(This is in response to Jeff Bezos’ call for feedback/ideas on his philanthropy) Jeff, If you want to immediately help a few homeless in Seattle, do that. But what about the other 10,000 homeless in Seattle and the other tens of thousands of homeless in other American cities? And what about the billion others who live a life with even less food, less shelter, and less chance of a...
We are told that employees (labor) works for management, that management works for the board, and that boards works for shareholders, with shareholder value being the ultimate goal of business. We’re told a lot of things that are simply not true. That story is common, but not universal. It’s not required by law. It’s just tradition. Another pattern is the employee-owned...
Sure, once you are a successful entrepreneur, life can be fun. But don’t forget to have fun along the way too. Startups are intense. If you pick a startup solving a real problem, it’ll pull you along, rather than require you to push it to the finish line.
Meanwhile… a fun video from two highly successful entrepreneurs:
When ideas are 100 years old, we tend to not only not know their origins, but also think of those ideas have been around forever. So it is with the large, organized philanthropic organizations today known as private foundations. The first of these was the Carnegie Corporation of New York, established in 1911, by Andrew Carnegie, who invented the idea of giving away one’s fortune. That...
I’ve been quoted in a new book, Crazy Good Advice, by podcaster Tony Loyd. You can buy the book as part of his StartSomeGood campaign for Social Entrepreneur. startsomegood.com/socentradio [hr] We need your help to bring Social Entrepreneur to the radio After 150 episodes, we’re at an exciting tipping point with the podcast Social Entrepreneur. We have the opportunity to produce a...
Since 2012 we’ve been waiting for equity crowdfunding. Five years later, we have it, but it’s not working. Back in 2014 we managed to pass the Washington Jobs Act. Three years later, its never been used, caught in the trap of overly onerous regulations. Finally in late 2015 the SEC made it through their rules process for the national JOBS Act, and companies have been using those...
Last week I posted a TL;DR blog post on why the Fledge accelerator works so well at helping startups succeed. In short, a few key elements of its program, along an enormous number of tiny details learned through iteration and experimentation. This post is inspired from the multitude of conversations I have with people and organizations who want to help startups and who often have an idea on a...
It’s good to be out of debt… even when that means finishing David Graeber’s Debt: The First 5,000 Years. I had started on this book before diving into the rabbit hole of The Wealth of Nations, Communist Manifesto, Capitalist Manifesto, Divine Right of Capital, Et al, revisiting Debt’s 400 pages on occasion to clean my mental palate between other books. Debt is another...
Great advice from an entrepreneur who has built an amazing interrelated set of companies: [hr] “Jeff, what does Day 2 look like?” That’s a question I just got at our most recent all-hands meeting. I’ve been reminding people that it’s Day 1 for a couple of decades. I work in an Amazon building named Day 1, and when I moved buildings, I took the name with me. I spend time thinking about this topic...
Two economics books, both anthologies, both edited by Mariana Mazzucato, both too brief to make their arguments convincing, and neither providing much about income and wealth inequality. As an impact investor, I had high hopes for Mission-Oriented Finance for Innovation, but like a lot of English it seems the term “mission-oriented” has multiple meanings. This book can be summarized...
