Finding Clarity in an Ambiguous World
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Unspoken Assumptions & Improving Decisions
This last week we had several very good meetings with our advisors who helped us refine our direction. Like stepping into a frigid pool on a scorching day, it was both refreshing and shocking. The result was very positive, but I was surprised that I hadn’t seen the refinements prior to meeting. Sometime ago, at…
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Small Is The New Big – VC Edition
One of the significant trends that is happening in business, is that the opportunity for people to create new small businesses that make a living but stay small is growing. The cost of distribution, the cost of creation, and the cost of reaching a small target audience are all approaching free. The ability for these…
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Rear Wheel Differential
This is a fairly simple post today. This video (skip the first 1:50 tells how a rear wheel differential works). I’ve always wondered and found it fascinating. If you’ve always wondered how it works, enjoy…
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Immediate Gratification
I have been listening to a very good book (“Rapt”) and she mentioned a study that was done measuring the way we respond to situations where there is an immediate payoff which offsets some longer term goal. Essentially, if you are presented with the choice between taking $100 now, or $200 three years from now,…
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Fertile Fallacies
Recently while reading George Soros’ book on the Crash of 2008, he discusses something he calls “Fertile Fallacies” which I found quite interesting. The basic idea is that there is some knowledge that seems very true and early experiments in that information continue to confirm it’s veracity, but eventually the fallacy catches up with you…
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Focus Management
How many times has someone asked you about an action that you committed to and you responded: “I’m sorry. I haven’t had time to get to that yet”. Many of these tasks would take only 5 minutes or less to do, so are you really saying you didn’t have 5 minutes to perform this…
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Kings & Marketing To Perceived Desire
Earlier this spring, NBC announced a new show called “Kings”. They advertised it heavily, trying to build momentum for a show about what life might be like if we lived with a modern monarchy. I saw the ads and had little interest in watching (or even DVR’ing the show) and I wasn’t alone. The show…
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Target Your Customer Not The Public
Yesterday, my colleagues and friend sent out a link with the title: highly effective marketing. On top of being one of the best software architects I have ever worked with, my friend is also an avid guitarist and wood worker. I watched the video with zero knowledge of wood working and was shocked by the…
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The Context Matters
A couple of weeks ago, while visiting Colorado, I noticed a number of people advertising their businesses on their cars to varying degrees of success. It made me think that while you do get a lot of people looking at your “ad”, you are also providing a lot of context about your company based on…
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Terminator, Attention and Storytelling
This last week, we went and watched the latest Terminator movie. Essentially, it takes place after the machines are trying to kill all of the humans and ends up providing more of the backstory to the previous two movies. In the movie, there are several fight scenes that take place in factories where the robots…
Got any book recommendations?