Like everyone else, I’m not sure when and if we’ll beat the virus. My guess is that we’re going to be living with it for some time as it continues to mutate and evolve. When it first broke out, I told Eric that I thought it would take up to five years while we as
Category: Books
My Favorite Books
One of the good things that has come out of the pandemic is that my college friends and I Zoom each month. When our reunion was cancelled, I emailed the gang to see if people would be interested in meeting up on line. And, I’m glad people said they were. I lived with the same
Book Review: ‘We the Possibility’ by Mitch Weiss
For my second vaccine shot, I went to a large facility where the workers were cheery and friendly. I was in and out in 20 minutes. The process was very smooth from entry to exit. It struck me that I take government for granted. When roads are paved, street lights work, and schools function, I
Book Review: Tom Eisenmann’s ‘Why Startups Fail’
Tom Eisenmann’s Why Startups Fail is a gem of a book. As I’ve blogged before (here), the success rate in venture capital is only about 33%: a super-majority of investments made by people who supposedly know what they’re doing comprises of flops. Some mainstream-media articles extol and chronicle successes that, truthfully, are few in number;
‘Why We Sleep’
I’ve been reading a lot of physical books from our town library since the holidays. Reading has been a healthy way to escape from the news of the day. And, now that the HBS semester has ended, I have more time. On the VC front, I also have more time: the companies on whose boards
Tony Hsieh
I never met Tony Hsieh (pronounced “shay”). But we were in an investment together decades ago, before there was a Zappos, before he was famous, and during the Dot-Com Bubble. When I was working on an investment (Ask Jeeves, which went IPO), I saw “Venture Frogs” listed on the cap table. I asked Rob Wrubel,