Monthly Archives: December 2009

One Quote Does Not Belong

Posted inHumor7 Comments on One Quote Does Not Belong

I just found myself on a Facebook profile page of a random guy and when I scrolled to the Favorite Quotations section, screenshot below, I started laughing uncontrollably.

Quotesscreenshot

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Muscle weakening, to me, is a good litmus test for humor. At the present moment I do not know whether I will have the strength, for example, to move the mouse and press the "publish" button.

Recall the Jan Helfeld interview of Congressman Peter "Shut the Fuck Up or I'll Throw You Out the Window" Stark — after watching I was unable to open the disposable soap package in my hotel room, so intense was the humor-induced muscle weakening.

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The Perils of Youthful Fame (Tiger Woods Edition)

Posted inSports14 Comments on The Perils of Youthful Fame (Tiger Woods Edition)

Bill Simmons on Tiger Woods and the effects of fame during one's formative years:

Did we underestimate the effects of fame in his formative years on Tiger? Become famous at an early age and invariably you "mature" into someone who can't remember anything other than being famous. Most (if not all) of your interactions are with people who are impressed by you or want something from you. You don't have to win anyone over. You don't have to work on being a better person, or funnier, or nicer, or anything. You don't want to make new friends because you can't tell if any prospective friends want to be friends because you're who you are, so you end up gravitating toward other famous people, most of whom are just as messed up as you. You can get away with almost any indiscretion and be forgiven. Your only responsibility is to stay yourself, but you became this twisted, self-aware version of you without even knowing it. And that's when the trouble starts.

Right. One problem with youthful fame in general is that it makes you risk averse at a time in life when you are supposed to be taking risks. Child stars who stumble in adulthood may do so because they did not acquire life lessons usually obtained in conventional youth, when the cost of failure is low and thus benefits of experimentation (of all sorts) are high.

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Robin Hanson once asked Tyler Cowen whether increased influence and fame through his blog has made him less interesting and weird. Robin thinks it has. Here's Clive Thompson's piece in Wired about the Age of the Micro-Celebrity: fame dynamics are at work even on a very small scale.

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Keepers of Private Notebooks

Posted inWriting11 Comments on Keepers of Private Notebooks

Joan Didion writes about people who keep and carry notebooks with them wherever they go:

The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself. I suppose that it begins or does not begin in the cradle. Although I have felt compelled to write things down since I was five years old, I doubt that my daughter ever will, for she is a singularly blessed and accepting child, delighted with life exactly as life presents itself to her, unafraid to go to sleep and unafraid to wake up. Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss.

Journalists always have a notebook with them — to record impressions or jot down that perfect opening sentence for a future story. It is the first dumping ground of their ideas. It's a physical artifact of their curiosity.

It's always good to see journalistic instincts in non-journalists. Yesterday I met with a technologist who, in the first five minutes of our dinner, pulled out a notebook to make notes. It was a terrific first impression on me.

Here's my post analyzing pros and cons of taking notes in an informal lunch/dinner meeting. Here's my post on the importance of capturing your fringe-thoughts. Moleskine notebooks are in-style but I prefer spiral ringed notebooks of equivalent size because I can clip a pen to it easily.

(thanks Steve Dodson for pointing out this essay)

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The Ideal Mix of a Start-Up Advisory Board

Posted inEntrepreneurship2 Comments on The Ideal Mix of a Start-Up Advisory Board

In the early days of a start-up forming an advisory board can be a great way to formalize and regularize the feedback you receive from experts.

I think an ideal advisory board contains big names with no time (whose name, by association, offers credibility in the sales or fundraising process) and no names with plenty of time to give you specific advice.

Among the no names who actually give you advice, I think an ideal mix in the early days emphasizes customer-centric folks — people with deep knowledge of the market you’re selling to. Perhaps even potential customers themselves!

The opposite of customer-centric advisors is “random business experts.” These are folks who are smart and experienced but don’t have specific experience in the niche your company is going after. They don’t have relevant experience in the exact market you’re playing in.

On day 1 of a start-up, perhaps 80% of the advisory board should consist of customer-centric folks, and 20% “general” experts.

As a company matures so does its understanding of the mind of its customers. And newer, different issues arise, and the composition of the company’s supporters and advisors evolves accordingly.

That’s why you see many publicly traded companies’ boards of directors filled with general business experts and executives from different industries. But you never see start-up boards filled with random big-shot attorneys or CEOs of companies in unrelated industries.

Bottom Line: The most effective start-up advisory boards seem to consist of big names with no time, and no names with plenty of time, and the no names have deep, specific experience in the specific customer niche of the start-up.

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