After enjoying most of Capital in the 21st Century I couldn’t pass up reading what is clearly supposed to be a counter-argument: Anti-Picketty. It’s not one, but twenty-four arguments against Picketty’s conclusions and claims, by more than twenty-four economists and think tankers. Despite 24 authors, this books is less than a half the length of Capital and despite a lot of...
Entrepreneurs (and investors) too often conflate risks and uncertainty. It is often said that entrepreneurs are those people who are not risk averse. As an entrepreneur, that has always felt wrong. I’ve never jumped from an airplane. Never would go rock climbing without a rope. I once owned a motorcycle, but not before taking the Washington State safety course. No, it’s not about...
Being an entrepreneur is hard. The ups and down of startup life are far larger and stronger than most other jobs. Working with entrepreneurs isn’t much better, as the empathy is almost are wary. I’ve worked with dozens upon dozens of entrepreneurs at Fledge and dozens more at PGS and elsewhere. Most handle these stresses in stride. Sure, they have some sleepless nights and...
I learned to code 35 years ago. For 30 years, I self identified as a techie. I still follow technology, but what I’ve learned in my greying-hair years is that technology is a tool. One of many. One that is generally best applied judiciously, if at all. Meanwhile, the ongoing excitement about technology makes entrepreneurs think otherwise. This excitement goes back over 100 years, to...
From The Wealth of Nations to The Divide, I’ve spent months with my nose in a book looking for answers to income and wealth inequality. Meanwhile, down on a trip to Lima in Peru, simply walking around answered one key question that keeps going unanswered by the writers, “Where does inequality lead us to?“ When that question comes up in my circle of friends, the conversation...
It has been four months since Debt: The First 5,000 Years, and my quest to find answers to inequality. In that time I came across The Divide, by Jason Hickel, which claimed in the subtitle “A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and it’s Solutions” to provide not just problems but also solutions. That jumped it to the top of my growing stack of books. The first two thirds of the...
Republished from rankandfilemag.com/first-12-months-as-an-entrepreneur Rank & File turned one-year-old [back in June]. It was quite a milestone for me as a first-time entrepreneur and so I wanted to do a bit of journaling here to document the biggest, most important lessons I have learned during the last 12 months, so I won’t ever forget what the beginning felt like and taught me. Here are...
In October of 1929, the public stock market crashed. Black Tuesday. Bad day on Wall Street. At least for the 16% of rich Americans who had investments in those public companies. As often happens after a financial crisis, the federal government decided to step in to protect a re-occurrence. The result of that, was the Securities Act of 1933, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and the...
Finding a great name for your startup is a challenge. The following 10 minute video walks you through the process to not only finding a name you love, but also the steps you need to take to ensure that name can be found by others.
Five years ago, while still working on the business plan that was to become Fledge, I helped run a weekend event for “social entrepreneurs” called #SocEnt Weekend. From that came the following video with Brian Howe, co-founder of what was to become Impact Hub Seattle. Reminiscing is often fun. More so when we can look back five years to see what we thought might happen in ten years...
