The Supreme Court handed down a bunch of rulings yesterday. The two that I find most interesting relate to patents and guns. Both rulings are disappointing, as I am against software patents and for stricter gun control. But they are also not as terrible as I feared they might be. As far as I can tell, on both counts the Supreme Court handed down fairly narrow rulings. The initial analysis over at Groklaw of the Bilski decision (patents) suggests there are plenty of openings in this ruling for...

The Supreme Court handed down a bunch of rulings yesterday. The two that I find most interesting relate to patents and guns. Both rulings are disappointing, as I am against software patents and for stricter gun control. But they are also not as terrible as I feared they might be. As far as I can tell, on both counts the Supreme Court handed down fairly narrow rulings. The initial analysis over at Groklaw of the Bilski decision (patents) suggests there are plenty of openings in this ruling for...

Yesterday evening I wanted to bone up on the racing rules in sailing after having had a close encounter while rounding the leward mark last Thursday (which elicited quite a blue streak from the skipper of the other boat). I really wanted to see some animations of different situations that one might encounter to test my understanding of the rules. After a quick search I wound up on the UK Halsey site, only to remember that I was on an iPad and none of the animations would work because they are...

Yesterday evening I wanted to bone up on the racing rules in sailing after having had a close encounter while rounding the leward mark last Thursday (which elicited quite a blue streak from the skipper of the other boat). I really wanted to see some animations of different situations that one might encounter to test my understanding of the rules. After a quick search I wound up on the UK Halsey site, only to remember that I was on an iPad and none of the animations would work because they are...

A quality that I find hugely important but increasingly rare in people is the willingness to admit mistakes. Growing up I wasn’t really part of a culture in which mistakes are openly discussed and used as an opportunity to learn. For a long time, my own approach was therefore one of just moving on or trying to fix things without admitting to any mistakes (often compounding the initial mistake in the process). But as I started to manage people I came to realize that if you want them to try thi...

A quality that I find hugely important but increasingly rare in people is the willingness to admit mistakes. Growing up I wasn’t really part of a culture in which mistakes are openly discussed and used as an opportunity to learn. For a long time, my own approach was therefore one of just moving on or trying to fix things without admitting to any mistakes (often compounding the initial mistake in the process). But as I started to manage people I came to realize that if you want them to try thi...

So I am finally midstream in migrating off Exchange and onto Google. Email - check (gmail). Contacts - check (google contacts). Calendar - check (gcal). Notes - what no Google notes? Huh? I may be overlooking something obvious here, but it doesn’t seem as if Google has a direct equivalent of notes. Now as it happens, I use notes a lot. For instance, I keep a running list of ideas for blog posts as a note. I have notes for each portfolio company. There are notes for travel destinations. In gen...

So I am finally midstream in migrating off Exchange and onto Google. Email - check (gmail). Contacts - check (google contacts). Calendar - check (gcal). Notes - what no Google notes? Huh? I may be overlooking something obvious here, but it doesn’t seem as if Google has a direct equivalent of notes. Now as it happens, I use notes a lot. For instance, I keep a running list of ideas for blog posts as a note. I have notes for each portfolio company. There are notes for travel destinations. In gen...

Yesterday saw the “wire transfer heard ‘round the world,” as Bryce put it in a tweet. Foursquare did indeed close a Series B financing as has by now been widely reported. My job of writing a blog post about this has been made very easy: Dennis wrote a terrific announcement on the foursquare blog, Ben Horowitz from “A16Z” does a great job in his post of describing why all the investors are excited about Foursquare; and my partner Fred provides a refreshing perspective on the process. The only ...

Yesterday saw the “wire transfer heard ‘round the world,” as Bryce put it in a tweet. Foursquare did indeed close a Series B financing as has by now been widely reported. My job of writing a blog post about this has been made very easy: Dennis wrote a terrific announcement on the foursquare blog, Ben Horowitz from “A16Z” does a great job in his post of describing why all the investors are excited about Foursquare; and my partner Fred provides a refreshing perspective on the process. The only ...

I love to blog about all the awesome things that the Internet is bringing and how that creates great investment opportunities. But once in a while I have first hand experiences that remind me how much innovation could/should/will (?) occur in other areas. Last week was one of those. One of our kids suddenly had areas of skin the size of quarters essentially dissolve. The pediatrician thought that it was some kind of bacterial infection. But here is where the interesting part starts. In order ...

I love to blog about all the awesome things that the Internet is bringing and how that creates great investment opportunities. But once in a while I have first hand experiences that remind me how much innovation could/should/will (?) occur in other areas. Last week was one of those. One of our kids suddenly had areas of skin the size of quarters essentially dissolve. The pediatrician thought that it was some kind of bacterial infection. But here is where the interesting part starts. In order ...

Fred has been posting a wonderful series of MBA Mondays posts that I recommend to everyone who wants to know more about the business side of startups. If you come from the engineering side, it may also help to think about business using engineering principles. My favorite one is the idea of a “single binding constraint." When the execution of a program runs into a hardware constraint, it tends to be a single binding constraint: the program is either CPU-bound, memory-bound or IO-bound but gen...

Fred has been posting a wonderful series of MBA Mondays posts that I recommend to everyone who wants to know more about the business side of startups. If you come from the engineering side, it may also help to think about business using engineering principles. My favorite one is the idea of a “single binding constraint." When the execution of a program runs into a hardware constraint, it tends to be a single binding constraint: the program is either CPU-bound, memory-bound or IO-bound but gen...

Following our recent recruiting effort to find Christina and Gary I have been spending a fair bit of time meeting with people we encountered in the process who wanted career advice. Here are some of the points I have found myself talking about repeatedly. First: many people think they want to be an entrepreneur but few actually are. The best way to tell is to look at the things you have already done. If you have never taken the initiative to create something from scratch (and even if that som...

Following our recent recruiting effort to find Christina and Gary I have been spending a fair bit of time meeting with people we encountered in the process who wanted career advice. Here are some of the points I have found myself talking about repeatedly. First: many people think they want to be an entrepreneur but few actually are. The best way to tell is to look at the things you have already done. If you have never taken the initiative to create something from scratch (and even if that som...

As in the past 8 years, we went to see the Scarsdale Memorial Day parade earlier this year. Attendance was incredibly low. I remarked to Susan then that this is a direct function of virtually no one in Scarsdale having a family member in the military. As far as I can tell, we have essentially “outsourced” fighting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to the poorer parts of the States. I was reminded of this on 4th of July, where around here everything was idyllic and not a single conversation I h...

As in the past 8 years, we went to see the Scarsdale Memorial Day parade earlier this year. Attendance was incredibly low. I remarked to Susan then that this is a direct function of virtually no one in Scarsdale having a family member in the military. As far as I can tell, we have essentially “outsourced” fighting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to the poorer parts of the States. I was reminded of this on 4th of July, where around here everything was idyllic and not a single conversation I h...

Yes it is officially hot in New York City these days. I don’t know if I can stand this when I am older, but for now I quite enjoy the huge seasonal differences. They are a reminder that much as we may obsess about things that happen at work or at home, there are much bigger forces surrounding us (we all live on a rock traveling through space). This is a useful bit of perspective. One of the books that is part of my summer reading adds to this view: 13 Things that Don’t Make Sense: The Most Ba...

Yes it is officially hot in New York City these days. I don’t know if I can stand this when I am older, but for now I quite enjoy the huge seasonal differences. They are a reminder that much as we may obsess about things that happen at work or at home, there are much bigger forces surrounding us (we all live on a rock traveling through space). This is a useful bit of perspective. One of the books that is part of my summer reading adds to this view: 13 Things that Don’t Make Sense: The Most Ba...