E-mail is an oft-pilloried form of communication. It’s sometimes tone-deaf. There’s too much of it. It’s not as immediate as texting or calling. I am reminded of a line attributed to Winston Churchill; “Democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others.” Similarly, e-mail is flawed, but it’s often the best mode […]
Communication Best Practices
Communication is one of the most important skills in business; perhaps in life. Recently, I saw David Tisch talk about communication best practices in a lecture at Cornell Tech. I agreed with nearly everything he said and made me think someone should write a blog post on the topic. He was kind enough to let […]
Staffing an Experiment: Selling Before Hiring
Steve Blank, Eric Ries and others have observed that a startup is a fundamentally different type of organization than an established company. Paraphrasing these observations: an established company exists to deliver a product to customers as efficiently as possible, while a startup exists to determine what product to deliver, to whom and how. I believe […]
Joining CoVenture
Today I am excited to announce that I have joined CoVenture as a Managing Partner. CoVenture is an early-stage venture capital firm with a twist: we develop software in exchange for equity. We also invest small amounts of capital, around $25,000, in selected portfolio companies. At the same time, CoVenture today announces the closing of […]
Assembling Your Board Dream Team
In a previous post, I wrote about how to have productive board meetings. As noted in that post, a board is only as useful as its constituents. This post provides some food for thought for those who are constructing a board. It’s obviously not always possible to select all one’s board members, but I hope […]