Psychologists dub the tendency to presume that others react to the world in the exact same way we do as "projection." For example, an entrepreneur is reluctant to schmooze and unwilling to discuss his company in social settings for fear of annoying potential customers and investors. According to Christopher R. Edgar, projecting can hold you [...]
Over at the American Express Open Forum blog I just posted an interview with Chunka Mui, the author of Billion-Dollar Lessons: What You Can Learn from the Most Inexcusable Business Failures of the Last 25 Years.. The subject of the interview is how and why companies make billion dollar mistakes. His thoughts are quite instructive [...]
Over at the American Express Open Forum blog, I've posted a description of "Plan B" for fund raising. Plan B is 180 degrees from the usual venture-capital path. Check it out by clicking here. If you go with the usual Plan A, don't say I didn't warn you.
Here's the long-awaited D90 video sample from me. :-) You can watch it on YouTube by clicking here. Or download the original file here (35312.7K). Or watch it on the Posterous platform here. What’s most interesting is how much better the Posterous version is--you've got to love what Posterous is doing. (Here's a higher resolution [...]
Nikon just released the D90. This is the first digital SLR that can shoot movies (as far as I know, anyway)--now you don't have to carry a digital SLR and a video camera. How cool is that?! My buddies at Ritz Camera and the 6sight Future of Imaging conference made this possible. Click here to [...]
These videos are my recent attempt to explain the art of raising venture capital. They are part of the Montgomery & Hansen online learning site and conference. For example, to learn about financing agreements and the term-sheet process, click here. http://www.youtube.com/v/1etQC2-Vg_s http://www.youtube.com/v/uFDnT_xgqJ0 http://www.youtube.com/v/UwMNlJJBVZk Click on these links for up-to-date information about venture capital, startups, and [...]
My buddies at StickerGiant are designing Alltop stickers. StickerGiant is quite an operation: it has 24-hour delivery on custom stickers and even a sticker blog. What makes StickerGiant especially attractive it that they also fulfill orders--click here to see how it handles Laughing Squid. Please take our survey
These are the winners of the Slideshare World's Best Presentation Contest. Notice the use of pictures and graphics, big fonts, and minimal text. Check them out! First Prize THIRSTView SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: crisis design) Second Prize Foot NotesView SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: design inspirational) Third Prize Zimbabwe in [...]
I've been using the JS-Kit widgets for comments and ratings for this blog, and I'm really happy with them. JS-Kit commenting provides very effective ways to fight and delete spam, and I love that people can create avatars for their comments. The star-rating that you see is also from the company. JS-Kit is installed on [...]
The Pope dons red Prada kicks, politicians break out red ties in election season and that darn Netflix package always seems to stand out in a crowd of manilla and ivory mail. Why red? Do humans have a penchant for the rainbow’s most fiery color? This study released in 2005 discovered that red-clad athletes out-performed [...]
YCombinator is a new kind of venture capital firm that focuses on $20,000 investments to help entrepreneurs go from "idea to company." It admits two "batches" of entrepreneurs per year for a three-month period. At the end of the term, there is an open house where the companies strut their stuff to investors. YCombinator has [...]
Over at the Sun Microsystems blog I've posted my list of the five most important lessons I've learned as an entrepreneur. #1 is "Focus on cash flow." Please check out the entire posting here. More information for startups is also available here and more information for small business is here.
Some of my buddies have expressed astonishment that I get approximately thirty-six hours of standby with my iPhone, so I'm sharing my settings. Note: this is my second 3G iPhone--I returned the first one because I was getting only five hours of standby time. This is my usage screen. One thing to notice: I don't [...]
Check out this site where Lenovo is aggregating the blogs, tweets, pictures, and video of Olympic athletes from around the world. Lenovo provided these athletes with Ideapad laptops and video cameras and let them go at it.
Over at the American Express blog I explain how to tell if your boss is crazy based on the work of Mindsite to DSM-IV-TR bring to the rest of us. If you suspect that you work for a narcissistic, paranoid, obssessive-compulsive, anti-social nut case, click here to learn more. Related resources: "Is Your Boss an [...]
If you're going to BlogWorld Expo, you can get an additional 20% off even the early-bird prices (they expire on August 22nd) by using this special code: "Alltopvip." This conference is in Las Vegas on September 19-21. Click here to register.
I found a great article called "10 Practical Uses for Psychological Research in Everyday Life." It explains how to detect lies, make your smile more attractive, persuade people, avoid getting scammed, and reduce your cholesterol level. On example: one person expressing an opinion three times has 90% of the effectiveness as three people expressing it [...]
Is your mantra, mission, and/or elevator pitch failing? Startups often have the problem that nobody can understand them. If this is you, George Lakoff may be your fix. Lakoff is a cognitive linguist who focuses on "the last smile" between message and recognition in brain. The Chronicle has a brief history of Lakoff's career (thanks [...]
My friend Richard Shaffer of Israeli Wine Direct interviewed my other friend Roger Dooley of the Neuromarketing Blog. The interview is called "This is Your Brain on Wine." Ostensibly the interview focuses on wine, but it's applicable to marketing in general. Here's an example of a Dooley answer from the interview: Effective Internet marketers let [...]
Ever wonder what scientists read when they are not mapping the universe or otherwise changing the world with their discoveries? Hint: They're not all geeky science texts. For example, physicist Freeman Dyson has printouts of 165 emails. Here is a link to the books and other whatnots of a handful of famous scientists like cosmologist [...]