Mentor Whiplash

What do David Bowie, Jazz, and an unplayable piano have to do with the power of business accelerators? All get you out of your comfort zone, and that seems to be a secret to success. This episode of Tim Harford’s Cautionary Tales explains how. Listen to the episode first. My analysis is that one of the powers of an in-residency, in-person business accelerator is that it gets entrepreneurs...

When you send an email, you have the choice of putting recipients in three places: to, cc, and bcc. Here’s what bcc is useful for… There is a bit of untaught business email culture that not everyone seems to have noticed or practices.  But should. When someone makes an email introduction to you, the best practice is to (a) Reply All, (b) move them into the bcc: line, and (c) thank the...

What you learn from blogging is that you can never tell which posts will be popular: #1 – Selling the First TelephoneBy far the most popular post. Why? I’ve no idea. Not once has anyone every told me they read it. It’s read a few time every single day, and thus it can’t be some teacher somewhere who happens to assign it as a reading. #2 – The Next Step: PodcastThis...

Someone wrote me today: I have taken a lot of time to ponder Rule #1 in your ‘Dividing Equity’, “Expect to be Disappointed”. I have also been diving into ‘Slicing Pie’ and talking to Mike Moyer about his ideologies as well. Similarly, I find the same disconnected energetic as he refers to everyone as “grunts”. I ask the question, why is it so difficult for humans to come together? My answer: For...