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"History is just one damn thing after another" I was a History major in college.  Basically that means that you read a ton, write a ton, and try to understand why certain events happened - and - what those events did to cause things

How do you know if an idea, product, team, or business is a good bet? In the short run it's always unclear. Probabilities suggest that evidence or proof is pretty thin in the beginning.  Good ideas can struggle.  Bad ideas can succeed.  If we

"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

It's the push and pull of creating anything remarkable.  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

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

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,

I get to live and work in Boulder, CO.   Some have described Boulder as "25 square miles, surrounded by reality", and I don't think it's all that far off.  Boulder's a phenomenally beautiful place, quite literally surrounded by a 43,000 acre green-belt of

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

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,

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 we help others succeed.

I can remember with complete clarity the times when I received feedback so honest and pure it felt like getting smacked in the head with a 2×4. Those moments when someone I trusted cut through all my bullshit and knocked the wind

Building a company from the bottom up is an interesting journey.  At each rung of the ladder you raise a bit more money, hire a few more employees, and hit a few more milestones.   In the early days especially you have to place really

It doesn’t really matter much the subject; you don’t really understand something until you can explain it to someone else so that they understand it.  And that job, of explaining with clarity, gets more difficult the less the person you’re explaining

Constraints matter.  A lot.  By embracing them we become better and stronger than we ever could without them. 2 very different examples are below.  I also outline a process I cribbed from a good friend and former colleague on how to pick the best

If you ask me how our business did in 2012, chances are I’ll pepper you with a story of amazing network growth and spectacular results.  If you stop by our offices, you’ll see a constant buzz of excited activity –

Its been far too long since I’ve posted here on my blog.  Its not like I don’t write.. just not here all the time. Retargeting and rethinking the click Publishers confront the Mobile Mess Publishing in the viewable Ad era Why in-view

Solving coordination problems in hidden markets is a really big deal.  The last 5 years at Lijit and the 4 years prior to that building an Open Source software business evolved my thinking about the nature of markets and how institutions take advantage of

Building a business is hard.  Mostly its hard because of the known and unknown unknowns of the environment in which you’re building.  The more I do this, the more I’m convinced that the separation between a thriving and growing business

Its been a while.. and I miss not writing some of my hairbrained thoughts.  Turns out the past few months have been busy for me, not the least of which because my wife and I went to China and adopted a baby boy.  Its

People that know me are well aware of my passion for cycling.  I ride all year and in all kinds of weather (as long as the temp isn’t too far below my age).  I race cyclocross in the fall, and a few

I hear this alot, particularly in the start-up world: "fail fast".  I’m not exactly sure who popularized it, perhaps it was my friend Brad Feld.  I’m pretty sure Brad didn’t mean that failure – and doing

Venture capitalists are “meta” smart. Lots of people are deeply smart about very particular things.  Niches that they dig into and become experts in.  They become masters of their domain.  They understand their ecosystem of a particular economy of a business. It’s this

I’ve written on this blog before about my affinity for Peter Drucker.  Anyone that is a student of management theory and genuinely interested in building kick-ass businesses needs to read the Essential Drucker. This morning I read an article on the Harvard

No matter what company, job, industry, time of year, state of the economy, one’s age, or position in life – the words are always the same “I’m too busy”.  Of course the words themselves vary from person to

We form the decision-making process during and around the act of consuming content.  We seek, or stumble, into information that interests us. We dig deeper because we’re engaged by the content.  Its authenticity, opinion, or perhaps even its entertainment value is what grabs