February 2012
1 post
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Life's Problems Worth Solving
Many conversations with other twenty something year olds out of college seem to gravitate inevitably towards what we’re doing with our lives — as in, what’s the point in what we’re doing and should we continue doing it? I often hear people ask what is “the narrative of my life?” as though their story will be told to posterity, which is an interesting way to...
January 2012
7 posts
What's Wrong With the Teenage Mind? →
How earlier puberty is affecting society and people. Interesting take on how teenagers need more real world experience and perhaps less schooling to make better decisions.
“In a fight between a grizzly bear and an alligator, the terrain determines the...”
– Unknown
2 tags
Helping the Little Guy: How Local Businesses Can...
There’s something noble and attractive about the little guy standing up against the giant. We feel special and better about ourselves when we go to the local mom-and-pop establishment and give them our business — I know I do. I also know I don’t feel that way after I leave Starbucks or some other huge chain. Apparently, there’s a new trend for people to even rebel against...
“Entrepreneurship is the pursuit of opportunity without regard to resources...”
– Inc. Magazine - “What’s an Entrepreneur”
The Quiz That Shows How Human Decision Making... →
Interesting demonstration of how humans tend to make the wrong decision based on framing.
“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were...”
– Thomas A. Edison
1 tag
Resolution: Taking A Stand
One resolution I’ve made for 2012 is to take a strong stance on more issues. I’ve always felt some people are too opinionated about things they don’t know enough about, which probably made me overcompensate and not form strong opinions to share. Some friends have pointed out that even when I know a lot about things, I often times don’t take a strong position about them....
December 2011
7 posts
2 tags
What are the most common cognitive biases seen in... →
I wrote an answer to this question on Quora. There are few things more interesting to me than the intersection of behavioral economics and startups.
“All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses...”
– T.E. Lawrence
3 tags
Hiring The Best and Those Even Better
Reading the biography of Amazon.com’s CEO, Jeff Bezos, I came across this quote on hiring:
“One of [Jeff’s] mottos was that every time we hired someone, he or she would raise the bar for the next hire, so that the overall talent pool was always improving,” said Nicholas Lovejoy, who joined Amazon in 1995 as the fifth employee. Bezos put the philosophy this way: Five years...
“I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful...”
– Steve Jobs
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Grit is the Secret to Success
Growing up, I always believed anything could be accomplished through “sheer will.” Most childhood challenges for me fortunately related mostly to school work so it was easy to see the linear relationship between time spent and output. As I grew older, I began to wonder if “sheer will” was enough, especially as I entered into more and more competitive academic environments...
Is It Irrational to Give Holiday Gifts? →
Interesting take on gift giving by a behavioral economist:
Behavioral economics has one more lesson for gift givers: If your goal is to maximize a social connection, don’t give a perishable gift like flowers or chocolates. True, people enjoy them, and you don’t want to impose by giving something more permanent. But what are you trying to maximize? Is your goal to avoid imposing on them...
2 tags
Behavioral Economics Study: scarcity imposes huge... →
An interesting new study suggests that the poor have more to think about in terms of trade-offs which costs them financially.
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The Hardest Thing in Life To Do
From Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland:
“Which road do I take?” (Alice)
“Where do you want to go?” (Cat)
“I don’t know,” Alice answered.
“Then, said the cat, it doesn’t matter.”
“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.”
I’ve come to realize that the hardest...
November 2011
11 posts
“You tend to get told that the world is the way it is, but life can be much...”
– Steve Jobs in PBS’ “One Last Thing” (via lilzet)
2 tags
Future of Retail: Why It Won't Be Empty Windows
Recently, I received a nice postcard from a friend who was explicitly trying to prop up her favorite dying US agency — a beautiful, thought though likely futile effort. It made me wonder about the future of businesses that primarily operate offline.
The Internet through the spread of email has permanently disrupted the main business of the US Postal Service, and the uptick in shipping...
“Dreamers need the realists to keep them from soaring too close to the sun. And...”
– Cam from Modern Family
2 tags
Founding Foodies: Gourmet Startups
As a bit of a foodie myself (just made Yelp Elite! screw useless Foursquare badges. I can’t eat them), I’ve always been fascinated by entrepreneurship in the food space. I still can’t believe the crap most people eat and that there aren’t better choices available for some people. People are forced to eat unhealthy take out food or junk food because of a lack of fresh, tasty...
2 tags
Why Nice Guys Don't Finish Or Decide
In response to the article on the Entrepreneurial Generation, I’ve been discussing with friends a specific part:
AND that, I think, is the real meaning of the Millennial affect — which is, like the entrepreneurial ideal, essentially everyone’s now. Today’s polite, pleasant personality is, above all, a commercial personality. It is the salesman’s smile and hearty handshake, because the...
The Entrepreneurial Generation →
The millennial affect is the affect of the salesman. Consider the other side of the equation, the Millennials’ characteristic social form. Here’s what I see around me, in the city and the culture: food carts, 20-somethings selling wallets made from recycled plastic bags, boutique pickle companies, techie start-ups, Kickstarter, urban-farming supply stores and bottled water that wants to save the...
1 tag
Time and Attention as Signals of Caring
Recently, someone remarked to me that the way she shows that she cares for people is by traveling to see them. The time involved in traveling is a clear signal of caring. Spending time to travel is a better signal of caring than spending money on a gift. Money is producible and you can always make more of it, but you can’t ever get time back. This holds true for whether it involves a subway...
“If you want to live your life in a creative way, as an artist, you have to not...”
– Steve Jobs
1 tag
People Are The Story: What Jobs, Gladwell, and...
Storytelling is such an important skill in life. In spite of all the data that now exists that never before did, people really focus on the overall narrative still rather than the complete details — it may be a biological limitation or evolutionary adaption, but whatever it is, we naturally communicate best through stories. I’ve been thinking about some of the greatest storytellers...
October 2011
14 posts
“The biggest risk is not taking any risk. In a world that changing really...”
– Mark Zuckerberg
1 tag
When Why Trumps How For Innovation
Recently someone described to me an idea for a financial payments startup and asked how it may be possible to implement. After thinking about it, I realized that it may not have been the right question; instead, we should have been wondering why it hasn’t been done before — in fact, it turned out WePay had done it. It wasn’t the most perfect implementation but it went a long way...
1 tag
What LinkedIn Could Learn From OKCupid and Others
With the success of my co-founder’s side project, JobChangeNotifier, I’ve been wondering what else LinkedIn could be doing better. As a heavy LinkedIn user, I’m surprised when I hear how little others use LinkedIn or how little value they see in it beyond being a repository of resumes. I think part of the issue is the presentation of information by LinkedIn. Here are some ideas...
1 tag
Believers vs non-believers →
The odds and stats tell us that most startups won’t work out. Everyone knows that.
But we are believers. We believe that we can make it work.
And that’s what gets me up every morning.
“An entrepreneur is someone who dares to dream the dreams and is foolish enough...”
– Vinod Khosla
2 tags
Letter from the Founders
After PaperG took on investors a number of years ago, I realized we needed to begin communicating with a new group of people who cared about the future of the company. Before, we just had our founders and our customers which made it pretty easy to figure out what to share and what not to share with who or who not. Soon, we would have many more employees, advisers, and other supporters which would...
1 tag
The True Cost of Commuting →
Commuting is one of the worst things you can do for your happiness and finances. This is why I live 15 minutes walking distance from work. I’m glad someone has finally quantified the issue:
So each mile you live from work steals $795 per year from you in commuting costs.
In other words, a logical person should be willing to pay about $15,900 more for a house that is one mile closer to...
1 tag
“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be...”
– Steve Jobs
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Airlines Are Driven to Nickel and Dime →
Since 1995, airfare prices are down 21% after inflation. Airlines really have no pricing power even after all the consolidation. I wonder if the pricing trend has anything to do with the Internet and the increased pricing transparency of the market. In fact, I wonder how anyone decided what airplane ticket to buy before the internet.
3 tags
Game of Thrones Rules
Game of Thrones is an incredible HBO series based on the book series. The story revolves around the constant battle for the crown whether it’s at the king’s council, the battlefield, or behind closed doors. I wondered what lessons could be learned from this show about business and leadership.
Rule #1: Winter is Coming
House Stark’s famous words were “winter is...
2 tags
“It’s not what you make that matters, it’s what you build that...”
– Victor Wong
September 2011
6 posts
1 tag
Kindle Fire - The Fourth and Nth Screen
The recent announcement of the Amazon Kindle Fire has sparked some thoughts about the future. The idea of a thin client device that is cheap enough for most people makes me wonder how many screens the average consumer will have in a few years. Right now, people are still talking about “the third screen” (mobile phones, which followed the computer and of course the television). Why...
What if the Secret to Success Is Failure? →
An interesting take on what it takes to succeed — not necessarily with wit but certainly with grit:
People who accomplished great things, she noticed, often combined a passion for a single mission with an unswerving dedication to achieve that mission, whatever the obstacles and however long it might take. She decided she needed to name this quality, and she chose the word “grit.”
Another...
“The only difference between ‘try’ and ‘triumph’ is...”
– Bear Grylls
3 tags
Trust: Hosting and Staying with Strangers
AirBnB has received a lot of attention recently for an abuse of trust by a guest. The whole concept of hosting a stranger is a test of faith in your fellow person. So, recently I’ve decided to take the test on both sides to see what it’s like.
I used AirBnB to book an apartment in Barcelona for a few days. The host turned out not to be the next Norman Bates as I feared but in fact a sweet lady....
“Business begets business.”
– Alex Wang
1 tag
VISA + 3G = Interconnected World
Traveling in Spain has made me realize just how interconnected the world has become. Due to work, I barely had any time to plan anything beyond buying a plane ticket and booking rooms. However, I realized that today’s traveler only needs two things: a credit card and an iPad.
It’s amazing how the credit card has effectively reduced the need for hard currency and conversion. I showed up with almost...
August 2011
11 posts
“The problem with the Internet startup craze isn’t that too many people are...”
– Steve Jobs
2 tags
Starting A Company and Community
I’ve recently been reflecting about what it means to start a company and community. What sparked this chain of thought was a question about startup culture at Yale and the recent publication of a new Yale admission view book which included a brief profile of me. (side note: I can now say from experience that college admission books don’t use stock photos since I had to pose a dozen...
“Nothing someone says before the word “but” really counts”
– Benjen Stark (Game of Thrones)
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