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Jul 12 2019

Schelling Point: Cooperating Without Communicating

People who can’t communicate can cooperate by anticipating the other person’s actions
Let’s talk about Schelling points. The Schelling point is a game theory concept made famous by Thomas Schelling in his book, The Strategy of Conflict, which I recommend. It’s about multiplayer games where people respond based on what they think the other person’s response will be. More

Apr 29 2019

Judgment Is the Decisive Skill

In an age of nearly infinite leverage, judgment is the most important skill
 We spoke about specific knowledge, we talked about accountability, we talked about leverage. The last skill that Naval talks about in his tweetstorm is judgment, where he says, that “Leverage is a force multiplier for your judgment.” We are now living in an age of nearly infinite leverage, and all the great fortunes are created through leverage. More

Apr 11 2019

Embrace Accountability to Get Leverage

Take risks under your own name and society will reward you with leverage
Why don’t we jump into accountability, which I thought was pretty interesting and I think you have your own unique take on it. So the first tweet on accountability was, “Embrace accountability and take business risks under your own name. Society will reward you with responsibility, equity, and leverage.”  Yeah. So to get rich, you’re going to need leverage. More

Mar 7 2019

Make Luck Your Destiny

Build your character in a way that luck becomes deterministic
 I think it’s pretty interesting that the first three kinds of luck that you described there are very common cliches for them that everybody knows. And then for that last kind of luck that comes to you out of the unique way that you act, there’s no real cliche for it. More

Mar 6 2019

Making Money Isn’t About Luck

Become the kind of person who makes money
Obviously, we want to be wealthy, and we want to get there in this lifetime without having to rely on luck. A lot of people think making money is about luck. It’s not. It’s about becoming the kind of person that makes money. I like to think that if I lost all my money and if you drop me on a random street in any English-speaking country, within 5, 10 years I’d be wealthy again. More

Apr 10 2010

Who has time for meetings?

A lot of entrepreneurs assume that the initial way to engage with an investor is to *insist* on a meeting. It’s a relatively safe assumption that anyone on the buy side (an investor, an advertiser, an executive at a large company) receives far more requests for meetings than they can follow up on, and are constantly looking for excuses to say “no.” Synchronous activities, such as phone calls, screencasts, videos, and webex conferences are almost as bad. More
Apr 10 2010

Feb 21 2008

Tumblr customer service blows me away

When’s the last time that you had an accurate, timely, thorough, and polite response to an email to a free service? ——-Original Message——- Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2008 14:05:25 -0800 To: support@tumblr.com Subject: Migrating from squarespace >I’m abandoning my squarespace blog and moving to Tumblr. I have my own >custom domain. More
Feb 21 2008

Feb 12 2008

A User Model for Social Software

After looking at a lot of Facebook apps, I’ve sortof concluded that users: want sex. If they can’t have sex, they want food. If they can’t have food, they want fun. If they can’t have fun, they leave More
Feb 12 2008

Jul 15 2007

STIRR discovers Price Discrimination

At STIRR events, VCs fly business class, but entrepreneurs fly coach 🙂 I have a similar rule – whenever I go to coffee / lunch / dinner for business, the person who has raised more money pays… More
Jul 15 2007
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