Archive for 2015

Customers crave acknowledgement. Build your business around acknowledging your customers and you will never want for them.

Most people who claim to be a thought leader are usually the ones that are lead by others’ thoughts.

Jingoism doesn’t scale. Eventually you run out of the minority of “them” when everyone becomes a minority.

If you cannot afford to pay for my $9 salad on a three hour lunch “freebie mentoring session”, you probably cannot afford to take action on the advice I just gave you. Just saying…

You want to know why I don’t wear a watch? Because a watch tells you when it is time to start and when it is time to quit. As an entrepreneur you should’ve started yesterday and you never quit. It sounds trite, but it’s true. There is no time to quit as an entrepreneur. You…

Assume your customers are smarter than you and they always will be.

My cat dozing on the pillow next to my head as I lay on the futon writing code. And she lets out the biggest, stinkiest, foulest, rapidly expanding gas emission imaginable. Holy Cow this thing stripped all the greasy fingerprints from the touch screen on my laptop.

No matter how polite, generous, grateful or thoughtful you are, someone, somewhere, will take offense to you.

If you are an online marketing expert and out of work for an extended period of time, I just assume you are lousy at marketing.

Carefully guard all of your social capital you have accumulated , invest it wisely, and it will pay dividends. Frittering away your social capital on someone with toxic social credit is never a good idea. You can be generous and make a huge donation of your social capital, paying it forward to the next generation…

Key phrase: “We move fast here” = “I have no idea how to manage but by golly I’m going to do a lot of it!”

Entrepreneurship: The one profession where you don’t get an award just for showing up. You don’t even need to show up.

Rejoice in the gorillas that enter your domain, they’ve just validated your good taste and confirmed that what you’re eating is good food. It’s a business allegory, if you don’t get it, you aren’t ready.

Get invited to connect by a fake LinkedIn user whose profile picture appears on a number of Russian camgirl and dating websites. Automated script warns mutual connections of a fake profile. A week later receive an irate email from one of the mutual connections stating that it is highly inappropriate I am sending out links…

This is going to get a bit Jaden Smith, but bear with me. We eat food because of flavour, because of texture, because of smell (core mechanics, metagame, base setting, et al). But we are initially attracted to food because of how it looks (story & art). We “eat food” and “play games” with our…

Off to pay some friends at eBay a visit. Last day for a few of them as they are departing to launch their new start-up. Which is interesting because when they joined, eBay was the hot start-up to work for (they’ve been there a long time.) Also, if you are around downtown San Jose later…

How awesome is my life? Not at all. I spend most of my days either spent in executive business meetings or at a keyboard writing code. And yet, when I look back on the week, I realise I had more fun and more adventures than most of my peers. What’s holding you back from a…

Had a friend over for dinner. Rigatoni pasta (just regular boxed pasta from the store) and a bolognese sauce (homemade). The hand crank pasta maker is out on the marble prep table. Apparently this is the best tasting, homemade pasta, no, not the sauce, the pasta, that my friend has ever had. I feel like…

People want to be validated. If your product or service can do that for them, you can charge whatever price you feel like.

You have social capital and clueless people are always trying to spend it for you. “Can you introduce me to investors that will finance me?” “Can you introduce me to other engineers that will work for free?” “Can you get me a job at that company I am completely unqualified for or incapable of performing?”