Category: Leadership
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Aligning Incentives: Preferred vs Common Stock
An investor friend of mine posted on his blog this question: This week’s sign of tech bubble: multiple seed-stage startups demanding investors buy common stock instead of preferred. Thoughts? I have strong professional opinions on this and will draft a full blog post on the topic, but thought I’d crowdsource some input first… Every…
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The Consequences of Price
On a fluke, I recently visited BlockBuster for the first time in 4 years. Between Netflix and Redbox, I never really consider renting a movie from the expensive brick and mortar place. Walking through the store, I could almost smell the death of their business. Their competitors have displaced them. Even though they’ve changed their…
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Finding Joy in Moving
I hate moving. But I love helping other people move. Even if an acquaintance is moving, I often volunteer to help even before they’ve picked a date. This weekend I had the opportunity to help some friends move. People are always surprised when I tell them I enjoy helping other people move and so I…
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The Unreasonable Response : Avoid Too Little, Too Late
“We’re under a lot of pressure internally and the decision has not yet been made, but unfortunately it looks like it’s only 40% likely that we’ll be moving forward with you.” Sounds bad, but it could be worse. At least the decision hasn’t been made yet. This is what we tell ourselves. The reality however…
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Leaders Inspire Effort
A ten-year old girl sits with a smile across her face. Earlier this year she was made fun of in her class for being stupid, and even more sadly, she believed it. Having struggled with school much of her life, why is she now smiling? A friend of mine who is the managing director of…
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We Must Recognize The Stall
Suddenly, the pilot’s plane started descending at an incredible speed. He pulls up to avoid crashing. No response. He pulls up harder. Still nothing. Then the ground consumes him. Our natural reaction in emergency situations is to fight them: whether it’s a plane that has stalled, a car that is sliding out of control on…
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The Ultimatum Game
You’re sitting across from another person who has $10 in their hands. They will give you some and if you accept, you both walk away with the money in your hands. If you don’t, you both get nothing. The person offers you $2, keeping $8 for themselves. What would you do? Most people in this…
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The Search For Complicity
A cult in the Chicago area believed the world was going to come to an end. They didn’t seem too concerned for others going into that date. They gathered in a home and waited for the end. It didn’t come. After they were proved wrong, you might think that the would give up and move…
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Blame and Responsibility
The announcer asked, “To whom should I make out the card for the dozen roses?”, The boyfriend replies, “To My Shmookums Betsy, I love you alw…” “Who is Shmookums?” interrupts Sharon, his girlfriend who suspected an affair and used the radio station to organize a sting. Many of you have probably heard such radio programs,…
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Pricing Relativity
Think of the last 4 digits of your social security number. Now estimate how many doctors you think are in Manhattan. Obviously these two numbers are completely unrelated, but most people when presented with this problem will use their SSN as a starting point for estimating the number of doctors, and in studies, they’ve found…