The final twenty years of my career was directly involved in disrupting large companies stuck with stale “we are too big to fail” thinking. Running into a person near my age, as I did at lunch last week, espousing today’s version of “It’ll never fly, Orville Syndrome,” irritated me. Don’t… Continue reading
This year I read 61 books, about ten more than average, roughly equally split between fiction and non-fiction. As I get older, the number has begun to creep up. I’ve always been a reader. A speed-reading class in high school gave me techniques for increasing speed and comprehension, and I… Continue reading
I’ve just finished Frank J. O’Connell’s book, Jump First, Think Fast, and found it more fun, interesting, and inspiring than I had thought possible. I’ve known Frank and his wife Barb for more than twenty-five years. There was never a doubt Frank’s life and career would make a great story.… Continue reading
For the past ten years my interest in diminishing the impact of psychics and pseudoscience has grown. I wrote a newsletter about scary psychics earlier this year. Few groups stand up for reason and truth – there should be more. The good ones, like the one mentioned below, needs and… Continue reading
Because I subscribe to a variety of websites and have a good-sized group of Facebook friends linked more by shared love of family, motorcycles and cars than political affiliation, I run across my fair share of questionable news reports. Whether they are conspiracy theories or just scary threats to which… Continue reading
After nine of them, I know a good bit about starting companies. After investing in at least twenty, I spot founders with a high success likelihood pretty quickly. An author I admire, Taylor Stevens, recently penned a newsletter nailing one of those elusive success factors brilliantly. For her, it is… Continue reading
Recent explorations into ethical questions have led me down a variety of rabbit holes, eventually to the whole psychic phenomenon and people claiming to be mediums and able to predict the future. One fascinating character is Mark Edward. I watched a 90-minute presentation where he explained how he and others… Continue reading
My nerves were on edge as I took the wheel of Rich Marin’s Tesla Model X. We were driving from his Escondido hilltop home to old town San Diego for an early dinner. The car wasn’t what was worrying me. My issue was about after dinner when we would drive… Continue reading
My friend, Rich Marin, has invited me to teach at one of his graduate business school classes in San Diego, on the subject of Evaluating and Using Business Ethics. While looking forward to this, it’s forced me to take several actions. The first was to find a company around which… Continue reading
News reached me yesterday my friend, Chris Locke passed away on Dec 21. Chris had a remarkably large impact on my life and the way I thought, during my critical transition from working for large companies like IBM and AT&T to early stage startup companies. The Internet was just a… Continue reading