How the VC industry works
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CEO Picks - The most popular editorials that have stood the test of time!
How the VC industry works VC is an interesting business that has long lurked in the shadows of finance. For those curious about how it operates, here's a good primer from an insider on the structure of a VC fund, the players involved (LPs, GPs, etc), the J curve, as well as how GPs get paid and how Queen Isabella of Spain became the first true venture capitalist when she backed an entrepreneur (Christopher Columbus) with capital (money, ships, supplies, people) for his venture (voyages seeking westward routes to Asia). |
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The cult of happiness The cult of happiness is making us miserable. The happiness that obsesses popular culture is but a brief dopamine reward for desired events and behaviors, like a treat for a dog. Somehow the gently feeble minds of the masses have been convinced by self-help culture and the tech mentality that human happiness is a sort-of mountain peak that we will all colonize once we figure out how to stay up there without falling off. This couldn't be farther from the case. Happiness is a climax, meaning it's dynamic. It relies on the buildup of prior events, which requisitely must not be the same events that lead to the burst of happy feeling. |
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The corporate obsession with growth From Bill Maher's vantage point, Apple's serial release of new products is indicative of the corporate world's unhealthy obsession with growth. "Somewhere along the way we bought into this insane idea that everything always has to get bigger, especially sales," he said. He argued that the constant drive for better financial performance can lead companies to engage in unethical behavior, citing the Wells Fargo fake accounts scandal as a prime example. "It's that very pressure for growth, endless growth, even when you're filthy rich, that led them to a crime where they cheated and deceived their customers," he added. Maher put the onus on consumers to see through corporate manipulations and stop buying things they don't need. |
The best CEOs focus on 4 things The best CEOs focus primarily on four things: communication, communication, communication, and overseeing resource allocation to ensure that the priorities they're communicating are actually the ones getting funded. Based on HBR research and decades of experience working with CEOs, here are six tips for CEOs who want to get the boring-and most important-stuff done: 1. Liberate yourself from your own staff 2. Disentangle yourself from the byzantine bickering of the professional managerial class 3. Laminate your "strategy on a page" and find joy in talking about it for the thousandth time 4. Celebrate the doers 5. Be the question guy, not the answer guy 6. Ignore the conventional wisdom of coaches. |
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Get hiring right (165 slide deck and key recommendations) Hiring is hard, and getting it wrong is expensive. For startups and other small employers, the risks are even greater. Hiring the wrong person can consume management's time, undermine morale and drive off other employees. "We see a lot of first-time founders who are really great in the domain they know, but haven't hired a team before, and they can have some really horrible, painful experiences," said Maria Palma, an executive at RRE Ventures, who helps guide the companies backed by the venture capital firm. After witnessing multiple startups having the same struggles, Palma and RRE published a detailed slide deck that walks hiring managers through every stage of the recruitment process. The 165-slide presentation includes tips on defining your company's culture to attract the right employees, how to organize interviews, and where to find compensation data to set salaries. A summary of the key recommendations and the entire deck at the link below. |
Sam Altman and humanity's forward march If you don't know Sam Altman, you heard it here first. Along with Elon Musk, he is up there in terms of people I watch that are moving humanity forward. The 36 year old runs OpenAI and used to run YCombinator (the most successful accelerator), which has over 11 unicorns among its graduates, including AirBNB, DropBox, Stripe and Instacart. When Altman took over from Paul Graham, he wanted to create a trillion-dollar conglomerate to move the world forward. And, he realized, "you couldn't have a trillion-dollar enterprise without major scientific advances." So he opened the batches to hard tech, studied the science and engineering problems such companies faced, and recruited the most promising ones. Altman helped to persuade Kyle Vogt, the C.E.O. of the self-driving-car company Cruise, to do YC in 2014; afterward, when Cruise had trouble finding funding, he invested three million dollars in the company. In March, General Motors bought Cruise for $1.25 billion. Altman had long wanted to start his own nuclear-energy company; instead, he had YC fund the best fission and fusion startups he could find. Then he personally invested in both companies and chaired their boards. Thousands of startups are devoted to social interaction, and fewer than twenty to fission and fusion, but, Altman said, "hard things are actually easier than easy things. Because people feel it's interesting, they want to help. Another mobile app? You get an eye roll. A rocket company? Everyone wants to go to space." When a YC enters "hard tech", that's exciting! The full New Yorker profile here |
Addicted to your phone? Well, you are being manipulated McDonald's hooks us by appealing to our bodies' craving for certain flavors; Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter hook us by delivering what psychologists call "variable rewards." Messages, photos, and "likes" appear on no set schedule, so we check for them compulsively, never sure when we'll receive that dopamine-activating prize. There is arguably an element of hypocrisy to the enlightened image that Silicon Valley projects, especially with its recent embrace of "mindfulness." Companies like Google and Facebook, which have offered mindfulness training and meditation spaces for their employees, position themselves as corporate leaders in this movement. Yet this emphasis on mindfulness and consciousness, which has extended far beyond the tech world, puts the burden on users to train their focus, without acknowledging that the devices in their hands are engineered to chip away at their concentration. It's like telling people to get healthy by exercising more, then offering the choice between a Big Mac and a Quarter Pounder when they sit down for a meal. Tristan Harris, ex-product philosopher at Google believes that Silicon Valley is addicting us to our phones. He's determined to make it stop. |
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