February 2012
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The Blog of Steve Schwartz: No One Knows What the... →
Be sure to check out my follow-up to this post, clarifying and addressing a few misinterpretations that have been making their way around the internet.
Feeling Like a Fraud
Have you ever received praise, or even an award, for being great at something despite having no clue what you’re…
January 2012
10 posts
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WatchHow an Injured NFL Hopeful Made a Fortune on Linkedin Instead featuring Lewis Howes.
via Mashable
Pretty inspiring story of how Howes leveraged relationship building and his focus on pouring out goodwill and value to create a business. I would say the ubiquitous internet connections and the rise of social media tools made sales and marketing more down-to-earth and based on listening instead of...
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WatchI love this talk by Tina Roth Eisenberg! Her tips are really great and I love side projects too!
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“…when Deresiewicz writes that our generation has “no anger, no edge, no...”
– From Thoughts on Reluctant Entrepreneurship, by Danny Alexander. This is in response to this article. via @SSIReview
I agree with Danny here in that there is plenty of anger, edge, and ego. A lot of people in my generation felt screwed over by the economy and our education system. Many of us,...
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Nathaniel Whittemore: Flying Cars, Mega Funds, and... →
nlwinsf:
Yesterday, I published the first half of a list of trends that I believe will shape venture investing in the upcoming year. Here’s the second half of that list.
6. There will be more new alternatives to venture financing for different types of businesses
The trends towards…
I agree with #6; Democratizing funding for startups will be huge in the coming years. There is already...
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Nathaniel Whittemore: The Ten Trends That Will... →
nlwinsf:
Sean Parker (Founders Fund) and Shervin Pishevar (Menlo Ventures) at Le Web.
Nothing says the end of December like prognostications for the new year. In 2011, the breakneck pace of early stage investing continued to grow, with new market segments like “collaborative consumption” (think…
hmm… implications for StartSomeGood.
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KEEPS: 20 Rules for Formulating Knowledge →
keepsdiary:
image via time.com
I’m sure I’m not alone in taking the start of the new year as a jumping off point in learning (or relearning) things. As seen in my last post, I’m pushing myself to really get better with the guitar.
I recently came across a great article on formulating knowledge from…
December 2011
6 posts
Start Some Good: The Blog: Interview with One... →
startsomegood:
Rey Faustino is the founder of One Degree, an organization that aims to innovate school systems in low-income communities through a network of poverty-fighting supporters. Just a few weeks ago, Rey and his team led One Degree through a largely successful campaign on StartSomeGood….
I love One Degree’s mission! Please support them if you feel the same!
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Juventas Fugit: How to Pitch Irrational Investors →
jfugit:
Venture capitalists are not rational: you have to be at least partly insane to believe you can pick the next Google, Fedex, Netflix etc. There are a lot of great resources out there to help startups create pitch decks for investors, but almost all miss the bigger picture: you have to emotionally…
If you are thinking about pitching a VC…hear it from a VC!
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The Philosopher's Guide to Startups: On Quitting →
mattangriffel:
Two weeks ago to this day, I quit my job to start my own company. It’s been one of the scariest, strangest, and most exciting things I’ve ever done, so I wanted to write a post to anyone who’s thinking of doing the same. Specifically, I want to help a few of you get a sense of what it’s like…
If you’re thinking of quitting your job to pursue entrepreneurial...
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Good Ideas: Start 2012 with a Good Workshop →
goodworkgroup:
Here at Good Work Group, we like to start off the New Year thinking about opportunities and growth, both personal and business.
For example: We’ve dusted off our snow shoes and polished our boots in hopes we’ll spur the snow gods to shake the frozen dust from their feathers and give us a…
Dear Twin Citian-
Good Work Group is simply awesome! If you would like your...
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How to Make an Impact During the First Month of... →
Via @ericstromberg
Here is my interpretation:
No one is going to tell you what to do.
Get off your ass. Find out what needs to get done. Do it yourself.
Don’t assume. Test out your ideas. JFDI.
See what works, what doesn’t. Improve upon what works. Write it down. Share it.
Record your observations about the company’s strategy when you have fresh eyes. See if you were right...
November 2011
7 posts
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What swimming taught me about prototyping
I swam competitively for 13 years. I had some talent for the sport and I worked extremely hard but that’s not enough to become an All-American.
I was fortunate and fast enough to be put on a national-qualifying relay that went on to place top 8. I got a pretty sweet trophy out of it. In part, I owe my achievement to my teammates - without them, I wouldn’t have gotten there. But...
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The money, social change, and judging the book by...
If Impact was a person, she would be running around with Harry Potter’s Cloak of Invisibility. Anyone who is working for social change is chasing her but of course she’s hard to find. Could this elusive Siren be a mirage of sorts?
I recently wrote about investing in arts, design, and culture to revitalize struggling cities. It is obviously a complex topic and my casual analysis...
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Can Investing in Art, Design, and Culture Revive...
Last week, I read an article on Grist on such topic and this caught my attention:
But if the goal is to strengthen local economies, are these people wise to throw their money at artists? Wouldn’t foundations and government agencies be better off putting their money toward industries that create real jobs?
So what are real jobs anyways? Accountant? Personal finance manager? Machinist?...
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Revenue Model Innovation
Want To Upend An Entire Industry? Change Its Revenue Stream
Revenue Model Innovation: How to Generate Sales in a World of Free
I thought these two articles were pretty interesting since in a startup, maintaining and creating new revenue streams are of utmost importance. What’s missing and would be interesting to follow up is the context needed to make a new business model succeed....
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Translating fun and irreverence into funds for a...
Moustache Madness: Movember Emphasizes Fun, Not Guilt, To Raise Millions For Cancer Programs
In college, we had a no-shave January contest to see who could grow the thickest beard. It was fun seeing someone with really gnarly facial hair, although his girlfriend probably wasn’t too fond of it. (I couldn’t really grow anything on my face if I’d tried.)
What’s interesting...
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Thought You Should See This: GE's Beth Comstock on... →
thoughtyoushouldseethis:
Beth Comstock also co-chaired the Design at Scale event, and she gave a 15 minute snapshot presentation on the importance of design to her in her role as CMO of General Electric. Talk about an eloquent advocate for design. Beth is someone who understands the power of design at a…
It’s interesting to see how design and business have been successfully...
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“Prototyping is a collaborative, improvisational process.”
– Jake Barton, founder and president of New York design firm, Local Projects, opened the two day Design at Scale conference, organized by the DMI (and of which I was co-chair.) He showed a number of the firm’s projects, including Change By Us, an idea-sharing/matching initiative launched in New York...
October 2011
8 posts
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Start Some Good: The Blog: Book Review: We First →
startsomegood:
Editor’s Note: below is a review of the Social Enterprise Book Club book for October, We First: How brands & consumers use social media to build a better world by Simon Mainwaring. We’re excited to by hosting Mr. Mainwaring for an open conference call on November 8 to discuss his…
I need to read this! Looks very interesting.
This Startup Costs Me Thousands Of Dollars...
parislemon:
…simply because they didn’t exist yet.
Codecademy.
About 6 years ago, I decided I was going to go back to school to learn how to code. I had very casually dabbled with some simple stuff ranging from HTML to C++, but decided I needed a more formal setting to truly learn. I was wrong.
It’s not that I didn’t learn anything going back to school — I did. But I was wrong that I needed...
Robert Collings # Global Creative Artists: Context... →
robertcollings:
Two of my favourite, long-running TV shows ended this year: HBO’s Entourage and the BBC’s Spooks. I recently re-watched the first series of both programs and was struck by the vibrancy and intensity of each. Sadly though, for me, this had been lost somewhere in the journey of eight and ten years…
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Minnesota Rising 2011 Un/Conference: Building A...
So I’ve been helping plan for this un/conference and it’s happening soon! (October 22)
This is such a great opportunity for people to gather together to engage in conversations about the future of Minnesota. Having the opportunity to co-create a shared vision for the future is immensely powerful considering how ineffective our government has been.
I’ve always believed that no...
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“If you want to redraw the map, you cannot know the right thing to do in advance....”
– Jesper Christiansen on policy-making
September 2011
12 posts
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Jonathan Stark's Social Experiment With...
Sure, I majored in the sciences during college but you didn’t have to be a scientist to participate in the social experiment, Jonathan’s Card. What started as a local project amongst friends quickly blew up to become a national barometer of generosity and collective sharing.
The man behind Jonathan’s Card is an mobile app developer, Jonathan Stark. As a way to explore how he...
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“…we need to change how we make policy. Right now we make big decisions as...”
– On Adapting to Sandpiles by Joshua Cooper Ramo
Also, he raises a good point that this deluge of data seems to help us make decisions but up to a certain point. Above a certain threshold, it actually obfuscates reality because the overwhelming amount of data confuses people without a reliable way to...
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On Governing by Design →
Design, Identity, and Pluralism. Design’s conceptual role in policy-making.
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Thought You Should See This: It's The Jobs, Stupid →
thoughtyoushouldseethis:
Here’s a link round-up of some interesting pieces I’ve read over the Labor Day weekend. Zero Job Growth Latest Bleak Sign for U.S. Economy unpicks the grim news that August brought no increase in the number of jobs in the United States, “a signal that the economy has stalled and that inaction…
Language shapes perception and if people don’t understand its...
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“The biggest enemy of manufacturing in the U.S. is the pseudo-knowledge that...”
– Former Intel chief, Andy Grove has some terse words to say about the state of American manufacturing in this MIT Technology Review interview. As he puts it, where’s the evidence that manufacturing in Asia really is so much cheaper? Instead, shouldn’t the American government embark on a vigorous...
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Dear Crest,
Your product selection is confusing.
With bewildering amount of product tiers, you are bound to make choosing one of your products time-consuming and annoying. Occupying more shelf real estate at a retailer doesn’t mean you will increase your sales. Let me explain.
I walked to the Target store right near my house to buy a tube of toothpaste. You see, I’m one of those people who...
August 2011
23 posts
3 tags
Tech Community, are we MTV or TED? →
abudak:
A fantastic article in the Washington Post, “Tech Community, are we MTV or TED,” which explores something I’ve been thinking a lot about. In a community that loves to think of itself as world-changing, why then, “…are so many great developers spending their time trying to create products specifically designed to addict and help us waste our time?”
It’s a well-written,...
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Eric Stromberg: How to get a job at a startup if... →
estromberg:
Recently, I’ve received an increasing number of emails from “business people” looking for advice on how to get a job at a startup. Most have the same story, “I could go work at a big company, but want to join a startup. One problem: I don’t know where to start the process.” Everyone knows how to…
I probably posted this before but I think it’s worth posting again…
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Ditch sustainable products. We need sustainable...
What’s interesting to me but may be old news to some of you is the proliferation of the “collaborative consumption” economy or the “access” economy. We started with Zipcar and Airbnb and there’s even a venture fund called Collaborative Fund to support ventures that tackle the entrepreneurship of sharing.
The Atlantic also did an article on how we need to move...