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Nivi

added: Wed, 30th November 2005 | 498 views | 1x in favourites
feed url: http://feeds.feedburner.com/nivi

Latest feed entries:

Recommended: A new Venture Hacks feature

We just launched Recommended, a new feature on Venture Hacks.It’s like match.com for investors and entrepreneurs. Here’s the summary from the launch post:The most common question we hear from entrepreneurs is, “Can you introduce me to investors?” Yes we can. We’re going to recommend startups on Venture Hacks. Investors are invited to subscribe to our [...]

Warren Buffett on Taxes

Warren Buffett on taxes: “Relative to GDP, government taxation is 18.5% and spending is 20%, so we borrow the balance. The national debt should not be a scary topic and the fact that it’s gone up is fine as long as it’s proportional to GDP. Where do we get that 18.5%? There’s 2.7 trillion in government [...]

Subscribe to my FriendFeed

This blog isn’t going away but, these days, I’m doing most of my publishing on these sites: Venture Hacks My Twitter Venture Hacks Twitter Delicious Google Reader Y Combinator News You can subscribe to all of [...]

The Latest from Venture Hacks

Naval Ravikant and I write a blog called Venture Hacks: an entrepreneur’s guide to hacking venture capital. Here are some excerpts from our latest articles: Should I pay my investor’s legal fees?: “C’mon—you have $500M and I am raising $1.5M and you want me to take the first $25K to pay your legal expenses for doing the [...]

You can’t be normal

From Jeffrey Pfeffer’s book, The Human Equation: “You can’t be normal and expect abnormal returns.” You can find more amazing aphorisms on my Twitter profile.

All Your Things in One Place

I’ve been using FriendFeed to pull together everything I contribute to the Web via Venture Hacks, del.icio.us, Twitter, YouTube, digg, last.fm, LinkedIn, Yelp, et cetera! FriendFeed doesn’t have a compelling value proposition for me (yet). But it’s fun to visit it at the end of the day and see all the stuff that I’ve added to [...]

Songbird 0.3 Has Landed

Songbird 0.3 is here. Songbird is the Firefox of media players. And Mosaic. And Netscape. And a bag of potato chips. Imagine iTunes with the Web inside. Imagine iTunes sync’ing to every device in the musiverse. Imagine all the people. iTunes is great but, to quote Trent Reznor, “iTunes kind of feels like Sam Goody to me. I don’t [...]

Ken Hess’s Checklist for Building a Company

There’s a lot of wisdom in Ken Hess’s Remarks to Software Forum Dinner Meeting (from 1997!): Ken’s Checklist for Building a Company This checklist is about getting the odds in your favor. Fitting together all these pieces of the puzzle is what separates a good business plan from mere speculation. 1. Are you focused on creating the product? 2. [...]

Makin’ Moves

I laughed, I cried. Watch this video if you don’t see the embed below: Makin’ Moves.

Science and Technology Humor

Google Launches ‘The Google’ For Older Adults “All you have to do to turn the website on is put the little blinking line thing in the cyberspace window at the top of the screen, type ‘thegoogle.com,’ and press ‘return’—although it will also recognize http.wwwthegoogle.com, google.aol, and ‘THEGOOGLE’ typed into a Word document.” Google Announces Plan To [...]

Ignore your limits?

From Aging’s Changing Face in Psychology Today: Researchers who have found that negative stereotypes about aging can actually shorten your life. A Yale University study last year in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that people who have a positive perception of aging tend to live seven and a half years longer than those [...]

Great Quotes from Twitter

Here are some of the latest aphorisms I have posted to Twitter: “When humans are uncertain, we rely on social connections to help us out.” — Joshua Porter “At any given moment, the majority of resources in a capitalist system are being pushed over a cliff by morons.” — Scott Adams [...]

Edward Tufte on Moderating Forums

Edward Tufte on moderating forums: “Moderating a forum is fairly straightforward: knowing what you want, deleting entire threads that aren’t going anywhere, correcting the spelling of the word “it’s,” fixing URLs, deleting individual contributions that fail to advance the thread. It helps to have experience writing and editing (and reading student papers, refereeing journal articles, reviewing [...]

Cognitive Biases Make You Stupid

I recently enjoyed Cognitive biases potentially affecting judgment of global risks: All else being equal, not many people would prefer to destroy the world. Even faceless corporations, meddling governments, reckless scientists, and other agents of doom, require a world in which to achieve their goals of profit, order, tenure, or other villainies. If our [...]

Poll: Would you join a startup that recruits developers from Craigslist?

Would you invest in an early stage startup that recruits developers from Craigslist? Would you join one? Do good developers look for jobs on Craigslist? Do good startups need to use Craigslist to find talent? If we assume the talent on Craigslist is so-so, does that mean that software startups that recruit from Craigslist are so-so? What do you think? (Apologies [...]

Pithy Business Observations from Jeffrey Pfeffer

From Guy Kawasaki’s interview of Stanford professor Jeffrey Pfeffer: “Learning requires, first, a tolerance for failure, since by definition, learning means doing things you aren’t very good at.” “A lie takes two people: the person who tells the lie and the individual who signals that s/he wants to hear it.” “The most important three feet of real estate [...]

Ignore the competition

“Even in the fact of massive competition, don’t think about the competition. Literally don’t think about them. Every time you’re in a meeting and you’re tempted to talk about a competitor, replace that thought with one about user feedback or surveys. Just think about the customer.” – Mike McCue, CEO Tellme Networks, Former VP of Technology [...]

Quick: Vertical Blogging

Start a blog devoted to your expertise. Start a vertical blog. A vertical blog is for your readers. Personal blogs are great, but they’re focused on you and what you find interesting. They’re not focused on your readers. A vertical blog is focused. Focus is a competitive advantage. It will be a better blog. A vertical blog is branded. [...]

Quick: Complaining is silly. Either act or forget.

You have probably seen this list from Stefan Sagmeister’s diary, but it bears repeating regularly: Complaining is silly. Either act or forget. Thinking life will be better in the future is stupid. I have to live now. Being not truthful works against me. Helping other people helps me. Organizing a charity group is surprisingly easy. Everything I do always comes back [...]

Quick: Never be disappointed

When you get rejected, don’t say that you’re ‘disappointed’. If you’re an investor and an entrepreneur decides to take money elsewhere, you say: “Congratulations! Awesome! Wicked! Is there any room left for us to participate!?” If you’re trying to get a job and the company decides to hire someone else, you say: “Congratulations! Awesome! Wicked!!! Please keep me in [...]

Quick: Hierarchy of Designers

Here is my understanding of the different types of designers: Artist: How do I make a farting bird? Graphic Designer: How do we make this icon or logo or font communicate? Information Designer: How do we lay out this static page so it communicates? [...]

Quick: Psychology Today

My favorite new “undiscovered” blog: Psychology Today (RSS) The best article so far is Trashing Teens which argues that teen-hood is an unnecessary part of life that teenagers should be able to skip through tests akin to a driver’s exam: Why do you believe that adolescence is an artificial extension of childhood? In every mammalian species, immediately upon reaching [...]

Quick: Bad Words

Words I hate: space: “the advertising space” play: “this is an VoIP play” at the end of the day: I am told that this is used so often at Microsoft that they have an abbreviation for it. deal: “i want to get into this deal” synergy no-brainer I stole the last two from Mike Moritz. Words I love: customers market users

Quick: iPhone Pet Peeves

I’m looking forward to the iPhone. It’s from the future. Like something in Minority Report or Blade Runner. Too bad other companies lack the imagination to come up with something like this. I hate it when people say things like, “But you can’t edit Excel documents on it!” That said, here are some prospective weird pet peeves based on the [...]

Quick: It probably isn’t exponential growth

Just because you’re growing faster than a straight line doesn’t mean you’re growing exponentially. Exponential growth means that you are growing at a rate of cx, where c is a constant greater than 1 and x is a period of time. If c = 2 and x = 1 month, then you are doubling every month. If [...]

Venture Hacks is Hiring: One (Wo)man Developer Army

You probably know that I run a site called Venture Hacks which shows entrepreneurs how to negotiate great deals with their investors. We’re hiring! We’re looking for a one (wo)man developer army who wants to work with Venture Hacks to build our next product. It’s in a $25 billion market filled with lame products and unsatisfied customers. We’re [...]

Cold Call Me

Cold call me if you have started a company and need help: nivi at alum.mit.edu Cold calls work for me: Songbird cold called me, I joined the company as a VP, we did some cool stuff which we haven’t announced yet, and the company continues to rock. Newroo cold called me, I joined them as an Advisor, and [...]

My Favorite Undiscovered Blogs

Here are a couple “undiscovered” blogs that I like a lot: Brian Norgard Goldman’s New Market Today, going public is a pain in the ass thanks in large part to the wonderful piece of legislation that is Sarbanes-Oxley. Growing private firms are looking for alternative options: VC/PE cash outs, foreign exchanges and, probably most prevalent, not going public [...]

“For Geniuses” — Not “For Dummies”

We all know about the For Dummies books. It is a great brand. The Dummies books make it easy for people to learn about the things they care about. They lower the barriers to entry for learning. They put the burden on the author to help the reader learn. I think it is time for “For Geniuses” [...]

Shrink + Grow a market?

Josh Kopelman has a great article about shrinking markets: “We love investing in technologies and business models that are able to shrink existing markets. If your company can take $5 of revenue from a competitor for every $1 you earn – let’s talk!” When you shrink a market you simultaneously grow a substitute market. But [...]

The Reverse Freemium Business Model: First do the ‘mium’, then do the ‘free’

Here’s a twist on the popular freemium business model: First do the “mium”, then do the “free”. First prove that people are actually willing to pay for your product by building and selling the paid (”mium”) product. You don’t have to acquire a ton of customers, just a handful so you can say, “Hey, maybe we’ve got [...]

‘Mark as Read’ Firefox Extension

I commissioned a Firefox extension to add a “Mark as read” button to Y Combinator News and Techmeme. Download the extension and then open it in Firefox to install it. When you press the “Mark as read’ button, the articles change color to their “visited” color. This is useful if you visit those sites several times [...]

The Latest from Venture Hacks, Part 2

Naval Ravikant and I run a site called Venture Hacks which is an entrepreneur’s guide to hacking Venture Capital. Here are some excerpts from our latest articles: From Get vested for time served: If you have been working on the company full-time for one year, 25% of your shares should be vested up-front and the balance of [...]

The Latest from Venture Hacks

Naval Ravikant and I run a site called Venture Hacks which is an entrepreneur’s guide to hacking Venture Capital. Some excerpts from our latest articles: From Reactions to Venture Hacks: Everyone in Silicon Valley benefits from lowering the transaction costs of funding startups, which means more companies get funded, more jobs get created and tax revenues increase [...]

Management by Objectives

This article is paraphrased, summarized, and plaigarized from The Essential Drucker, Chapter 8: “Management by Objectives and Self-Control”. Management by objectives can improve the performance of an organization by transforming an organization’s goals into personal goals. Personal goals are determined by their contribution to the objectives of the whole organization. And each person knows how his contribution [...]

Introducing: Venture Hacks

Today, Naval Ravikant and I are launching Venture Hacks, an entrepreneur’s guide to hacking Venture Capital. Naval calls it a “‘tell all’ site that helps entrepreneurs get on an even footing with their better-informed counterparts when negotiating an investment.” Our first series of articles, Term Sheet Hacks, describes how to negotiate a great Series A investment. [...]

Eric Schmidt: Chief List-Making Officer?

Eric Schmidt: “What I found was a company that was working extremely well but just needed a little bit of list-making and structure. And that’s frankly what I’ve been relegated to.” Larry Page: “No, no, that’s not true.” Eric Schmidt: “It’s okay, it’s okay, your strategy’s pretty good. It’s working well so far.” – May 1 2002, Source: [...]

Quotes from Peopleware

My favorite quotes from Peopleware: “Projects on which the boss applied no schedule pressure whatsoever (’Just wake me up when you’re done.’) had the highest productivity of all.” “Because we go about… work in teams, we are mostly in the human communication business, [not the high-tech business].” “Quality, far beyond that required by the end user, is a [...]

More Microblogging on Twitter

A few of my recent microposts from Twitter (RSS): “The truly important events… are not the trends. They are changes in the trends.” – Peter Drucker “If you can sharpen your intuition, which they say is emotion and intellect joining together, then a knowingness occurs.” – David Lynch “With knowledge being universally accessible… there will be no ‘poor’ [...]

The Essential Peter Drucker (Part 2)

More quotes from The Essential Drucker (Peter Drucker is one of the fathers of the discipline of management): On Risk “Successful innovators are conservative. They have to be. They are not ‘risk-focused’; they are ‘opportunity-focused’… And defending yesterday – that is, not innovating – is far more risky than making tomorrow.” On Wealth “Enterprises are paid to create wealth, [...]

Microblogging on Twitter

Check out my microblog on Twitter. Twitter lets you publish short posts via IM and SMS. Twitter was created to help you keep your friends and public apprised of your ongoing activities and sins. But I will try to keep my Twitter page more better than that. So far, I’m posting interesting things I hear during the [...]

How to Be a Great Reporter

“Whoever the average reader was of my newspaper, I never wrote for him. I always wrote for the people living the event. And I wanted not to be embarassed in front of them as a writer. So if I’m writing about somebody who is struggling with addiction, I want other people who have struggled with addiction [...]

Education is About Grading, Not Learning?

“All through school, from kindergarten up, you were taught that mistakes are a bad thing. You were downgraded for the mistakes that you made. It is perfectly apparent from what [schools] do in examinations where errors are identified, [that] education is not about learning. It is about grading. Because if they were interested in learning, they [...]

The Essential Peter Drucker (Part 1)

My favorite quotes from the first 3 chapters of The Essential Drucker (Peter Drucker is one of the fathers of the discipline of management): On Management “… the fundamental task of management [is] to make people capable of joint performance through common goals, common values, the right structure, and the training and development they need to perform [...]

Mavericks at Work (Part 1)

My favorite snippets from the first three chapters of Mavericks at Work: On Cause “We didn’t get here by playing the rules of the game. We got here by setting the rules of the game.” – Chris Albrecht, CEO HBO “It’s not TV. It’s HBO. TV is a finite idea. ‘It’s not TV’ is an infinite idea.” – Chris Albrecht, [...]

What is Learning? (Part 1)

What is learning? Learning is the acquisition of data, information, knowledge, understanding, and wisdom. And what are those things? Data consists of symbols that represent objects, events, and their properties. For example, the speedometer in a car presents data. Information is data that has been made useful. Information answers who, what, where, when, and how many questions. Information is [...]

Business Lessons from “Miami Vice”

Lessons I learned from the film Miami Vice: “We didn’t come down here to audition for business. Business auditions for us.” – Tubbs “They didn’t do time with us, they ain’t doing crime with us.” – Crockett “I do not buy a service, I buy a result.” – Arcangel de Jesus Montoya

Hire People for their Strengths (You Can’t Fix their Weaknesses)

Marc Hedlund found a great quote about hiring people for their strengths: Russian clown Yuri Kuklachev has a troupe of cats who do handstands, crawl along high wires and balance on balls and he says the secret to training them is realizing that you can’t force cats to do anything. […] “Each cat likes to do her own [...]

You can revolutionize your ass on out of here

In 1973, Coleman Young became Detroit’s first black mayor. He remained Detroit’s mayor for another 19 years. If you like quotes, I recommend this pocket-sized collection of his wit. Here are some of my favorites: On affirmative action: “Some people say affirmative action is discrimination in reverse. You’re damned right. The only way to handle discrimination is [...]

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