[This post is part of a series on “Mental models and beliefs: an exercise to identify yours.” If you don’t see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you’ll get more value than reading just this post.] You want to do something meaningful. You know it will take resources — time, energy, attention, etc. You have your goals. You have a general plan.[…] Keep reading →

I can’t resist reposting a comment I posted on the forum of one of my favorite other blogs, Mr. Money Mustache. I’m reposting it because two other readers rated my response highly, one giving my response this animated image, making me proud. The post I responded to Alright mustachians [the term for people in the Mr. Money Mustache community who practice his principles of not spending money on stuff that[…] Keep reading →

Do you feel stress from too much stuff to do or lose track of things? Many entrepreneurial and management types I know read Getting Things Done and put it into practice. I recommend it. I read the book and like the philosophy — in particular, his observation that if your mind has to remember something, it will allocate resources that distract you from everything else. The more you have to[…] Keep reading →

If you’re an entrepreneur or VC in New York, clear off Monday, April 15, 2013 from 7:00 PM to 9:30 PM. I’ve written before about InSITE, the entrepreneurship group I started working with at Columbia Business School, and a friend there winning a competition with a business to reduce pollution. If you didn’t know, InSITE brings together graduate students at various schools around NYC (mainly from Columbia’s and NYU’s business,[…] Keep reading →

Investors describe themselves as helping entrepreneurs and often they do, but somehow every entrepreneur I’ve asked about the challenges of working with investors could still tell me stories about how investors made their lives and business difficult. However much investors want businesses they’ve invested in to grow, their interests never perfectly align with those of management, especially before they invest in the firm in question. I wouldn’t call that difference[…] Keep reading →

I just read that Sweden is separating their trash so effectively, they’re buying garbage from other countries. That is, their reducing-reusing-and-recycling programs work so well, their waste-incineration program is running low. Needless to say, reducing waste reduces pollution more than incinerating garbage, so one program starving the other helps the environment. According to Phys.org, Europe’s average amount of trash ending up as waste if 38 percent. Sweden’s is 1 percent.[…] Keep reading →

In September, 2001, the company I co-founded, Submedia, was installing its first display in Atlanta for our first big launch. We anticipated a lot of press. Giving away part of how the story ends, we did get a lot of media attention. The night before launch was crazy — we had a few hours to finish installing the display, we had to prepare for the Fire Marshall’s inspection the morning[…] Keep reading →