Power Law Distribution - A Glimpse into a VC Fund Perhaps the most enlightening lecture about startups I ever attended was class 7 in Peter Thiel’s CS183. In it, Thiel outlined the basics of what a VC firm does, with a particular emphasis on what the graphs must look like in order for a VC firm to come out ahead in any given fund. These words in particular have stuck in my mind for years since I heard him utter them:...
I recently picked up the book Insanely Simple by Ken Segall after my roommate insisted it was a ‘game changer’. I’d originally pegged it as a book on minimalistic lifestyles, but it’s actually a book about how simplicity has driven Apple’s design decisions for most of it’s history. Segall touches on Steve Jobs illness and quotes a few lines from the commencement speech he gave to Stanford in 2004. Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life....
“They just fired me” The words caught in her throat and reverberated oddly into my brain. I could feel the moment starting to warp into some sort of shakespearian ‘lesson’ I was supposed to latch onto and spit out at my junior employees years into the future; and yet I simply stared staunchly back into that statements twisted face in denial. Standing before me was one of my best friends who I had recruited a year earlier to be a linchpin in a company I helped co-found....
To me a highly effective leader is someone who leads from the back. Like a good user interface an effective leader frames the problem, points their employees in the right direction, and then gets out of the way. If a leader has surrounded themselves with the right people (aka people smarter than themselves), getting out of the way allows your organization to fully unleash their collective creativity on a problem and grow closer together as a unit....
Way back in 2009 I took my first Human Computer Interaction course at Stanford from my future advisor, Scott Klemmer, that sparked my curiosity with early stage products. Recently I decided to relive some memories and logged on to his 2012 coursera course where I was reminded of an incredible story that really embodies the value of low fidelity prototypes and not being afraid of putting your work out there at it’s earliest stages....