I love working with engineering-centric founding teams — makers who can not just envision the future but build it as well. But I had a conversation this morning with another early-stage investor that highlighted a common skill gap in teams like this: even when they have a crisp vision of the future in their heads, continue…
I was both pleased and surprised last week to find Seattle ranked #4 on a global survey of startup ecosystems — below Silicon Valley, Tel Aviv and Los Angeles, but above several much more talked-about innovation centers, including both New York and Boston. The report was a timely validation of a hypothesis I’ve been exploring continue…
I had a great conversation with a Vancouver, BC entrepreneur this morning that forced me to organize several half-formed thoughts about the future of online “specialty” retailing” — this post is the result. Specialty retailing is the opposite of the everything-under-the-sun kind practiced by supersites like Amazon + WalMart.com. “Specialty” means that the merchant focuses continue…
Last Thursday I participated in my first-ever Ignite, a multi-city live event series that operates under a brilliant tagline for the ADD era: “Enlighten us, but make it quick.” UPDATE: I just added the video of my session above. This was not only my first time as an Ignite attendee, I was also one of 15 continue…
My brain is exploding. This will be a short post that foreshadows an (as yet unwritten) longer one but I wanted to point out some great thinking + writing by others, and also offer up the beginnings of a framework that extends / integrates these ideas to (hopefully) make them more actionable. First, the links: continue…