Intentional Serendipity

By now you should know that typically luck is made (and not a random thing). Or as Seneca the Younger once said “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”

Preparation is all the hard work you do beforehand; the sleepless nights, the long hours…

How To Find Your Next Startup

Pretty much every day I get an email from someone pitching me her or his startup idea, often asking what I think about the idea and how viable I believe the startup to be. What strikes me is that very often it is utterly unclear to me how the person came up with the particular…

The Price Of Publicity

A lot of us believe that when we made it into TechCrunch (or whatever other news site floats your boat) — we made it. And in some respect that might even be true. There is no doubt that publicity gives you an incredible boost (both for your ego as well as, and more importantly, for your…

Get A Response From Someone Busy

The last couple of months have been insanely busy for me: I am now in a state where my day is scheduled in 20 min increments and booked solid. I’m neither proud nor happy about this particular situation — I merely see it as the price I’m paying for moving some…

Ideas — Not People

Recently someone asked me about my “information diet” — the stuff I read on a daily basis. I told her that I don’t read that much online anymore; I essentially gave up on TechCrunch, PandoDaily, The Next Web, Mashable, Business Insider and the like. I skim Hacker News and Re/Code and that’s…

Insanity

Albert Einstein once said: “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

It’s funny how this is so true in startup-land: Entrepreneurs try something out, it doesn’t work, they assume it didn’t work because of some external factor, they never…

The Two Rules For Meetings

Rule #1:

Don’t waste people’s time.

Rule #2:

If you don’t get something valuable out of it, it’s your fault.

If you approach every meeting with this attitude you’re golden.