PEOPLE ALWAYS SAY THEY WANT TO START A COMPANY. Nobody ever spends years wishing they could run a company, or track key performance indicators over several quarters for a company. I don’t think I’ve ever even heard someone say that their dream is to lead a company. People are focused with the starting part, myself included. There must be some sort of God complex […] read more...
THE LEFT ONE! NO! NO! THAT’S TOO FAR LEFT! SECOND FROM THE RIGHT. SECOND FROM THE RIGHT NEVER FAILS! PICK THE MIDDLE ONE! The Stanford CS106 Section Leaders are having their weekly staff meeting, and the Door Prize is being awarded. A web app containing face-down cards is projected on the screen and the […] read more...
tl;dr: Use Amazon Fresh for your grocery delivery, or Instacart if you’re a hipster. Disclaimer: I have friends who work at Instacart, but I have no loyalty to them, or to any friends really. Over the past several months, our household has parlayed our addiction to Amazon Prime into an addition to convenience delivery in […] read more...
Last week marked the 30th anniversary of Macintosh, the adorable little machine that coined the phrase “Please insert Disk 1. Please insert Disk 2. Please insert Disk 1.” While they didn’t always have the cachet and widespread adoption of today’s Macs, these little machines touched my life in small ways in each of the last […] read more...
“You are making a major mistake,” said the prominent startup exec who was trying to convince us to give up on Context Optional and be “acqui-hired” by his well funded and highly praised startup. To be fair, it was something that we approached them with, when we were basically out of money and looking for a mercy killing. However, as our talks continued, […] read more...
I scan pretty much everything — bills, old photos, mortgage documents, tax stuff, etc. It can be tedious, but it makes finding things much easier when you need to remember whether you filed in 83(b) election in 2006 or what exactly the previous owners disclosed about the condition of the roof. Having a good scanner […] read more...
Today is your day. You’ve got your degree! You’ll start your career as an interviewee. You’re ready to go. You know all your stuff. But maybe you’ll find that that stuff’s not enough. The people you’ll work for Are the Valley’s elite. So get ready to hear of the Founders You’ll Meet! Here’s Scotty Farnocky, […] read more...
If you ask most founders why they wanted to start a company, you’ll likely find that a big part of it had to do with building a team. The notion of creating a place where people can have fun, build a career, and create something great rings true. The culture that develops within a startup […] read more...
Ah, the “pivot”. It’s not a failure if it’s merely a complete change in what you’re doing. You’ve heard about lots of high profile pivots, like Groupon (originally for charity fundraising), Flickr (originally a game), and PayPal (originally a type of stone fruit). But did you know that Context Optional wasn’t originally the Social Marketing […] read more...
In a number of recent conversations with startup founders, I’ve preceded any advice I might offer with this disclaimer: “We did things in a very nontraditional way.” Sure, every startup takes a different path. Some focus on building a killer product before spending much on building a sales team. Others focus on early wins with […] read more...