The Cost Of Loyalty
In the local transportation market, we now have lots of options in addition to mass transit. Here in NYC, we have taxis, Lyft, and Uber. In SF and LA, we have taxis, Sidecar (our portfolio company), Lyft, and Uber. Around [...] Read more
What To Do (and Not) About Online Discourse
GamerGate has laid bare a fundamental fault line for online discourse. A. Words matter. Anyone dismissing tweets threatening violence along the lines of “sticks and stones can break my bones but words will never harm me” is trivializing the power [...] Read more
Lump of Labor: Certainly a Red Herring (And Possibly not a Fallacy)
I have written before that it is OK to worry about the effects of automation on work. One frequently encountered response is that this worry is wrong, that having it is committing the Lump of Labor fallacy. Marc in particular [...] Read more
Network Effects for SaaS Businesses
Later today I am talking at Point Nine Capital’s annual SaaS conference. The topic will be how to create network effects for SaaS businesses. Just as a quick reminder, a business has network effects if the value of the service [...] Read more
A Short Note on the Word “Panic”
In the current discussions on what to do (or not to do) about the Ebola outbreak the word “panic” is being abused. Panic means a “sudden, overpowering terror, often affecting many people at once.” And some of the nonstop CNN [...] Read more
Parallel Book Reading
I used to be highly skeptical that one could be reading more than one book at a time. But in the last couple of years what I have found works best for me is to have 3-4 non fiction books [...] Read more
Changing Society, Startups, (My)Self
The Next Big Thing? (Techonomy Detroit)
Last week I was in Detroit to speak at Techonomy’s one day conference there. I had never been to the city before and enjoyed meeting Mike Duggan, the mayor, Beth Niblock, CIO, and many other people working hard to turn [...] Read more
Climate: A Successful March and Three Fallacies
I am thrilled that the Climate March in New York City yesterday had such a huge turnout. It felt like the beginning of an important movement to finally take more decisive action. The organizers estimate that more than 300,000 people [...] Read more