More and more of my work with startups is over in the so-called emerging markets. These are countries not known for being well run nor known for have an efficient and successful way of collecting taxes. That said, a lot of taxes go unpaid here in the U.S. too. One lesson on how to fix this problem comes from Taiwan, one of the Asian Tigers, four success stories in global economics that will...
One of my hobbies is reading books on economics. (People do call me Luni after all). What I’ve learned from all this reading is that some economists can explain how an economy actually works, but have very odd, very wrong ideas on how should work. Case in point today is The Production of Money by Ann Pettifor. The book explains how central banks don’t actually print money, that...
What do David Bowie, Jazz, and an unplayable piano have to do with the power of business accelerators? All get you out of your comfort zone, and that seems to be a secret to success. This episode of Tim Harford’s Cautionary Tales explains how. Listen to the episode first. My analysis is that one of the powers of an in-residency, in-person business accelerator is that it gets entrepreneurs...
When you send an email, you have the choice of putting recipients in three places: to, cc, and bcc. Here’s what bcc is useful for… There is a bit of untaught business email culture that not everyone seems to have noticed or practices. But should. When someone makes an email introduction to you, the best practice is to (a) Reply All, (b) move them into the bcc: line, and (c) thank the...
