Business
« Previous EntriesMy Thoughts on The Changes in Rob’s Business Thoughts
Monday, February 25th, 2008BusinessPundit, which my boss got me hooked on, is one of the blogs that I follow regularly. Rob May, the guy behind the blog for the past 5 years, is moving on to do other things — and he wrote a fantastic post titled “The Top 10 Changes in my Business Thinking” summing up his […]
A Young Internet Millionaire - Max Levchin
Sunday, October 28th, 2007There is a story on Max Levchin, one of the founders of PayPal & current CEO of Slide.com, in the New York Times that is a great read — After Succeeding, Young Tycoons Try, Try Again.
Max Levchin was one of the early founders of PayPal, which was acquired by eBay in October 2002. Max, now […]
Who Owns Your Content?
Monday, October 22nd, 2007You Do! Duh. Everything with your name & a link back to your website belongs to you.
There was a ton of commentary about “who owns your content” as a result of the Move - Active Rain lawsuit a couple weeks ago — should you focus on building your own content on your own servers or […]
Do You Believe?
Monday, October 8th, 2007From Jeff Pulver’s blog –
Based on my own startup history, being the CEO of a hi-tech startup can feel a lot like what a baseball fan imagines it is like being the manager of a major league baseball team. You always have to worry about what the owners (investors) have to say and how they […]
Surrounding Yourself With Passionate People and Being Inspired
Tuesday, August 21st, 2007Surrounding yourself with passionate people is important — both in life and in business.
Though I do firmly believe in the vision of Zillow, I wouldn’t be at Zillow if it weren’t for all the fantastic colleagues I get to work with — it was the team that attracted me. I’ve heard both Rich and Lloyd […]
Gnomedex Thoughts 2 - Evangelism
Friday, August 10th, 2007Guy Kawasaki was the 3rd speaker leading up to lunch and talked about evangelism. Every entrepreneur is probably thinking about how to get the word out on the cheap w/out advertising. Here’s Guy’s 10 tips to effective product evangelism (he actually gave 11, but I seemed to have missed one) –
Make Meaning
Make Mantra
Roll the DICEE
Deep
Intelligent
Complete
Elegant
Emotive
Niche […]
Business is All About Execution - Period
Monday, July 16th, 2007Not sure how many of you have read the latest coverage on Techmeme of the 3-year old lawsuit against Facebook. There’s also the question of whether the lawsuit will affect a potential Facebook IPO. For a summary of the lawsuit, I’ll take a page from VentureBeat and post the great summary at Portfolio:
The lawsuit, filed […]
Why William Wallace Signifies the Web 2.0 Entrepreneur
Sunday, June 24th, 2007I’m not sure what made me think of this, but I was thinking about the Braveheart clip that I posted a couple days ago and I realized it can easily be related to the web 2.0 generation.
In today’s world, William Wallace is a Web 2.0 entrepreneur and the “Nobles” signify traditional business executives.
William Wallace […]
The Complete Small Business Solution — The Potential of a Google - Salesforce Alliance
Monday, May 21st, 2007There is lots of talk on Techmeme about a possible Salesforce - Google alliance against Microsoft. First of all, let me say that I have no idea whether Google will buy Salesforce or not — I would guess a big part of that would be whether salesforce CEO Marc Benioff would sell the company. However, […]
Why Isn’t the United States More Like Microsoft?
Sunday, May 6th, 2007I’m a big believer in the saying “What goes around, comes around.” I firmly believe that time spent educating and helping potential customers (without asking for anything in return) is time well spent for companies and individuals who are looking to build their client base. Let’s take a simple example — a couple weeks ago, […]
17 Tips for Job Seekers
Saturday, April 21st, 2007I “stumbled” upon this post this morning and think it gives some good advice for job seekers. Most importantly, make sure you take note of point #1:
Tap your contacts. Do you know anyone who works for the organization already? Do you know anyone who might know someone who works for that organization already? Try to […]
The More You Know, the Less You Need
Sunday, March 25th, 2007I read the latest copy of Fortune magazine today — there is a fantastic story about Patagonia (the article isn’t online yet or else I’d link to it), which is about the “greenest” company you’ll find anywhere. There was a superb quote that Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard is said to tell his customers –
The […]
10 Things Employers Want You to Learn in College
Monday, March 12th, 2007One of my colleagues gave me a book a couple months ago: 10 Things Employers Want You to Learn in College. Try as I might, I’m certainly not perfect — I’ve got a long way to go and a lot to learn. For all the young professionals and college students who might be reading, the […]
The Most Important People on the Web are, well…Important
Monday, March 5th, 2007PC World takes a look at the 50 Most Important People on the Web (syndicated to Yahoo!). Who are they? Well, no real surprises in the top 5 –
Eric Schmidt, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin — Executives at Google
Steve Jobs — CEO of Apple
Bram Cohen — Cofounder of BitTorrent
Mike Morhaime — Presidenta at Blizzard […]
Business Strategy Insights
Tuesday, February 20th, 2007There are two primary aspects of business that are extremely enjoyable — 1) relationship building and 2) business strategy. On the subject of business strategy, Guy Kawasaki asked Michael Raynor some fantastic questions & receives some great responses. Michael has a degree from Harvard and authored The Strategy Paradox — so I think it’s safe […]
Social Media’s Impact on Business and PR
Saturday, February 17th, 2007If you are a CEO — do you have a handle on your employees? Do they really like working at your company? Ask Miller Brewing Company how social media impacts them after several discontent employees decided to publish a song on YouTube in response to the “possibility of CEO Norman Adami freezing their pensions.” […]
Quick PR Lesson from Obama
Monday, February 12th, 2007I know - sorry, political overkill, but Barack Obama was interviewed on 60 Minutes tonight (here’s the video) and I think there is something we can all (ESPECIALLY other politicians) learn from him: admit your mistakes. Obama didn’t deny that he “used marijuana and cocaine as a teenager.” Personally, I know few people who did […]
Fantastic Fortune Articles
Sunday, February 11th, 2007I just read the majority of the latest Fortune magazine, which I received in the mail yesterday. I was extremely impressed with the issue (I don’t know why I’m surprised). And no, it’s not just because Zillow was the cover story that I’m choosing to mention this edition. The primary reason is that I’m glad […]
Link Love
Thursday, January 25th, 2007No, I’m not going to talk about how to link to others tonight — instead, I’ll just do it:
The 2007 World Economic Forum is under way in Switzerland — you can actually watch webcasts of most of the speakers here. The Economist has an interesting podcast on the subject of CEO’s and other leaders starting […]
A CEO Apologizes Publicly. Is PR Changing?
Saturday, January 20th, 2007Man, I was shocked to see the CEO Jonathan Schwartz of a Fortune 500 company (Sun) publicly apologize to the blogosphere without being asked. In response to this blog post by Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg that critizes the Sun Startup Essentials program, Jonathan wrote this on his own blog:
…yes, I saw the entry written by […]








