Speaking of Seattle, living here often feels like being in a forgotten room in a house, or off in a corner of an otherwise busy meeting room. Seattle is a city that many people have heard of, but it’s the 15th largest city in the U.S. and (counting the metropolitan area) around the 50th most populous city in the world. But in terms of geography, it is literally off in the corner of the...
A few times per year I’m reminded that what I do for work is completely unrelated to what I studied in college. Or at least it seems that way on the surface. I studied Mathematics and Computer Science for my Bachelors degree, then Computer Science and Engineering for my Masters. I’m thus trained as a reductionist, a logician, a bit of engineering, and a lot of focus on proving how...
From the inside of the startup process, as the entrepreneur, the pass to success seems rather simple. You’ve got a great idea. It’s obvious that it will work. It’s frustrating that others are not simply following along. Reality is that entrepreneurship is complicated. Few ideas truly are great. Most startups fail. Sometimes analogous situations make this far more obvious. ...
Starting startups is hard. It’s a process full of Catch-22’s. But it doesn’t end there. If you successfully navigate the path from idea to startup to revenues, the next stage is just as tricky, just as difficult, and full of new issues to overcome to reach the next milestone, profits. First-time entrepreneurs don’t realize (or know) that these stages exist, let alone...
Thanks to the Angel Capital Association the so-called “99 investor problem” is sufficiently solved for small seed funds. Specifically, S.2155 was passed by Congress and signed into law, which amongst a series of changes to financial regulations included: (Sec. 504) The bill amends the Investment Company Act of 1940 to exempt from the definition of an “investment company,”...
One of my favorite topics to teach is how to name your startup. Naming can be difficult. Naming can be tricky. You not only need to think up a great name, but you also then need to worry about whether you can own the matching domain name, the Twitter handle, the Facebook page, etc. But even more important than those, you need to worry about what else is in the search results when you Google...
Change happens. Inevitably. Change happens a bit every day, usually without you noticing. Then one day, you look up and the world was not as you remember. This happens in all sorts of areas of life, and this slow series of changes can greatly affect your business in a multitude of ways. The most obvious is when the competition has changed their pricing, or when they’ve added a...
It was 21 years ago that Eric Raymond wrote an essay about a cathedral and a bazaar, explaining to the world why the messy, open, chaotic format of a bazaar would be the better way to develop software vs. the centrally designed and organized form of cathedral building. He was more right than wrong, as even the centralized cathedrals of Google and Amazon are based on and contributors to the Open...
Ray Dalio is the founder, co-Chief Investment Officer and co-Chairman of Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund. He’s also the author of the #1 NYTimes Bestseller, Principles: Life and Work and has summarized that advice into the following 30 minute video series. (Total running time: 31 minutes) 1. The Call to Adventure 2. Embrace Reality and Deal With It 3. The Five Step...
It’s not just me who appreciates when “timeless things” are not as old as we think. Did you know that the pro/con list is less than 250 years old? That we know who invented it? That it was none other than polymath and U.S. founding father Benjamin Franklin? Beyond learning these bits of trivia, and beyond the lovely feeling of confirmation bias when others point out when we...
