Less But Better

Dieter Rams. If that name doesn’t ring a bell I urge you to look him up. Dieter Rams is most likely one, if not the most influential designer of the outgoing 20th century. Apple’s Sir Jony Ive wouldn’t design the products which made him famous if it wouldn’t be for the design language which Dieter…

Linking Mission to Strategy and Action

One of the fun perks of my new role at Mozilla is to think about how we can explain Mozilla better — and in the process engage more people in what we do and believe.

Lifestyle Business

Lifestyle Business? If you haven’t heard the term before — fret not. It is not important. You can happily go back to do what you were doing right now and won’t have missed anything. In case you actually have heard someone use the term before I wonder in which context you heard it.

The Soul-Crushing Reality of Big Companies

I joined eBay in Germany in early 2001. At a time when we were less than 100 people who all believed that we can and will change the world.

And change the world we did. I will never forget meeting an eBay seller at an event in…

Is Silicon Valley seriously only about money?

I host student groups from all around the world from time to time to talk with them about entrepreneurship, Mozilla, the lessons we learned along the way and my personal journey. Yesterday I had a group of engineering students from Germany at Mozilla…

Pivot my ass.

Silicon Valley’s obsession with everything lean startup and especially the magical pivot is getting really old. Everybody and their dog pivots these days. Tried a business idea for about 12 minutes and didn’t get an offer from Zuck for $1BN? Pivot. Try again. You learned something. And that’s what…

What to learn from Failure

I just posted this to my blog and thought it might be interesting for this tribe as well. What’s your point of view?

Failure. The fabled word. For some it’s the apocalypse. For others it has become a badge of honor.