Sorry, no

Thanks for the all the feedback. Here’s the funniest email I’ve gotten about these articles (sent today):
“…can you make them shorter? theyre really long.”
No, no I can’t. But thank you for “reading.”

Your idea isn’t good enough to keep secret

Yet.
One of the most rookie mistakes young entrepreneurs make is keeping their ideas secret. It goes something like this:
You: “So what are you working on?”
Rookie: “Oh, sorry. I can’t really talk about it.”
Really! Your idea is so grand that you can’t share it with even your close friend? Wow, I want to invest in [...]

We love to debate minutiae

If you’re below the age of 125, you have heard people saying one of more of these phrases about losing weight:

Don’t eat before you go to bed because fat doesn’t burn as efficiently
If you cut your carb intake and raise your protein level, you can lose lots of weight quickly
If you eat fruit in the [...]

The Myth of the Great Idea

There’s a common and weird conception in this country of The Great Idea.
This is the idea of PageRank, a graphical user interface, or sticky notes. Huge successes, right?
Sure. But for 99% of people, The Great Idea is a big fat myth.
At the beginning of 2004, a few friends came over to get some advice. They [...]

New section: Personal entrepreneurship

I’ve been talking about launching a series on personal entrepreneurship for a long time, and I’m happy to finally launch it today.
Personal entrepreneurship is different than regular entrepreneurship. We’re not going to be talking about term sheets and anti-dilution clauses and equity here.
Instead, I’m going to share some ideas about entrepreneurship on a personal [...]

Value, not cost (Part 1)

In my post about cheap vs. frugal people a few days ago, I mentioned value vs. cost. I want to dig into this a little bit more.
Remember when I went to the grocery store and was outraged at how much it cost to buy the basics for new apartment? That sucked.
Anyway, my reaction was [...]