How To Read An S-1 Accessing a company’s S-1 is like getting to peek over the shoulders of giants. You gain access to a competitor’s business plan. It allows entrepreneurs, in particular, to see just how much money it takes to scale a large company, gives good benchmarks to shoot for in growth and margins, and helps entrepreneurs understand what is market in terms of management compensation.
Updated Wed Feb 8, 2012
How Women Entrepreneurs Sell Themselves Short Women hire people than them, pay them more, and generally put the company first--all great traits of successful entrepreneurs. But very few companies actually make it to a liquidity event and there are a lot of rough spots and decisions between founding and then. Women have to do a better job of protecting themselves. Three basic steps can save you from walking away with nothing.
Updated Tue Aug 16, 2011
Entrepreneur on the Loose I recently sold the company I founded, Consorte Media, Inc. (buy me a beer if you want to hear more) which has left me with some time on my hands.So I've been meeting with lots of great folks and thinking through my next steps and of course, company ideas.I thought I'd share here a few interesting companies I've come across and conversations I've had recently.
Updated Thu Aug 4, 2011
For Job Seekers, A Cautionary Tale In How To Scare Off Potential Employers You can get the address right, be on time, and lead with success stories, but only the self-aware can truly show up.
Updated Mon Aug 1, 2011
When The Best Defense Is Not A Good Offense Defensiveness--it happens to the best of us. The trouble is when defensiveness gets in the way of communication.
Updated Thu Jul 21, 2011
Why I Am Ashamed Of My Early VC Years I worked in VC for almost six years. I knew a lot about markets and industries from interviewing people, analyzing companies and doing research, but at that point I had never run a company before. As I've learned all too well, it's one thing to analyze companies and quite another to start and run one.
Updated Tue Jul 5, 2011
What Is Homophily? To put it briefly, homophily means "love of the same". Not the same wine every night, but a tendency to surround yourself with others like you. This would just be an interesting footnote, if the concept wasn't so important to the workplace. I never quite grasped this very human tendency until I became a boss.
Updated Tue Jun 28, 2011
How To Start Up With StartX Everyone from The Wall Street Journal to Justin.TV was there. It was Demo Day for SSE Labs, now called StartX, or Stanford Student Startup Accelerator.
Updated Thu Jun 9, 2011
How It Works As A New College Grad May is alive with the nervous energy and resume flurry of brave new grads who have foregone the investment banking and consulting routes. They are right to be anxious. The market is as competitive as ever and standing out has become a technological art. A new survey by eLance bears this out.
Updated Tue May 17, 2011
Why Scientists Are The Next Engineers While most media is abuzz with the dangers of data, the reality is data is everywhere and hundreds of people are finding ways to put it to work.
Updated Mon May 2, 2011
What Dogs Can Teach Entrepreneurs Did you know that search and rescue dogs, the most motivated of dogs, can get discouraged?
Updated Mon Apr 25, 2011
How to Be Bossy One of the most insightful business books today comes from the unlikeliest of sources: Tiny Fey. Her book, "Bossypants," narrates and navigates the challenges of being a boss and being a woman.
Updated Tue Apr 19, 2011
Do You Measure Up? I recently attended my first meet-up of the Quantified Self Movement. Quantifiers are people who measure themselves in various ways--how long they sleep, how much they exercise and even how they feel. They use all manner of devices from Zeos and FitBits to homemade contraptions.
Updated Tue Apr 5, 2011
Are We in a Bubble? We're in circles--that's for sure.
Updated Tue Mar 29, 2011
Does the World Need a Game Layer? Seth Preibatsch of Scvngr is getting a lot of attention at SXSW for his presentation, "The Game Layer on Top of the World". He demonstrated his ideas by applying them to our education system, calling it a poorly designed game. Is gaming, used by many to distract themselves from reality, going to help people create a new reality?
Updated Wed Mar 16, 2011
Beware "Angels" A lot has changed since I raised money for my prior company in 2005. The VC partners are younger, the angels more plentiful. But the pitfalls entrepreneurs looking to raise money encounter have not gone away.
Updated Tue Mar 8, 2011
What Leaders Can Learn From Kids Have you ever tried to get a child to do your bidding? If so, then you know just how tricky communication can be.
Updated Tue Mar 1, 2011
No Valley for Old People Let's just come out and say it--the focus in Silicon Valley has turned decidedly young.
Updated Wed Feb 23, 2011
How to Change Your Life It seems obvious that a social network can help you make a change, but it is less clear how. What better explains transformation is commitment and consistency. As flaky as we sometimes think we are, human beings at a reptilian level are capable of committing and once they do, are surprisingly consistent.
Updated Tue Feb 15, 2011
How to Find a Devil's Advocate Don't you sometimes just want someone to give it to you straight? The search for truth is often problematic and the search for good feedback can be just as vexing. There is as much an art to getting feedback as there is to giving it.
Updated Tue Feb 8, 2011
