The concept of acquired situational narcissism has been in my head since 2001, when the New York Times Magazine included it in their annual “Year In Ideas” issue. The phrase describes the lack of empathy — and resulting self-serving behavior — that the rich and powerful tend towards when they mistakenly interpret their own success continue…

Last week I had several different conversation with entrepreneurs who are on the verge of setting up operations for their new startup. The topics we covered included: Should I self-fund / bootstrap or raise angel money? Should I accept an EIR / incubation offer from a VC firm? Should I keep looking for a technical continue…

Lots of chatter lately about how Seattle investors aren’t stepping up to back promising local entrepreneurs, which in turn is driving the best + most ambitious teams to decamp for Silicon Valley (e.g., GeekWire on Tony Wright’s departure, or Trevor Gilbert’s PandoDaily piece on local funding weakness). This is a big and complex topic that I continue…

I’ve written before about the fractal relationship between running a startup and running a venture fund — here’s another example: Freemium pricing is one of the most powerful customer acquisition strategies in the software business. Many billion-dollar businesses have been built (think Dropbox or Evernote) by giving away a significant chunk of their overall value continue…