Archive for 2014

In the equation of entrepreneurship: Ideas are multipliers. If you don’t multiply something by an idea, you get zero. Execution, money, effort, marketing; these can all be multiplied by ideas. But if you don’t have a base value to multiply by, just having an idea will always give you a value of zero.

You only wish you were as brilliantly stupid as me!

What is it about a brand new pencil art eraser with its square sides and it has just been unwrapped and is ready to use that makes it so appealing? Or am I just being weird? No really, just run your fingers along that edge, doesn’t that feel awesome?  

Let me guess. You’re looking for a tech co-founder and an investor. Your startup is in stealth. And you cannot tell me anything until I sign an NDA. This encapsulates 90% of the conversations I have with entrepreneurs. I know because I keep statistics. Entrepreneurs that have nothing are not among the clueful.  

Getting someone on TaskRabbit to make a delivery + Krispy Kreme open late = dangerous combination!

Ooh! Alibaba.com has strings of 100,000 micro-LEDs for about $400. I think I might buy a roll of those.

Potential Client: “So what kind of projects do you want to work on where you’d be willing to give us a deep discount?” Me: “Interesting problems where I learn something new.” Potential Client: “Well I guess you could learn NodeJS or something on your own time, would that be interesting enough?” WTF!?! *click*

Why don’t I return your calls after you reach out to me? Because… you’re a waste of time. The entirety of the business relationship as you see it is: 1. You want to sell me something 2. You want me to give you something for free that will take hours, days, weeks or months of…

You’re interviewing them as much as they are interviewing you.

Friend who weighs 340lb (145Kg), eats nothing but take-out junk food and drinks nothing but soda doesn’t understand when I tune out his dietary advice concerning the bottle of sparkling mineral water I am drinking. Apparently this stuff will give me cancer and put me in an early grave.

Using the sharpest knives known to man to make lunch, nary a scratch. Cut myself on the cardboard box that dispenses cellophane (Saranwrap).

You’ll rarely see an egregiously large red flag. Look for little red flags. Little red flags will tell you what that person will be like to work with.

Givers and takers. There are more of the latter than there are of the former.

Wife: “Why are you walking around with tinsel in your hair.” Me: “Because I want to feel pretty.”

Lunch… the meal that comes immediately after I wake up.

Exploring. Dreaming. Discovering.

Wanting me to sign an NDA before we’ve even been introduced tells me you are a joke.

A long time ago… Old Client: “Why do we need to pay for half of the project up front, don’t you trust us?” Me: “You paid your last invoice two years late. Eventually I had to send it to collections and the courts put a lien against your business.” Old Client: “Yeah, but that’s still…

Success = hard work. But most everyone insists on working hard for someone else and then cannot figure out why they aren’t a success.