Stanford Magazine has a terrific article about Kiva called “Small Change, Big Payoff” by Cynthia Haven. This is the story of how Matt and Jessica Jackely Flannery created it to enable people to make micro loans to entrepreneurs around the world. The results are awesome: more than 123,000 people have loaned more than $12.4 million [...]
TechCrunch published a great guest post by Glenn Kelman, the CEO of Redfin, called “Entrepreneur 2.0.” It inspired me to piggyback on his idea that investing in “serial entrepeneurs” who have already been successful might not be all that it’s cracked up to be and write this post. Both our posts run counter to the [...]
All hail Carleen Hawn because she has written a fabulously funny analysis of the management style of (Fake) Steve Jobs. It’s called the “Ten Commandments of Fake Steve Jobs” Never let people know where they stand. You don’t have to hire the best people. Only promote stupid people. Never tell people what is expected of [...]
Here’s the place to get video clips from my interview with Dan Lyons, aka “Fake Steve Jobs.” This is one of the funniest interviews I’ve ever done—if I do say so myself. There are a boatload of inside jokes going on, though. If you need joke support, just post a comment.
I found this interview of Mohammad Yunus of Grameen Bank. His idea to provide “micro loans” to poor people to jumpstart their entrepreneurship truly is changing the world. In fact, Yunus won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for his work. Here are some key quotes from the interview: “Women have a long-term vision, she wants [...]
My interview of Fake Steve Jobs, sponsored by LinkedIn, is tomorrow at 6:00 pm Pacific. If you want to attend in person, click here to register. UStream will also stream it live if can't attend in person. You can click here or return to this posting to watch this embedded player. Also, on November 8th [...]
After posting "Financial Models for Underachievers: Two Years of the Real Numbers of a Startup" about the two years of actual costs of Redfin, many people asked for a generic version of the financial model that Redfin used to project costs. Here it is! Redfin used this model over the past two years, but beyond [...]
Fred Greguras is a partner at the Silicon Valley law firm of Fenwick and West. He is also a buddy of mine, and I asked him to answer the most common questions of newbie entrepreneurs. His clients have included BioMarker Pharmaceuticals, Excite, Kintana, and Speedera Networks. It’s very important to make the right decisions in [...]
My buddy at Redfin, Glenn Kelman, decided he wanted to bare his financial soul so that other entrepreneurs could get greater insight into the witchcraft called financial modeling. In this two-part posting, he reveals his numbers and his lessons. They are eye-opening for most entrepreneurs. Part I: Numbers Startups face one primary challenge: To never [...]
David Bornstein is the author of How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas. He recently updated this book, and it’s now available for the first time in paperback. No less than Nelson Mandela said the book is “wonderfully hopeful and enlightening.” David is also the author of The Price [...]
I blew it. Two weeks ago I was supposed to offer discount tickets to Jeffrey Pfeffer’s Stanford talk called “What Were They Thinking?: Unconventional Wisdom About Management.” It’s on Wednesday, Sept. 12th. Here’s the link to the discount. Sorry that this is so last minute.
This is a guest posting by Glenn Kelman, CEO of Redfin, a company that enables people to buy homes online. He offers a counterpoint to my posting about how easy it is to make millions of dollars with "user-generated, long-tail, Web 2.0, social-networking, open-source content." Last month, Guy called James Hong and Markus Frind heroes [...]
I work in the surreal world of Silicon Valley where venture capitalists fund companies based on PowerPoint pitches and executive summaries. My friend Tim Berry rightfully pointed that business plans still serve an important role in "the rest of the world." He's right, and he should know because he's the president of Palo Alto Software, [...]
Thinking about taking the plunge and being your own boss? First, check out “Should You Start Your Own Work at Home Business?” It explains the pros and cons of working at home. Sometimes the grass isn’t greener, but it’s best to know what you’re really getting into in advance.
Jeffrey Pfeffer is the Thomas D. Dee II Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University. He is the author or co-author of twelve books.Dr. Pfeffer received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from Carnegie-Mellon University and his Ph.D. from Stanford. He began his career at the business school at the University [...]
On Thursday I'll be appearing live (as opposed to dead?) on uStream. The details are: 2:00 pm Pacific time July 12th Click here to go to the site. Hope you can join me. It's going to be a freewheeling discussion about venture capital, entrepreneurship, Truemors, and anything else you want!
Lois Kelly is the author of Beyond Buzz: The Next Generation of Word-of-Mouth Marketing. This is her explanation of the top nine types of stories that people like to talk about. If you’re pitching your company to investors, customers, partners, journalists, vendors, or employees and you don’t use at least one of these story lines, [...]
The Churchill Club panel called "No Plan, No Capital, No Model...No Problem" is now available for download.
Scott Berkun worked on the Internet explorer team at Microsoft from 1994-1999. He is the author of a recently released book called The Myths of Innovation. He also wrote the 2005 bestseller, The Art of Project Management. He teaches a graduate course in creative thinking at the University of Washington, runs the sacred places architecture [...]
Markus Frind, the founder of PlentyOfFish.com is my new hero (James Hong of Hot or Not is a close second). Marcus spends about two hours a day in his underwear managing a free dating website that gets twelve billion page views a year. He is the only employee, and he only has one server. And [...]