Archives for February 2012

Pattern Matching Can Cause Blindspots

Chris Yeh, a partner at Wasabi Ventures just wrote a great piece on the dangers of stereotyping when guessing how an entrepreneur or athlete is going to perform.  It was originally published in his blog Adventures in Capitalism, and then also syndicated by PEHub Wire.

The key point he makes that stereotyping only makes sense in the absence of better data.  Nobody subscribing to conventional wisdom saw the Jeremy Lin basketball phenomenon coming because he was an Asian player from Harvard, but a group of Moneyball-type analysts with better data knew he would be a super-star because they had studied his stats.

And of course he brings it back to picking entrepreneurs (specifically in Silicon Valley): [Read more…]

Where the Puck is Going

Vinod Khosla, one of the founders of Sun Microsystems, a long time partner at Kleiner Perkins, and a principal in well-respected Khosla Ventures, just published a great piece in TechCrunch on the “unhyped” new areas in Internet and mobile that interest him.  These are the areas he expects to produce the next batch of great opportunities and start-ups.  It is well worth a read, but here are the twelve areas he identifies:  [Read more…]

Getting Off The Ground; Early Formation Economics

After speaking on a panel to a group of entrepreneurs recently, I had a classic follow-up exchange with an entrepreneur trying to get a company off the ground. I thought the exchange was worth sharing:

He wrote:  “Thanks for your talk today – it was very helpful. Here are the details of my question. [Read more…]

Multiple Monitors Does Not Equate to Multi-Tasking

Image courtesy of MacWorld Magazine, June 2008

I am a long time member of the cult of multiple monitors. And the practice is really taking off.  But the NYT has it all wrong.   [Read more…]