Startups suffer from two types of problems. Neither is fun. Both are stressful. You only want one type, but don’t have control of which you’ll get. One set of problems are the search for more customers, the search for more investors, the search for more talent to get you out of the current hole you are in. These are not the problems you want. The other set of problems are too many...
There is something about people who aim to improve the world and circles. Maybe its the camaraderie vs. the hierarchical structures of family, work, and school. Maybe its something else. Whatever the cause, I find myself sitting in a lot of circles in my work and life. Today it was the Seattle Impact Investing Group’s offsite. I won’t tell you what we discussed, as the core purpose of...
Change is hard. Making change happen even harder. Looking for the origins of change fits in with my questions of how things used to work three or more generates ago, and my general search for hidden assumptions. I was thus delighted today when I flipped on the Planet Money podcast, Episode 925: A Mob Boss, A Garbage Boat and Why We Recycle. I was in high school living in suburban New York when...
Today’s Fast Company article (seen above) was forwarded to me today by one of my fledglings. Two answers to their question: First, why are they not counting Whole Foods, Zipcar, Etsy, and EBay? How about Twitter? These are companies that set up to improve health, the environment or build communities. Talk to Fred Wilson at Union Square Ventures and he’ll tell you they are social...
Zirconia is a startup company, not an obscure country. Last week I trekked over to the Zirconia lab/factory in Tukwila, Washington to check-in with the team. While there I shot a quick video visit: And recorded an interview for The Next Step podcast. The company has a breakthrough coating for concrete which seals the surface from decay and prevents the growth of bacteria and fungus. In the...
Last week Seth Godin published a blog post that started like this: Today’s the 11th year in a row of daily posts on this blog. Nearly 5,000,000 words since my first post twenty years ago, and I haven’t missed a day (given some time-zone wiggle room) since 2008. Many times per year people ask me how on Earth I do everything I do. When I look at Seth Godin, I understand their point of view. But...
With capital “S” Socialism in the political news, when The Case for Socialism appeared in the new book shelf at my local library, I thought it a good time to see if Alan Maass and Howard Zinn could help me better understand Capitalism and its flaws. Unfortunately, instead this book had me asking my wife (a professor of philosophy and teacher of logic and critical thinking) for the...
Americans today think of “money” as paper that in minted by governments, but this was not always the case. A century ago money (“notes”) still retained their ancient connection to credit. Notes were promises to be redeemed for coin or reliable securities. — America’s Bank (page 200). Today we’ve not lost this underlying concept of credit, but we instead...
Back to uncovering the history of the modern economy and understanding of how money truly works (see Lords of Finance, War and Gold, Capital in the 21st Century, Debt: The First 5,000 Years, and The Wealth of Nations to get up speed) my latest read is America’s Bank: The Epic Struggle to Create the Federal Reserve. The title sounds a bit dry and the book delivers on that promise, but there...
I came across these logos on my news feed. I love a good logo, and these are great examples of how logos can the most elegant logos can be simple line drawings. In the last seven years I’ve helped (re)brand more than a dozen companies, and have personally created quite a few of their logos. A quick sampling of that effort is in the following video: Does your logo look this good? If not, why...
