In the past week, the theme of capitalism vs. social justice has cropped up over and over. First, I read an amazing set of articles from the NY Times that chroniced the life of a homeless child. Then, I perused Pope Francis’ recent letter, wherein he criticizes unfettered capitalism. And today, Fred Wilson and Bijan
An Email Exchange at 11 p.m.
I was surprised last night at 11 pm to get an email from one of my CEOs. His flight was cancelled due to bad weather and he was going to have to bush-whack his way home on a train. He was also feeling pretty run down, he admitted. So, we emailed back and forth and
The Most Important Question You Can Ask
Moritz Plassnig this morning sent me a great article through a Tweet. It’s called “The Most Important Question You Can Ask Yourself Today”. It is well worth reading. Author Mark Manson writes: What’s more interesting to me is what pain do you want? What are you willing to struggle for? Because that seems to be a greater
Quit a Job and Pursue Your Dream?
There’s a cool article in today’s Wall Street Journal. It’s about a VC who leaves work to pursue his dream of competing in the Olympics. I think the best paragraph in the article was this one: His…epiphany came after his usual speech to entrepreneurs about following one’s dreams. Lying in his hotel bed, he thought, “I
An Inspiring Story
I stumbled upon a NY Times article about Jacob Mach. He is one of “The Lost Boys of Sudan”. This is an amazing story about survival (parentless while young and becoming a refugee), grit (finding his way to the U.S. and seeking to improve his economic prospects as an adult) and hope (he has amazing
One Way to Think About E-Commerce Start-Ups
Now that e-commerce appears to be less hot, we’re increasingly looking at the category. As I’ve written in the past, Customer Acquisition Cost is a key driver of the business. Another thing we look at in particular is industry structure. Specifically, we look at the supply chain and try to see where the “fat” is