A common assumption is that communicating face-to-face is more persuasive than email. That's not always true, according to a 2002 study. Researchers found that men are often more responsive to email because it downplays their competitive tendencies. On the other hand, women react better to in-person encounters because they are more relationship-oriented. These same researchers [...]
Over at the American Express Open Forum blog I posted an interview with Ori Brafman, the author of Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior. In this interview he explains how to resist irrational and dumb behavior. Click here to check it out. Not reading it would be irrational.
The proliferation of topics from twenty to 215 made a redesign of Alltop necessary for efficient navigation. The three primary enhancements to the site define version 2.0 of Alltop: Ability to find topics in three ways: searching by keyword, viewing by category (for example, Tech, Sports, People), and viewing by topic name. Addition of 200 [...]
Keynote lunch. On stage with Steve Rubel of Micro Persuasion. Brett Tabke of Webmasterworld. James Whatley of SpinVox Gary Vee of Wine Library TV. Line to talk to Gary Vee. Gary Vee and Hawaii contingent. Zach Coelius of Triggit, Jessica Hanson, and Laura Fitton. Laura is the person who brought me to Twitter along with [...]
According to a series of psychological studies discussed on Psychology Today, research participants are able to successfully communicate sarcasm and humor in a mere 56 percent of emails—and most of the senders had no idea their attemps were so ineffective. How do you avoid this? The article gives some tips: Read your emails aloud and [...]
I recently visited the offices of Google in Munich, and these are some of the pictures I took there. Enjoy! Google in the pretzel font. Front-desk receptionist. Front-desk receptionist trainee. Google-wear collection. I don't know what this lion is about. Google cow-bell bike bell. This is really how Google Maps are created. Cafeteria. Buffet line. [...]
You can accuse me of many things but looking a gift horse in the mouth is not one of them. As a followup to yesterday's interview with Nancy Duarte, I asked her to work her magic on my PowerPoint presentation (which I consider already very good). First, take a look at my current presentation. Then, [...]
The four horsemen (horsepeople?) of presentation skills are Garr Reynolds, Nancy Duarte, Bert Decker, and Jerry Weisman. Over at the American Express Open Forum blog, I just published an interview with Nancy Duarte called "How to Captivate an Audience." In this interview she explains the "how" of making great presentations, so check it out.
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.