>And the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, near where the MIT professor was killed, ended its contract with Flock earlier this month, following community privacy concerns.
Your comment made me lol. And it’s very rare for that to happen to me via reading text. And I needed it today. So I just wanted to tell you thank you and I hope you have a good day.
I think it's still a fairly new phenomenon where white collar work often consists of sitting in front of a computer monitor all day. Not for leisure, but for work (something you possibly don't want to be doing to begin with).
For me, less screen time (for work, but also in general) and more time spent outside and/or in the presence of people I like has really made me a happier person.
I really appreciated this piece, Jessica. Primarily because of its focus. I've heard many of the points in it before, but the fact you narrowed it down to these three and then included practical and specific commentary (based on your deep experience with startups) on each was very helpful.
I think the Winklevoss twins were rightly ridiculed for thinking they invented Facebook. However, they've made two prescient bets and deserve credit for those: (1) Getting Facebook stock instead of cash as part of their legal settlement; (2) Not only seeing bitcoin's future potential, but investing in it and sticking with it. While the final result on the second one is still TBD, they deserve credit for investing in something at a time when many thought they were stupid for doing so.
I may get downvoted for saying this but, anecdotally, people today seem way more sensitive and emotional about other people's viewpoints and actions, especially when they disagree with them.
Growing up, it was much easier to have conversations of differing opinions because people not only listened more, but they also listened better. (Perhaps that's in part due to the unique sense of curiosity that kids have.)
Today, it commonly feels like conversations involve hearing aids that have been turned off completely.
Einstein is quoted as half-jokingly saying that the greatest force in the universe is compound interest.
If your goal is to build a company, I think you should focus on the following:
1. Find a problem that you (or someone you know very well) have.
2. Look at the existing solutions to the problem and evaluate not only if you can build a better solution, but also how quickly people will switch to something better if they came across it today (i.e. How fed up are people with current offerings? How easy will it be for them to switch?).
3. Build and market something for a very small group of customers or users. Focus on making that group extremely happy with your product or service. (It could be as small as one customer or user at first.)
I think angel investors are different than venture capitalists. The former typically make small investments, starting anywhere in the low five figures, up to seven figures, but more commonly capping out in the low to mid six figures and receiving a corresponding stake size in the companies.
Venture capital often requires taking sizable stakes in companies by investing millions of dollars, in order to have a chance at producing the returns it's seeking.
After thinking about it more, this Rise of the Rest fund for the Midwest, to me, is more like Y Combinator (and likely a competitor to it), in that it's essentially a giant seed fund that will then bring in its big-name investors and business magnates to make VC-like investments in the most promising companies.
Instead of having a large network of former YC grads, it has a network of some of the most well-known investors and business magnates in the U.S.
With that said, Steve Case is quoted in the article saying, "First and foremost, our goal was to generate top returns.”
I have a hard time believing that the majority of people making 400k+ at either Google or Facebook would consider their work/life situation a type of hell.
I understand why some people don't want to work for those companies or in those areas, or aren't motivated by money. But I think many others do, and the ones that are living it now are doing so by choice and for their own reasons.
Found this bit particularly interesting.