Archive for the 'Life' Category

Why You Can’t Get More Happiness, Money and Love By Pursuing Them Directly

Thursday, June 17th, 2010

Many things people strive for are actually byproducts of what the real goal should be. But by focusing on the byproduct instead of the goal, the desired byproduct is ever elusive. Let’s look at a few examples: Happiness The real goal is finding activities you’re passionate about and consistently engaging in them. That definition skews [...]

Intelligence isn’t the engine it’s the steering wheel

Tuesday, June 8th, 2010

Intelligence is about building up continually improving mental models of the world and correcting false assumptions as you find them. As you have more models and modules you can solve more problems and understand more things. For example, when you can cross pollinate modules from psychology to shed new light on business problems. Some people [...]

Quote of the Day

Monday, June 7th, 2010

QOTD. Buckminster Fuller, 1970: “We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of [...]

Lean Education and Learning

Thursday, May 27th, 2010

I haven’t been writing much lately. Building my public voice hasn’t been a priority. But I thought I’d share this email I wrote, (lightly edited). The ideas in this post strongly reference the lean startup theory. If you don’t know much about that, this post might be a bit confusing. …This also inspired me to [...]

5 Steps of Entrepreneurial Growth

Friday, January 8th, 2010

I defined 5 steps in the entrepreneurial journey that I think most people go through. The distribution is a pyramid and only a small percentage of people make it through each stage. (1) No Desire —intrinsic motivation suppressed (usually by the school system) (2) Desire to make an impact and be entrepreneurial, but uncertainty about [...]

What I’m Working On

Friday, January 8th, 2010

Force For the Future— Force For the Future is a startup for startups working on creating new models and tools to enable entrepreneurs to more easily find what they need, collaborate, and share lessons learned. We’re working on creating a “post-accelerator” for the increasing number founders coming out of startup accelerators. Our pilot project, Founder’s [...]

Gap Year Update

Friday, January 8th, 2010

This fall I was lucky to be one of the 30 residents in the inaugural year of Palomar5. It was by far the most intense experience of my life, triggering a lot of personal and project growth. A lot has changed since, but the dots still make sense looking backward. The last few years I’ve [...]

What I’ve Been Up To At Palomar5

Sunday, November 15th, 2009

Originally posted on the Sandbox Blog This blog post is part 2 of the Sandbox Network ‘Palomar 5′ series: a six week innovation camp in Berlin from 9 October – 24 November 2009. To follow the progress of the conference, you can view the official Palomar 5 blog. Alternatively, if you are on twitter, follow [...]

My Post From The Sandbox Blog

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

Me and my fellow Sandboxers and Palomar-ians Sagarika, Jyoti and Eddie wrote a post about our first week at Palomar5. Read the full post here. A few favorite quotes posted below. The Palomar5 experience began with a warm welcome to a chilly Berlin at the Malzfabrik, a former giant brewery that is being transformed into [...]

My Profile on the Palomar5 Blog…

Saturday, October 17th, 2009

From my profile on the Palomar5 Blog ‘I try to make what I do and what I am passionate about as close together as possible. I believe that should be one of everyone’s major goals in life. I think passion almost always manifests itself as a desire to change or improve something, whether it’s the [...]