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"If you've been playing poker for a half an hour and you still don't know who the patsy is, you're the patsy" - Warren Buffet We've all spent time in large, recurring, intentionally important meetings.  The type of meeting where you get together with other busy people to cross-functionally address

It's something every entrepreneur, investor, leader, or creator of remarkable things struggles with.  If they don't, they're either lying to you, or to themselves. Is your judgement right? Or did you miss something in your blind spot? Your judgement was right, but you didn't persist. It's a mind-f*ck struggle.

When we set out to do anything we form a mental picture or "forecast" of what can be achieved with proper focus and execution.  Forecasts, given their nature of predicting the future are often wrong.  Ideally they're wrong in a favorable sense, where we exceed our aim.  Obviously sometimes we

Note: I wrote the following in an internal email to the team here at Sovrn. A big perk of my job as CEO is I get to meet with all sorts of interesting people. Many of the people I meet are fellow entrepreneurs, CEOs, and aspiring company leaders. A few

I get to live and work in Boulder, CO. Some have described Boulder as "25 square miles, surrounded by reality [https://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/30/style/tmagazine/30boulder.html]", and I don't think it's all that far off.  Boulder's a phenomenally beautiful place, quite literally surrounded by a

Values are a reflection of what you want your behaviors to be.  Values are always aspirational, sometimes inspirational.  Values are what you believe. Your beliefs + your behaviors = who you are. Collective beliefs + behaviors of a group = the culture of the group. I've worked in different companies and cultures.  I've observed,

If we see things through probabilities & bets, we give ourselves a built-in opportunity to improve. Armed with this perspective, we can develop and then seek to improve our systems. Systems allow us to better evaluate probabilities, and place better bets. A revenue forecast, for example, (supported by existing customers, retention

Work on something that matters to you more than the monetary rewards you get for doing it. Create value for other people faster than you create value for yourself. We succeed when others succeed.

Our nature is to compete. Especially among motivated and high-performing people competition is always “on”. Its tempting to value collaboration over competition, but I think that misses the point. One is a consequence and the other is a cause of being successful. [https://www.firstnamedotlastname.com/content/images/wordpress/2011/

It turns out we are the audience.  We buy the toothpaste.  We take the vacations.  We check out the new ‘whatever’ it is we want to buy.  We are the people that get marketed to.  And we are the people that the entire advertising industry is based upon.  Basically, to

Great things happen when you’re on a roll. Coming up with a smart idea usually kicks off more smart ideas; more smart ideas lead to innovations. Being confident in what you know and what your doing has a positive reinforcement in making you feel more confident, more creative, more

It turns out that I'm more interested in other stuff than I was in the stuff I was learning in school. That changed when I got to grad school. The difference was that I wanted to learn the material because I found it interesting; it mattered to me. I had

What’s the purpose of a company? Why do we do what we do? Peter Drucker [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Drucker] said: the purpose of a company is to create a customer. The purpose isn't to generate profit, nor make money. The purpose isn't to generate shareholder returns.

#901 – The simpler the idea the more likely it will succeed. #32 – Partnerships matter. #742 – Its more complicated than that. #49 – If I like you and I trust you, I will buy something from you. #1127 – The harder the job, the more lonely it will be.

Sailing isn’t all that hard.  Sailing faster and more efficiently than anyone else when everyone has all the exact same equipment is really really hard!  It turns out that sailing and running a business have a lot in common. 1. Boat size = company size [http://walterknapp.typepad.com/.a/

[http://walterknapp.typepad.com/.a/6a00e54eff9e5388330120a76a2d85970b-pi]

Good intentions. Sage advice. Clever insights.  All good and worthy goals of a conversation with a smart person, a successful person, an influential person.  The problem lies in the clarity of what you want out of it and your perspective on the situation or issue.  Smart people want (desperately) to

#73 Work is inextricably intertwined with life. If you don’t believe me you probably need to get a new one. #19 Saying you’ll do something and actually doing it is not the same thing.This is even worse if you’re a repeat offender.  This is somewhat to

Just got this from a good friend. Drove through the worst snow blizzard I've ever been to…was going so slow that I saw this sign, grabbed my phone, took it out of its cover, turned it on, made an espresso, drank it and took this picture that I hope

Thomas Friedman has a short op-ed in the NYT today [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/22/opinion/22friedman.html].  I think he hits the mark on how we should be thinking about investments and bailouts in this country.  If we want to come out of this economic crisis in

[http://walterknapp.typepad.com/.a/6a00e54eff9e538833011278fcbb1f28a4-pi] Interesting article in the MIT Technology Review [http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/22197/page1/] about measuring the value of a company (startup) by measuring buzz metrics (Twitter activity, Techcrunch mentions, Blog posts, etc.).  Similar to the YouNoodle [http://younoodle.com/] or KillerStartup [http://www.

A pullback, slowdown, recession or whatever you want to call it, often exposes big opportunities for people and companies that are wise to the bigger picture.  This is exactly what I think is going to happen in the world of online advertising data. The ad networks figured this out a