The Red Sox are an interesting test case. Last year they were called the most talented team in baseball. Starting in September they imploded and now they’re barely winning half their games. How did this happen? Two managers later they still are not able to figure it out. The team is in a funk. I
Category: Entrepreneurship
The MassChallenge Founders
I met up recently with Akhil Nigam, one of the founders of MassChallenge. You may have heard of this incubator. This year, over 1,200 entrepreneurs from 34 countries applied to be among the 125 companies that MassChallenge hosts. What most people don’t know is that Akhil and his co-founder left very lucrative positions at Bain
A Founder’s “Opportunity Cost”
I recently caught up with a friend of mine. He has raised a few rounds of VC money, and his start-up is making some progress, but isn’t a rocket ship. They run out of money soon, and he doesn’t think he will be able to attract a new VC to the syndicate. He asked me
Uh-oh, MBAs like start-ups (again)
Jeff Bussgang Tweeted an article this Saturday morning that the percentage of Stanford MBAs pursuing start-ups has gone to an all-time high (more here). It made me think of the Harvard Business School business plan contests in 1999 and 2000. I gave the kick-off talks for both contests. In the fall of 1999, there were
Death of a Yale grad (and how time is precious)
I just heard about Marina Keegan, who last week graduated from Yale College and a few days later was killed in a car crash. One of Kepha’s investors told me about it and forwarded her last column in the school paper, published the night before her graduation. I re-print it below (it’s from the Yale
Doing the right thing
I had a usual week with a lot of meetings. One was with two young entrepreneurs. They raised some angel money, and while they’ve made good progress, they think the likely path is to sell the company to a strategic because progress has been slower than planned. As I’ve written before here, entrepreneurship is hard.