thoughts
Corporate Innovation Approach
None of the successful company CEOs I’ve worked with seek out innovation for innovation’s sake. They are after something else instead. In an uncertain environment, with pressure to grow their business, how should they evaluate opportunities? The last 20 years have left us with new tools and frameworks to evaluate opportunities for business growth. You probably […]
Calculating Critical Mass
You’ve probably heard the term “critical mass” tossed around when discussing startups (especially ones like social media products). The term is usually either used in the form of “we reached critical mass and then things just took off” or “we don’t have critical mass and we can’t grow…” But what is critical mass? How do […]
The Most Common Problems (University Student Version)
I just finished teaching my tenth college course over three and a half school years. Across those 10 courses, I’ve had approximately 350 students in my classes. During and after every semester I try new formats and reflect on what I should change, based on what’s working and who happens to be in each class. […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]