There are so many examples to choose among in the collected works that I might have to turn this into a series, but the one that’s been rattling around in my head this week is the following (from Hamlet, Act III, Scene II): Hamlet.  Madam, how like you this play?Queen.  The lady doth protest too much, methinks. continue…

I’ve had too many conversations recently like this one: ENTREPRENEUR: “We’re raising [insert amount of money here]. As soon as our raise is complete, we plan to [insert one or more of the following: quit our day jobs; stop outsourcing and hire a real dev team; start building our product; etc.]” ME: “So, you’re asking continue…

“Only through freely chosen discipline can life be enjoyed and still kept within the bounds of reason” – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi I am not religious, but I am guilty of evangelism. I spent the first seven years of my professional life careening from one unsatisfying corporate job to another, working my way down the ladder from a continue…

Entrepreneurship and schizophrenia have a lot in common. Every entrepreneur lives the Stockdale Paradox — constantly toggling between the urgent daily realities of survival and their lofty dreams of massive success and cultural impact. But entrepreneurs who take outside funding — and especially those who raise “institutional” money — have another dual life to live: continue…

This morning I got together with Tony Wright — one of my favorite Seattle-area entrepreneurs and a deep thinker on the topic of mobile app distribution and user experience design (among many other things). We covered a lot of ground in the discussion, but one idea in particular stuck in my head. On the topic continue…

Disclosure – I’m an unabashed Amazon fan. Not only is it one of the most aggressive, forward-thinking and best-led companies in tech, it’s also the beating heart of the Seattle tech scene. The comments that follow are offered out of deep respect and a sincere desire to see Amazon dominate the *next* decade of the continue…

The global economy is in a long-term path toward disaggregation, a gradual shift in economic power from the enterprise to the individual. This shift is most visible among the most “wired” segments of society — workers on the leading edge of the mobile / social / “indie” revolution. But as Venkat Rao illustrates in his excellent article, continue…

The “great acceleration” of software innovation over the past decade has fundamentally changed the playbook for entrepreneurial success. The new methods are obvious to the current generation of software entrepreneurs — the GenY applicants to Y Combinator and TechStars — but seasoned participants in the old model still struggle to grok how completely the world continue…

Well-meaning normal: “So Founders Co-op is an incubator?” Me (cringing): “Umm, no, I actually hate that word” Why does the word “incubator” make my skin crawl? Here’s why… I’m a word geek, so I’m hypersensitive to the nuances of language, but I firmly believe that words have incredible power: they’re full of latent meanings that continue…