Monopolies I Have Known
In light of Mark Zuckerberg’s Congressional testimony (and Facebook’s own natural monopoly) I reflected on some of the monopolies I’ve known. Given what Facebook does I focused on communications companies, which historically were somewhat close to what social networks of today provide. AT&T’s government granted monopoly We trace this back over 100 years to the Kingsbury […]
Decision Speed and Feedback Loops
Depending on your work and life, you will have different situations in which to make decisions and to learn from them. Some of this is related to the speed at which you make decisions (lots of small ones versus few large ones) and the quality and also speed of the feedback you receive. In my roles with […]
What Is Value?
The Fundacio Joan Miró is located quite a ways up a hill in Barcelona. Years ago I was dropped off there by a cousin who, knowing I had no phone, didn’t return for 10 hours. I was ready to leave after 30 minutes. The artist Joan Miró wasn’t even close to full-day interesting to me when I walked in. But […]
Corporate entrepreneurship workshop
I’m running an experimental workshop on applying entrepreneurial startup principles in a corporate environment. Over the past 6 years I’ve led 3 startup accelerators around the world, advised hundreds of companies, and helped them test new products, improve customer retention, raise capital, and more. For the last 4 years I’ve also been a professor at […]
Prediction Exercise – Music Industry
There’s a thought exercise that I like to do personally and now also when teaching entrepreneurship. I find it helpful to think through the past and to try to predict the future. Call it prediction practice. Yes, I do think you can predict the future with general accuracy. Often (99%+ of the time) when I […]
Video: Building Companies While Running Startup Accelerators on Three Continents
Video of a recent talk I gave on how building multiple startup accelerators changed the way I work with companies.
Questions I Have About Autonomous Vehicles
With yesterday’s death of a pedestrian by one of Uber’s self-driving cars, I’m writing this post. I’ve been thinking about these issues for a while but ended up putting the post up quickly. I’ll probably edit in the near future as I learn more. When it comes to upcoming big changes to a big part […]
Once in a Blue Apron
After a couple years of talking about Blue Apron in my classes and accelerators I thought I’d write of those thoughts down. Blue Apron is the meal delivery company that everyone loves to hate. It’s not without good reasons. Their stock price is currently $2.15 (it was $10 on opening day). We’ve seen their high CAC […]
If You Must Crawl Before You Walk Why Do So Few Do It?
It’s a common phrase, “you must crawl before you walk.” We say it because that’s what we see babies do as they mature. We then apply the same logic to businesses and founders. But is the saying true? Turns out, many babies go from some other type of movement (sliding, rolling etc) and straight into walking. […]
The Disposable Startup Redux
A few years ago I wrote a piece called The Disposable Startup. The piece was an appeal to let young startup founders explore and have fun building new things (like the college bands I remember), rather than see a need to provide adult supervision and oversight into every aspect (like college today). This is a […]
