I vividly remember the final battlefield demos at TC disrupt. The strange thing is, it’s not the demos that stick out in my mind, but rather a small fraction of one charismatic founder’s time on stage. When the cohort of decorated judges asked him about his background, he jokinginly admitted he spent three years in [...]
Digital Real Estate and Creating Personality Within Products
Value creation from real estate is not limited to property in the offline world. It exists across web platforms we interact with on a daily basis. The obvious opportunities exist anywhere we can create content. From short bursts to long-form writing, tangible value is created atop digital real-estate. Each piece of online content serves [...]
One Reason to Name Your Company After An Awesome Adjective
Check out this google sandwich It’s just so savory. I wanted to share this awesome Savored Picks section because I’m always looking for new date spots or places to “grab drinks.” I can’t be the only one with this problem. If you feel weird or embarrassed about using a discount on a date, you shouldn’t. It [...]
The Subscription Commerce War Chest Challenge
The heart-warming response and support from friends yesterday after opening the kimono on a sacred part of my life was pretty awesome. I’m really grateful to be surrounded by such a supportive ecosystem. However, I couldn’t help but wonder about the conversion rate. That is, how many people would actually read that article and take [...]
Talking to the Homeless and the Theatre of Everyday Life
Every time I step on a subway and hear a declarative “Excuse me” my ears perk up. I quickly scan the rest of the car to find the eyes of a person who has fallen on hard times. As I rise up from my seat and move with purpose towards the man, I feel the [...]
Be Authentic When Someone Asks How Your Startup is Going
So how is (enter startup name) going? Many people answer this question with some iteration of “good” regardless of where things stand. I’ve talked with founders who I know are flailing, yet they still come up with some anecdote that things are “going well”. I’m not surprised at this behavior; we live in [...]
Elegance: An Adjective Fit For More than British Accents
Two days ago, I was re-reading “Whose Got Your Back” and was struck Peter Gruber’s definition of elegance: Elegance is the art of exerting the minimum amount of effort for the maximum effect, the maximum amount of power and achievement in our life. When I signed up for Hipster today I tweeted about how beautiful [...]
Subscription Commerce is Not Plug and Play
Just because you can put cool items people want inside of a box does not mean a viable subscription commerce business exists. After the success of Birchbox, so many people are trying to find ways to emulate the coveted subscription commerce model. Why? My guess is because it’s an attractive, easy to understand model. Over [...]
SMB Social Media: Many Are Catching On
A trend I’ve been noticing amongst SMBs I interact with is that they’re increasingly using technology to capture value from one-off interactions where they previously failed. Larger brands have long recognized the power of an email address or social media relationship and have provided consumers with incentives to trade this information. This information is a [...]
The Salesman in My Head
Last night I read a post about the difference between pain and discomfort on Jason Shen’s blog. The paragraph and highlighted sentence below particularly resonated with me as I turned off the light following my google reader ritual: Only for the first night did I think I would have trouble getting up at 5am for [...]
List of Some More Life Hacks
Some readers told me they liked the life hacks section of my old blog, so I decided to publish some more. Engage Awesome Founders by Reporting Bugs - I encounter bugs in products all the time. Actually take the time to screenshot and document the actions that lead to a bug then send it to the founder. [...]
The Etiquette of “What are you working on?”
So… what are you working on? This question pervades the New York Tech scene like 6th grade girls at a Bieber concert. There’s nothing wrong with it, but I think there is a level of etiquette surrounding it which few employ. People ask this question for a variety of reasons: they’re naturally awkward and have no idea [...]
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