34 notes
Feb 7th
129 notes