July 2009
2 posts
Marketvania
There are just two things you just have to do to get the most out of a trip to a foreign land (be it a country or the world of social media).
Learn how to speak the language.
Always hire a good guide.
You might wonder why you need both. Wouldnʼt one or the other suffice? You can muddle through with one. But the experience is much better with both.
If you just learn to speak the language, you...
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“Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous ...”
– Peter Drucker
June 2009
16 posts
Designing for Sign-Up (Presentation Slides) →
Chartered Corporations
“Back in the good ol’ days—I mean as far back as the late middle ages—people just did business with each other. As traveling got easier and people got access to new resources and markets, a middle class of merchants and small businesspeople started to get wealthy. So wealthy that they threatened the power of the aristocracy. Monarchs needed to come up with a way to stabilize their own wealth...
Comment on What Drives Consumer Adoption
In my opinion it is: - sexyness to get people to first use - socialness to get them addicted - usefulness to keep them
Flo Pötscher on Fred Wilson’s Blog Post
100 Most Mentioned Brands on Twitter →
How Obama Used the Science of Change
“Barack Obama’s deputy field director Mike Moffo passed along guidelines and a sample script from the Consortium of Behavioral Scientists, a secret advisory group of 29 of the nation’s leading behaviorists.
The key guideline was a simple message: “A Record Turnout Is Expected.” That’s because studies by psychologist Robert Cialdini and other group members had...
“People still remember what it was like to discover something and be moved by it....”
– Ethan Kaplan, VP Technology at Warner Music
Rousseau on Happiness
“If there is a state where the soul can find a resting-place secure enough to establish itself and concentrate its entire being there, with no need to remember the past or reach into the future, where time is nothing to it, where the present runs on indefinitely but this duration goes unnoticed, with no sign of the passing of time, and no other feeling of deprivation or enjoyment, pleasure...
“My mother and father thought I had lost my mind, because I had this great job at...”
– Charles Geschke, cofounder of Adobe Systems on quitting his job to start his own company.
HBR: The Definitive Guide to Recruiting →
Seven steps of the full recruitment spectrum:
anticipating the need for new hires
specifying the job
developing a pool of candidates
assessing the candidates
closing the deal
integrating the newcomer
reviewing the effectiveness of the hiring process
Google CEO Eric Schmidt on the Long Tail
“I would like to tell you that the Internet has created such a level playing field that the long tail1 is absolutely the place to be—that there’s so much differentiation, there’s so much diversity, so many new voices. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. What really happens is something called a power law, with the property that a small number of things are very highly concentrated and...
May 2009
29 posts
“I have plenty of opinions about business models, but to me, the best business...”
– Paul Tyma, The Young Man’s Business Model
The Man Who Could Have Been Richer than Bill Gates →
Gary Kildall became a bitter man as the years went by. He was haunted by the IBM deal. It grated on him that Bill Gates was being given the credit for his invention. He was constantly asked if he really “went flying” the day that IBM came to call.
“The Flash of Insight, The Grand Gesture, The Rousing Speech, The Last Straw. All...”
– Michael Steger, Colorado State University (via Adventures in Capitalism)
“We have 19th Century intellectual property laws and 20th Century business models...”
– The Pirate’s Dilemma author Matt Mason
WatchHarper Reed (Threadless) and Jason Fried (37 Signals) speak at the MIT Enterprise Forum in Chicago about using Web 2.0 to improve your company. Moderated by Howard Tullman of Flashpoint Academy.
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“The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product...”
– Peter Drucker
Personal Circles
Community by the Numbers: Personal Circles — Christopher Allen explains the different types of relationships in our life and the maximum of each type the average person can maintain. Obviously there’s variance in these numbers depending on the person.
Support Circle - People you turn to in moments of severe emotional or financial distress: 3-5
Sympathy Circle - People you turn to for...
“This downturn will be marked in history as the time where many of the business...”
– Fred Wilson, Bits of Destruction
WatchCharlie Rose: An Interview with Malcolm Gladwell
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Control of Attention is the Ultimate Individual...
“Yet, I can’t help but feel that Gladwell and others who share his emphasis are getting swept away by the coolness of the new discoveries. They’ve lost sight of the point at which the influence of social forces ends and the influence of the self-initiating individual begins.
Most successful people begin with two beliefs: the future can be better than the present, and I have the power to...
“The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us...”
– Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture
The Long Tail?
More than 10 million of the 13 million tracks available on the internet failed to find a single buyer last year. In other words, a near 90% of digital tracks released in 2008 didn’t sell a copy.
“80 per cent of all revenue came from around 52,000 tracks and only 173,000 albums were bought out of the 1.23 million available albums.”
This poses a challenge to ‘The Long Tail Theory’ which...
“So maybe a recession is a good time to start a startup. It’s hard to say whether...”
– Paul Graham on Why to Start a Startup in a Bad Economy
Secrets of the 2008 Campaign →
I finally got around to reading Newsweek’s 7 part election run down. A fantastic piece of journalism and a major reason why in depth reporting is so important for democracy.
Hire Managers of One
“When you’re hiring, seek out people who are managers of one.
What’s that mean? A manager of one is someone who comes up with their own goals and executes them. They don’t need heavy direction. They don’t need daily check-ins. They do what a manager would do — set the tone, assign items, determine what needs to get done, etc. — but they do it by themselves and for themselves.
These people...
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Only in folklore...
…does the world beat a path to the inventor of the better mousetrap. In September 1895, the world simply shrugged when Armat and Jenkins publicly unveiled their new Phantascope in a corner of the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta. It was the first film machine to produce bright pictures and smooth-appearing actions. A local paper gave it brief mention, but only few...
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increasing your own chances at personal success...
Practicing constantly Gladwell estimates that, in order to become world class at something, one needs to invest 10,000 hours of practice. That amounts to two hours of practice a day for roughly fifteen years - a pretty tall order, indeed.
Listening and interpersonal communication Being able to pay attention to what others have to say - actuallylistening and incorporating their statements into...
The Difference Between a Job and a Calling
The distinction is artificial but worth drawing. A job will never satisfy you all by itself, but it will afford you security and the chance to pursue an exciting and fulfilling life outside of your work. A calling is an activity you find so compelling that you wind up organizing your entire self around it — often to the detriment of your life outside of it. There’s no shame in either....
“I have never thought of writing for reputation and honor. What I have in my...”
– Beethoven
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April 2009
34 posts
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Meaning
“Meaning is not something you stumble across, like the answer to a riddle or the prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of your own talent and understanding, out of the things you believe in, out of the things and people you...
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10 Questions for Nolan Bushnell (founder of Atari)
1. What’s your favorite part of a typical day?
My shower in the early morning. It’s this time of luxury and of solitude. It’s where I plan all the wonderful things I am going to do for the day.
2. What part of your job would you gladly give up?
The same part of my job I always give up: raising money and dealing with shareholders and accountants and attorneys. My sweet spot is...
