It’ll never fly, Orville

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

Best Books of 2022 – My ‘must read’ list

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

The True Saga of Indian Motorcycle: A Tale of Triumph and Tragedy!

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

Best success correlation ever

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

Scary Psychics

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

Business Ethics: An Oxymoron?

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

Goodbye Chris Locke

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