One of my former MBA students is turning his business school project into a real company… one that changes the way we bury our loved ones.
February 21, 2018
Dead 2.0
21February
February 7, 2018
Growing the tent for impact investing
07February
With all the buzz about impact investing (see BlackRock’s letter), it’s no surprise that Social Capital Markets’ new SOCAP 365 impact investing conference in Seattle was sold out. Investors, venture capitalists, family foundations and more joined to network, learn and make commitments in furthering the growth of the impact investing field. The day was filled with the realities of the impact...
November 1, 2017
The Top 40% and the Bottom 60%
01November
Ray Dalio posted a great analysis of the American economy, splitting it into two parts, the top 40% and bottom 60%. To understand what’s going on in “the economy,” it is a serious mistake to look at average statistics. This is because the wealth and income skews are so great that average statistics no longer reflect the conditions of the average man. For example, as shown in the chart below, the...
August 10, 2017
Lessons Learned During in the First 12 Months of Rank & File
10August
Republished from rankandfilemag.com/first-12-months-as-an-entrepreneur Rank & File turned one-year-old [back in June]. It was quite a milestone for me as a first-time entrepreneur and so I wanted to do a bit of journaling here to document the biggest, most important lessons I have learned during the last 12 months, so I won’t ever forget what the beginning felt like and taught me. Here are...
June 15, 2017
Don’t forget to have fun
15June
Sure, once you are a successful entrepreneur, life can be fun. But don’t forget to have fun along the way too. Startups are intense. If you pick a startup solving a real problem, it’ll pull you along, rather than require you to push it to the finish line.
Meanwhile… a fun video from two highly successful entrepreneurs:
June 8, 2017
Crazy Good Advice – by Tony Loyd
08June
I’ve been quoted in a new book, Crazy Good Advice, by podcaster Tony Loyd. You can buy the book as part of his StartSomeGood campaign for Social Entrepreneur. startsomegood.com/socentradio [hr] We need your help to bring Social Entrepreneur to the radio After 150 episodes, we’re at an exciting tipping point with the podcast Social Entrepreneur. We have the opportunity to produce a...
April 18, 2017
Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter 2017
18April
Great advice from an entrepreneur who has built an amazing interrelated set of companies: [hr] “Jeff, what does Day 2 look like?” That’s a question I just got at our most recent all-hands meeting. I’ve been reminding people that it’s Day 1 for a couple of decades. I work in an Amazon building named Day 1, and when I moved buildings, I took the name with me. I spend time thinking about this topic...
September 7, 2016
Mentor Whiplash
07September
A new online magazine, Rank & File has a nice article on the power of mentorship.
Read it at rankandfilemag.com.
Download the Rank & File App for Apple and for Android.
April 30, 2015
Looking through the business lens
30April
Once you realize that it is possible to do good for the world while doing business, you start to think about the scalability of that good. Or the flip side of that thought, that when thinking about the impact of an organization, you think about how to scale up that impact using business practices. Both these thoughts came to my mind as I listened to a recent Planet Money podcast, one that...
April 17, 2015
Guest Post: The Moral Bucket List
17April
I appreciate the way David Brooks thinks (an op-ed writer for The New York Times), but I don’t recall him writing often about conscious capitalism. David’s piece from last Sunday’s paper, entitled “The Moral Bucket List“, is one of those stories that everyone needs to read. My only critique is that I know it is possible for people like this to be aware how their...
