Is Marketing an Art or a Science?
Marketing professional. This term conjures images of glamour, consumption, and style, much like what the AMC series Mad Men depicts. If you've watched this show or heard talks given by…
Skills Posts
The Truth About Productivity and Efficiency
It was a lie, triggering simultaneous relief and disappointment. Inbox Zero, the badge of honor worn proudly by those who can regularly respond to and act on all emails regularly,…
Resolve: Learn to Stick With It
There is a strange phenomenon in the second half of each January. Gyms around the world start to empty out. Caffeine, chocolate, and alcohol purchases scale back up. TV binge-watching…
Narrow Your Focus to Prevent Overanalysis
Entrepreneurs come up with new business ideas all the time. Often, they just plunge ahead to develop the product or service without really taking the time to 1) determine if…
How to Find and Recruit a Technical Cofounder for Your Startup
So... you have a great idea for a tech-oriented business and maybe an MBA to go along with it. But if you don't have strong technical skills, then you're going…
Nice Guys Finish First, and Other Lessons from “Give and Take”
David Hornik, a prosperous and respected venture capitalist, offers a term sheet to entrepreneur Danny Shader. After extensive due diligence, Shader decides to sign with another investor. The reason? Hornik…
Eight Traits of True Founders
Business success begins in the mind of the startup founder and his team. A winning startup is a team of entrepreneurs who build and run the business as an extension…
Making the Most of MOOCs
The Arizona Republic newspaper recently ran a front-page article by Anne Ryman about the explosive growth of MOOCs. MOOCs is an acronym for “Massive Open Online Courses.” These are free…
Are You a Five-Tool Player?
We don’t know who coined the term “Five-tool player,” but it has been a common phrase in baseball for many years. My suspicion is that it may have first been…
The Debates
We imagine that most people know that it is “debate season” here in the U.S. as the 2012 Presidential debates dominate media coverage throughout the month. More than 70 million…