Some of the best aphorisms are misquotes of misquotes, but end up popular because they are honed down to as few simple words as can be. One such aphorism seems fitting in this moment in time, or at least a variation on the theme. It Always Seems Impossible Until It’s Done.Nelson Mandela, sort of, see quoteinvestigator.com/2016/01/05/done Three months ago, a global pandemic was...
Some people live in the past, with nostalgia as their favorite feeling. Some people live in the future, often with pessimistic dread or optimistic utopian glee. Times like these are a good moment to take time to live in the present. Enjoy a sunbreak (as we call it in Seattle when a few minutes of sunshine breaks through the clouds). Enjoy making waffles with your child (which they are home from...
I love hidden assumptions. Ideas and services we take for granted. Take, for example, HTTPS. The entire commercial Web has moved from http:// to https://. We did that because it is more secure. And it is. But it’s also way way way more complicated to set up. I’m not going to try an explain how it works. I have a B.S. in Mathematics/Computer Science from a top 5 university plus a M.S...
I read the news every day. It’s an age-old habit that goes back to the days before the internet, before 24/7 cable news, back when news was at least a day old, if not a week old or a month old and delivered as ink on paper. In today’s 24/7/365 world where hour-old news can be old news it is often difficult to remember what happened a week ago, or from a tidbit in a story today, from...
Three days later, and three days further into researching the likely scenarios, and we’re at the point in the Covid-19 outbreak equivalent to Apollo 13 where the famous line was spoken, “Houston, we have a problem.” As of today, Monday, March 9, 2020, there are 162 confirmed cases of Covid-19 with 22 dead. Plus positive cases in every neighboring county. Simple math…...
Watching the quarantine of Wuhan was one thing. Hearing about the first case of Covid-19 30 miles from my home from someone returning from China another. Then came six deaths 20 miles away, a school shutting down for a deep clean 15 miles away, and Amazon and Facebook employees with confirmed cases 10 miles away. Anyone in Seattle who isn’t already prepared for a citywide shutdown within...
Browsing the tech news I came across Fax on the beach: The story of the audacious, visionary, totally calamitous iPad of the ’90s and had flashbacks from my very first startup back in the early 1990s. This is a great example of how timing is so key to the success or failure of a startup. Timing, as the EO was 15 years too soon. They got the form factor correct, as the EO 880 is the same...
The title of the post is the first line in a (likely misquoted) quote: It Ain’t What You Don’t Know That Gets You Into Trouble.It’s What You Know for Sure That Just Ain’t So.(maybe) Mark Twain, but probably not. This quote shows up in The Big Short book and in the opening of The Big Short movie. It fits that story, as well as startup life. It reminds me of an old Fred Wilson blog post: Strong...
After finishing The Big Short book I had to re-watch the movie. This time not only was I watching for signs of purposeful fraud vs. emergent fraud, but trying to tease out the difference between incompetence, fraud, and something else that is something between ignorance and stupidity and folly. A real world example of this showed up in my life a week ago. I’m the Treasurer of my homeowner...
Halfway through reading The Big Short, I’m stuck wondering how after trillions of dollars of damage to the financial system, not only did no one go to jail, but no one was even brought in front of a jury. I think I figured out why. To explain, I have to go back to Adam Smith and The Wealth of Nations. Smith’s core argument is that the amazingly efficient system later dubbed Capitalism...
