Startups are an environment full of both opportunities and challenges for career advancement. The opportunities usually come in two distinct stages: founding and scaling. During the founding stage anybody can take any title and that’s often precisely what founders do. I have previously written about how this is generally...
essays
Any organization should be continuously on the look-out for talented people who are capable of taking on leadership roles. In this context you hear the word ‘ownership’ a lot, in reference to ‘owning’ a function, project, or deliverable. The words are often used interchangeably but, I believe, have very...
In a recent post on startup ethics, I emphasized the fact that employee equity is an investment like any other, and it is unethical for insiders (CEOs, select investors, etc.) to structure deals in order to screw employees out of their equity shares. I also hypothesised that character traits...
Entrepreneurship
, People
Why Employee Equity is an Investment like Any Other: Entrepreneurship and ethics
There’s been a flurry of articles and a Hacker News Poll, highlighting entrepreneurs who despite, or maybe because of their success, turn around and screw their employees, collaborators, partners. Just look at the last few big deals this year: Zynga and its CEO (personally worth billions at the expected...
How To Spot Technology Trends
, Technology
How to Spot Technology Trends II: Replacing ‘Impossible’ with ‘Never Before Possible’
This is part 2 of a post on spotting technology trends. In the last post I explained that the best place to look for technology trends is my mother’s demographic (a mainstream demographic, with disposable income, that is not very technologically savvy). In this post, I describe the mindset required...
Spotting technology trends is a subject that is at the forefront of our minds at TandemLaunch. While I can’t offer any silver bullet solutions, this will be the first of a 2 post series on the subject. I look forward to some good discussion on the topic. When you...
A couple of weekends ago I witnessed a lively debate around the issue of racism in Silicon Valley (ok, ‘lively’ is an understatement). I’m a firm believer that racism has a devastating effect on innovation, but I think we are all prone to these kinds of biases, and need...
Entrepreneurship
, Tech Entrepreneurship
Invention, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship: Different processes, different people
Invention, innovation, and entrepreneurship are words frequently thrown around by politicians, theorists, and entrepreneurs alike to generally describe the act of bringing a product or idea into the world. While easy to confuse, each concept is distinct and requires specific skills. When it’s time to choose the right...
While traveling in the Valley I had a chance to catch up with a few local entrepreneurs and accelerators. Many of them are doing interesting work, but I noticed a disturbing trend: entrepreneurship has become “cool” for a whole generation. As a an entrepreneur who had gone through several...
A few days ago I was at a “high society” party amongst captains of industry, political leaders and artists of renown from around the world (clearly as a “+1” to my spouse…). The crowd had two things in common: cowboy outfits (it was on a ranch), and pale...