BRYCE DOT VC: Everything will be reinvented
Fantastic post.
Tag Results: business
“If ever there were an opportunity to think big and attack large markets with incumbent players, its now. I’m a believer that in the next 5 years we’re going to see every major industry reinvented in ways we didn’t see coming. I mean, who would have guessed a silly little site for college kids could reinvent the IPO?”
“There’s an endless debate about the good and bad of selling a company that’s still growing in the Valley right now. There’s the obvious macro-economic answer: Everyone selling too early is bad, because no new tech giants are created. There’s the obvious micro-answer: A few million dollars is life changing for most people, and those entrepreneurs deserve to make a life-changing amount of money.”
If Web 1.0’s Kryptonite Was the Bust, Web 2.0 Kryptonite Was the Grind
Interesting thought. Being a part of a startup media company, I have to admit that the micro-answer does resonate with me. But I also have to admit that I want BlackTree to become a new media giant and disrupt the current corporate media landscape. There is certainly a middle ground that rewards founders and still makes corporate history. The question is: Does that founder have the knowledge and patience to make the right deal so that can happen?
“The very first company I started failed with a great bang. The second one failed a little bit less, but still failed. The third one, you know, proper failed, but it was kind of okay. I recovered quickly. Number four almost didn’t fail. It still didn’t really feel great, but it did okay. Number five was PayPal.”
Max Levchin, PayPal cofounder: FailCon: Failing Forward To Success : NPR
TRY, TRY, TRY AGAIN…
Great lessons in this article. If your business is online, you should read this. Here’s a 1 gem:
In technology, once you have bad programmers, you’re doomed. I can’t think of an instance where a company has sunk into technical mediocrity and recovered. Good programmers want to work with other good programmers. So once the quality of programmers at your company starts to drop, you enter a death spiral from which there is no recovery.
…In theory you could beat the death spiral by buying good programmers instead of hiring them. You can get programmers who would never have come to you as employees by buying their startups. But so far the only companies smart enough to do this are companies smart enough not to need to.
“A well-managed business pays high wages and sells at low prices. Its workmen have the leisure to enjoy life and the wherewithal with which to finance that enjoyment.”
— Henry Ford, 1914
Found this gem of a quote in Umair Haque’s article “A Deeper Kind of Joblessness”. It is so funny how business schools teach you costs costs costs. Here is an entrepreneurial innovator saying people people people.
“The ego is not your friend… The ego wants to be right, it wants to predict, and it wants to know secrets. The ego makes it much more difficult to trade well by avoiding the cognitive biases that hinder profits.”
(via The Kirk Report : Justification Mode)
This article was retweeted all over StockTwits today before I finally read it. A great read that gave way to thoughts about my own trading. So to be blunt:
Summer chop is hard to trade
2010 has been nicer than 2009 but I’m not pleased when I look through my journal. After a great 1H 2010 - in which I stuck to my trading plans more, traded well, and seized opportunities, I can see how coming into July my ego got stoked enough to be loose with the rules. Respect the market by studying and taking the lowest risk opportunities.
Keep the probabilities in your favor
Losses have to be quick and small. “Keep it tight.” But what messes with my emotions is that those tight losses are taken more often. The focus on losses as numbers and not probabilities allows emotion to cause, over-trading at best and gambling at worst.
Patience is required. Entries have to be close enough to perfect. Smaller lot sizes on riskier entries. Take more off the table. Leave less to run. Break even stops. The idea is to be strict with both risk and profit. So I may be wrong more often but the losses are much smaller, allowing the winners to remain real winners.
Very timely article for me today.
My thoughts here are specific to my trading style and performance so let me know what works for you! Many fellow traders are doing well this year too both professionally and personally. We have all grown and prospered so much and I am always humbled to be trading and talking and tweeting with them. I’ve known traders on my stream for almost/over a year now. Our trading has certainly improved after last July. But oh what an interesting year :)
“The “African Lions” – Algeria, Botswana, Egypt, Libya, Mauritius, Morocco, South Africa and Tunisia. Their collective per capita GDP, at $10,000, is already higher than the average for the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, China).”
FT.com / Emerging Markets - Emerging groups make ‘African lions’ roar (via @emeka_okafor)
The time is now. I will be a player in these markets, for these markets, and from these markets.
At this point, a mobile experience shouldn’t be an afterthought
It wasn’t long ago that mobile phones had weak browsers and 3g was a network that the carriers built but without the “killer app”.
Smartphones with amazing browsers changed all of that. The web is the killer app. The browser on iPhone and Android are incredible and only getting better.
So if you are building a consumer web service these days, I highly encourage you to think of the mobile experience right away. Don’t think of mobile as something you’ll get around to doing one day. It has to be a high priority.
That doesn’t mean you have to build a native Android or iPhone app. It really depends on the service. I can’t imagine an app like Bump working without a native app while Techmeme mobile web site is amazing. It often comes down to whether your app requires access to local iphone resources (camera, address book, etc) or not.
At the very least your application/service should be optimized for mobile browsing experience and has an open API.
That’s the minimum these days.
Completely agree.
B corporations is an interesting corporate entity created to address this new social business industry. I have taken an interest in social entrepreneurship since the start of 2010. Very interesting.
“In the case of Chanel, the answer to navigating a choppy economy is simple: Raise prices and bring production to a pace that creates mass demand.”
via Madison Avenue Spy: Bloomies
Business models turn me on.
50 Cent: Turn Shit Into Sugar
The following is an excerpt from The 50th Law, adapted for HuffPost.
“Every negative situation contains the possibility for something positive, an opportunity. It is how you look at it that matters. Your lack of resources can be an advantage, forcing you to be more inventive with the little that you have. Losing a battle can allow you to frame yourself as the sympathetic underdog. Do not let fears make you wait for a better moment or become conservative. If there are circumstances you cannot control, make the best of them. It is the ultimate alchemy to transform all such negatives into advantages and power.
Events in life are not negative or positive. They are completely neutral. The universe does not care about your fate; it is indifferent to the violence that may hit you or to death itself. Things merely happen to you. It is your mind that chooses to interpret them as negative or positive. And because you have layers of fear that dwell deep within you, your natural tendency is to interpret temporary obstacles in your path as something larger—setbacks and crises.”
50 Cent, amongst all his other talents and titles, showing himself to be a savvy venture capitalist!
“The opening of a fiber optic cable providing broadband Internet service to millions of people in Southern and Eastern Africa is… built by Seacom, a consortium 75 percent controlled by African investors…”
“The principles of running a good business are easily stated in one paragraph: ethics; clear goals; take care of the customer; take care of the employee; product quality and service; innovation; cost control; productivity; sound finance; manage the risk agenda; nimble and flexible; decision-making for the long term; deal with problems; avoid denial; prudence; patience, tone at the top; keep ego out of it; treat everybody the way you want to be treated; beat the competition.”
