Inspirational

feltron: Stephen Wolfram’s personal analytics

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 13:38:55 -0700

Stephen Wolfram’s personal analytics

How Naval looks at a company

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 14:56:04 -0700

“I look for two things that are paramount above all:

Great team. It’s obvious. It’s a tautology. Everybody says it. You have to be working with some of the best people in the industry you’re in.

Huge market. Niche markets just don’t work because the first idea never works. You always have to change the idea, so you need room to maneuver in a big market.

There are three more factors that I look at. Not all three of them are required but I prefer a company to have at least two of them: Difficult technology that is compounding over time.

- A proprietary distribution channel.
- A clever viral marketing, or SEO, or partnership, or whatever strategy that gives them a leg up over competitors.
- A direct monetization model. Something more than throwing up 10 cent banner ad CPMs.

"There’s this wonderful paper called The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Data (PDF) and it shows that..."

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 12:54:21 -0700

““There’s this wonderful paper called The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Data (PDF) and it shows that for every increase in order of magnitude of data you have, it beats all improvements in algorithms. For me this means to get data, you have to get people to use you…so design is the necessary prerequisite to the data that you want.””

- Massive Health Co-Founder and CEO Sutha Kamal Leaves The Company (via rahmin)

brinking.: Instagram is worth 1%, not $1b

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 12:15:37 -0700

brinking.: Instagram is worth 1%, not $1b:

nabeel:

The best way to think about the value of Instagram is not to think about $1 billion or $30/user, it’s this: 1%

The value of Instagram is tied up in Facebook being valued at an unprecedented $100 billion valuation. To use the case that Paul Graham makes for YC: do you believe that Instragram adds…

John's Tumblr: Dammit.

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 00:16:08 -0700

John's Tumblr: Dammit.:

lilly:

I was frustrated tonight with something that made me write something careless. Which ignited an intense back & forth that I think is somewhat better now, and will lead to a more substantial and useful conversation I think.

But I was so focused on it that I was a crappy dad. Didn’t pay enough…

davemorin: MIT ‘smart sand’ and ‘robot pebbles’ replicate...

Thu, 05 Apr 2012 11:30:10 -0700

davemorin:

MIT ‘smart sand’ and ‘robot pebbles’ replicate objects

mattgalligan: Oh shit…

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 15:58:53 -0700

mattgalligan:

Oh shit…

"When the meeting ends, it is unclear what exactly has been accomplished, but a lot has been..."

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 13:07:30 -0800

“When the meeting ends, it is unclear what exactly has been accomplished, but a lot has been commented upon in a clever, pithy way. Being at Twitter is, in fact, a lot like being on Twitter.”

- Fast Company: The Women of Twitter - Magazine - Vogue

"it’s more than a bit of a stretch to suggest that carelessness by Path could lead to “roundups and..."

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 15:29:50 -0800

“it’s more than a bit of a stretch to suggest that carelessness by Path could lead to “roundups and arrests” or dissidents in Egypt. My educated guess is Path is unlikely to sell, or give, any user data to the Egyptian authorities. Instead, they were using the data to make intelligent friend suggestions, which is significantly less evil.”

- I’m So, So Sorry. Here’s My Belly. Now Please Move On. « Uncrunched

thepersonalnetwork: We are delighted to be partnered with Nike...

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 21:00:09 -0800

thepersonalnetwork:

We are delighted to be partnered with Nike and the new Nike+ FUELBAND to journal your daily activity on Path. Share life and #makeitcount. Coming soon. Learn more here.

"Q. What ideals have you embraced from Steve Jobs? A. The importance of doing everything you do to..."

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 17:24:29 -0800

“Q. What ideals have you embraced from Steve Jobs? A. The importance of doing everything you do to your very best. And that the journey is the reward. If you do things well one at a time, you end up in a really good place. Don’t get ahead of yourself. Control the things you can.”

- Business & Technology | AP Interview: JC Penney CEO talks about the chain | Seattle Times Newspaper

"Now, Sarah’s where she’s supposed to be. The star of her own show, Pando Daily. Which launches..."

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 10:41:26 -0800

“Now, Sarah’s where she’s supposed to be. The star of her own show, Pando Daily. Which launches today. The name is from some tree ecosystem in Utah that has a root system that makes it one big organism. The point is that the trees and the roots are like Silicon Valley. Whatever.”

- via Uncrunched

I’ll admit to laughing, despite loving the Pando story.

Photo

Sun, 11 Dec 2011 14:06:00 -0800

"Now, when I advise entrepreneurs, I try to help in any way I can. If I don’t believe..."

Tue, 25 Oct 2011 10:55:20 -0700

“Now, when I advise entrepreneurs, I try to help in any way I can. If I don’t believe something, I don’t hold back. It’s not easy. I actually would rather be supportive, but I know that the marketplace is not supportive. It’s unfeeling, never satisfied, and totally merciless. Better to get tough feedback now, rather than fail later.”

- Advice to advisers: Stop being so nice. - humbledMBA

"Being young is supposed to mean you have the luxury of time. But in hard times, a few fallow years..."

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 08:46:43 -0700

“Being young is supposed to mean you have the luxury of time. But in hard times, a few fallow years can become a lifetime drag on what you earn, sort of the opposite of compound interest. Because the average person grabs 70 percent of their total pay bumps during their first ten years in the workforce, according to a paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research, having stagnant or nonexistent wages during that period means you hit that springboard at a crawl. Economist Lisa Kahn explained to The Atlantic in 2010 that those who graduate into a recession are still earning an average of 10 percent less nearly two decades into their careers. In hard, paycheck-shrinking numbers, the salary lost over that stretch totals around $100,000. That works out to $490 or so less a month, money that could go, say, toward repaying student loans, which for the class of 2009 average $24,000. Those student loans (the responsible borrowing option!) have reportedly passed credit cards as the nation’s largest source of debt. This is not just a rotten moment to be young. It’s a putrid, stinking, several-months-old-stringy-goat-meat moment to be young.”

- Why the Current Crop of Twentysomethings Are Going to Be Okay — New York Magazine

I think, and this is an unfinished thought, that we are starting to see the consequences of the stratification of extreme growth. Innovation seems to naturally create extreme status differentials, which seem to be counter-balanced by cultural tendencies towards revolution for equality.

The next few years is going to be a bad time to be a slow track of personal improvement. If those that excel, invent, and innovate don’t find compassionate motivations, I fear there will be real societal upheaval.

Given the crunch we will feel from energy, food, and water shortages — and the fact that the workforces opportunities will continue to shrink through mechanization — a successful revolution could bring us our own version of the dark ages.

"Ontologies supply a structure for relating information to other information in the semantic Web or..."

Sat, 15 Oct 2011 00:32:19 -0700

“Ontologies supply a structure for relating information to other information in the semantic Web or the linked data realm. Ontologies thus provide a similar role for the organization of data that is provided by relational data schema. Because of this structural role, ontologies are pivotal to the coherence and interoperability of interconnected data.”

- Siri (product): Is Quora important to Siri? - Quora

"[7] Why does society foul you? Indifference, mainly. There are simply no outside forces pushing high..."

Thu, 13 Oct 2011 14:11:57 -0700

“[7] Why does society foul you? Indifference, mainly. There are simply no outside forces pushing high school to be good. The air traffic control system works because planes would crash otherwise. Businesses have to deliver because otherwise competitors would take their customers. But no planes crash if your school sucks, and it has no competitors. High school isn’t evil; it’s random; but random is pretty bad.”

- What You’ll Wish You’d Known

"Do you think Shakespeare was gritting his teeth and diligently trying to write Great Literature? Of..."

Thu, 13 Oct 2011 12:48:04 -0700

“Do you think Shakespeare was gritting his teeth and diligently trying to write Great Literature? Of course not. He was having fun. That’s why he’s so good.”

- What You’ll Wish You’d Known

"The most important thing about power is to make sure you don’t have to use it."

Sun, 09 Oct 2011 14:07:58 -0700

“The most important thing about power is to make sure you don’t have to use it.”

- Edwin Land

"Don’t undertake a project unless it is manifestly important and nearly impossible."

Sun, 09 Oct 2011 14:07:32 -0700

“Don’t undertake a project unless it is manifestly important and nearly impossible.”

- Edwin Land (founder of Polaroid)