Improve Your Business By Reading

The New Year is often a time of reflection. It’s a great time to question what you are doing and what you could be doing better. This year I’m learning how to be a better manager and to delegate my work and focus on strategy.

I’ve also been doing a lot of reading lately about sales, marketing and management, and wanted to pass along some great articles I’ve recently read.

First up is Don’t just roll the dice: A usefully short guide to software pricing by Neil Davidson. Pricing can be difficult to get right and this book is an excellent primer on the subject. Even if you think you already know everything about pricing, I recommend you read the book. You’ll be reminded of things you already know, but may have forgotten. If you are short on time, you can read Darmesh Shah’s review, How To Price Software Without Just Rolling the Dice. Though it really is no substitute for reading the book; Neil details all the dimensions of pricing, while Darmesh covers only a few basic principles. Continue reading >

January 15, 2010

Leave comment

Resolutions…Old & New

Last year I tried an experiment in New Year’s resolutions. Instead of setting specific goals I wanted to achieve, I focused on the activities that might lead me toward my goals. So instead of setting a target weight, I made a resolution to exercise at least 10 minutes a day and eat less than 1,800 calories twice a week. My aim was to set low expectations and focus on behaviors rather than outcomes.

Overall, I think the experiment was a success. I ended the year with three out of my original five resolutions still intact, and while I fell off the wagon several times throughout the year, I always wound up getting back on. I also added several resolutions throughout the year, some of which also stuck, and learned lessons on keeping resolutions. Continue reading >

January 1, 2010

Leave comment

The Next Generation Search Engine…Isn’t A Search Engine

Wolfram Alpha and Microsoft Bing were both unveiled last month. Each provides a glimpse into the future of how we’ll use the Internet, and shows that Google has been sleeping on the job. Read on to imagine the future of search on the web.

Home Page Evolution

When I started using the web in the early nineties, search engines were in their infancy. The page you marked as your home page was a link directory. Eventually, the link directory that came to dominate was Yahoo.

And then the paradigm shifted. The web became too big to manually index and organize. The only way to access all the information the Internet had to offer was to use a search engine. And so came Alta Vista, and then Google.

Today I use Google for everything. To find links to sites containing information I need to know, to answer simple questions, to price compare and to find funny videos. Yet while Google sometimes provides answers, it usually only provides links to answers. Obtaining the answer requires me to scour other web sites to extract the information I need.

And yet, with Google at it’s peak, the paradigm is shifting once again. Google’s mission is to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”. The assumption is that the information already exists, and Google’s mission is just to find it and organize it. With the launch of Wolfram Alpha and Bing, it’s clear that this is no longer true.

Continue reading >

June 1, 2009

2 comments

How You Too Can Become a Financial Fraudster

Bernie Madoff plead guilty to financial fraud on Friday. The press has vilified him, portraying him as a calculating evil mastermind who bilked billions of dollars from innocent doe-eyed victims. And he may be truly evil, a sociopath with no regard for others. Or he might be a good person who made bad decisions, which drew him down a dark path into a downward spiral he could not control.

There are bad people, and then there are people who simply made bad choices. Which was Madoff? I’m not going to try to answer that question today, nor to defend Madoff’s actions or brush away the consequences of those actions. Rather I want to show how seemingly harmless decisions can lead someone down a path toward ever-widening financial fraud.

Continue reading >

March 16, 2009

1 comment

Use Indeed For Job Searches, Not for Trends

While researching an article requiring detailed employment and hiring data in the software industry, I ran across Indeed.com. For those not yet familiar with Indeed, it is a Google-style search engine for job postings. Type your skills in the search box and get back a list of job postings along with breakdowns by location, job title and estimated salary. Then click over to the “salaries” or “trends” tabs to see a history of the salaries or number of jobs for your skill set over the past couple years.

Fantastic, I thought. A few quick searches and I’ll have just the breakdowns I need to see which technologies dominate, which ones are gaining market share, and which ones are slipping away. In particular, I’m interested in the balance between Java and .Net and how the different web and Rich Internet Platforms compare to each other. Continue reading >

February 9, 2009

1 comment

A New Type of New Year’s Resolution

It’s New Year’s Day. And once again the time has come for resolutions.

I don’t remember ever really making resolutions until a couple of years ago. Since then, each year I type up my resolutions, hang them on the wall, and then promptly go about breaking them.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t intentionally break them. It just happens. But everyone breaks their resolutions, right?

Not this year. This year I’m trying something different. This year I’m going to make the resolutions work.

Looking back over my resolutions from the past couple years, I notice I tend to setup resolutions as goals, things to achieve during the year. I try to set the goals as fairly realistic, not trying to push myself too hard, but not making it too easy either.

And I think through the goals. One year my resolution list included a schedule of steps on how to achieve each goal. Another had general resolutions and then specific measurable resolutions.

This year I’m taking a different tack. Rather than focus on the destination, I’m going to focus on the journey. Little steps I can take throughout the year that lead me in the direction I want to go, but without hard set timelines or milestones toward some distant goal. Continue reading >

January 2, 2009

1 comment

Decomposing Relationships in the Age of Technology

A little over a month ago, I caved. I hadn’t joined a social network for personal reasons since Friendster, where my account went dormant days after I joined. I haven’t been oblivious. I’ve been a user of LinkedIn for years, even giving talks on how to use LinkedIn professionally. And friends had extolled the virtues of Twitter and Tribe and, yes, even MySpace. I just didn’t believe them. They just seemed, well, like…fanatics.

And then it happened. I joined Facebook innocently enough. I was looking to work a little less and connect with friends. Facebook seemed a good way to start expressing my identity and stay in touch with people I don’t get a chance to see often. I liked the Network Updates feature of LinkedIn, and heard Facebook had a similar feature. So I decided to try it.

I got hooked.

The photos, the routine updates, the snippets of previously unknown personal details discovered while browsing profiles of friends. Looking at photos of long-lost friends, photos of their kids. Listening to songs recorded, articles written, art created. Receiving mundane updates about the lives of friends I rarely have time to reach out and connect with. It all has reminded me of the value of friendship and given me a desire to foster and grow deeper friendships. And has got me thinking, what exactly is “friendship”? Continue reading >

December 1, 2008

3 comments

Unknowns & Uncertainties: Recent Reading

This past week the world has been in a state of chaotic uncertainty. The financial markets crashed in slow motion while talk of a prolonged recession intensified. With a business, a mortgage about to start adjusting and a girlfriend in college, I’ve been paying attention to the state of the world more than normal. Additional readings on risk, uncertainty, and social interactions have topped off the week.

The result has been a growing sense of uncertainty. A knowledge that I just don’t know. I’m still processing everything I’ve been reading, and the effect it will have on the articles I had planned to write on risk and angel investing. So rather than write about half-conceived ideas, this week’s post details what I’ve been reading. Continue reading >

October 13, 2008

Leave comment

Understanding Risk: A Basic Introduction

“They made risky investments.”

“He’s a risk-taker.”

“It’s a calculated risk.”

“That’s too much risk for me.”

Every day we hear people talking about risk, especially lately. But what really is “risk”, and how do we deal with it?

Up until a couple months ago, I had treated the word risk like we treat the world love or happiness. An abstract concept that described an amorphous feeling, rather than a concrete concept. Risk was intuitive; you knew it when you saw it, but you didn’t go around quantifying it.

Studying risk in the financial services industry has opened my eyes to the science of risk. How we decompose, quantify and handle risk. And how to develop principles of risk management that have practical application throughout life. This article gives an introduction to the basic concepts surrounding risk using the example of driving a car. Future articles will delve deeper into specific areas, and address how risk applies in entrepreneurship, angel investing and daily life. Continue reading >

October 6, 2008

Leave comment

The Dynamics of the Financial Crisis: The Mark-To-Market Rule

People I’ve talked to recently are confused why we are having a financial crisis. The financial crisis is seen as abstract, with undefined dynamics, and no discernable impact on their daily lives. This article aims to explain what I believe is one of the drivers of the financial crisis, the mark-to-market rule, in a way an average homeowner can understand. Continue reading >

September 30, 2008

2 comments

» Newer posts