Stop pretending it’s all a party: The social contract of working at a startup By Sarah Lacy On June 25, 2013 Perhaps it’s because I’ve worked my whole career in media and startups. But I’m having a hard time getting super lathered up about Bloomberg’s takedown of what it is like to work at Fab. Don’t hang your jacket on the back of a chair? Conde Nast gets away with this, because fashion is core to its brand. But let’s not stop at Conde Nast. And while we’re at it….how about Bloomberg? Companies are living organisms. Startups are like newborns. Startups are raw outgrowths of founders’ personalities, pure and simple. This isn’t just true when it comes to creating companies. Companies like Yahoo and Google and Facebook and Fab and Airbnb and Github aren’t just reinventing their industries, they are reinventing what it’s like to work in a major corporation in America. For people like me, this is why startups are fun to write about a be in. Right or wrong, I laughed when I read this in Goldberg’s blog today: Claim. Not everything Bloomberg alleges about Fab is funny.
There Are Only Four Jobs in the Whole World – Are You in the Right One? Gaz de schiste, fracturation hydraulique : pourquoi tant de craintes ? Aux États-Unis, près de 20.000 puits d'exploitation du gaz de schiste devraient voir le jour chaque année jusqu'en 2035 (selon un article paru en juillet 2012 dans Environmental Health). Cependant, jusqu'à 10 puits pourraient être creusés par plateforme afin de réduire l'impact sur le territoire. © Justin Woolford, Flickr, cc ny nc sa 2.0 Gaz de schiste, fracturation hydraulique : pourquoi tant de craintes ? - 4 Photos À l’heure où la France aborde la délicate question de la transition énergétique, un sujet polémique revient de plus en plus sur le devant de la scène : l’exploration et l’exploitation du gaz de schiste. Certains y voient une solution miracle. Cependant, de nombreux mouvements citoyens se sont élevés dans notre pays pour décrier cette filière énergétique. Pour ce premier article sur la question, Futura-Sciences a interrogé Marine Jobert, coauteur du livre intitulé Le vrai scandale des gaz de schiste (éditions Les Liens qui Libèrent). La question des eaux usées à traiter
6 Things Exceptional Leaders Do Better | Inc. 5000 What makes an exceptional leader exceptional? This was the topic I had the fortunate opportunity to discuss recently with a class of graduating university seniors. Many of the students believed that future business leaders needed a new set of leadership skills that recognized the new global economy that continues to be molded and shaped by rapidly changing technology and globalization. They aren't wrong. They were overlooking, however, the fact that fundamental leadership skills are characteristic of all great leaders, past and future. Here are six things exceptional leaders do better: 1. Being able to motivate and influence others is an incredibly important skill for a leader. 2. Great leaders operate innovative companies that often challenge a business or cultural paradigm. 3. I do believe that great leaders need to possess a high degree of organizational skill and be able to apply analytical thinking to understand complex business situations. 4. 5. 6.
The Psychology of Entrepreneurial Misjudgment, part 1: Biases 1-6 Mar 24, 2008 Charlie Munger is an 80-something billionaire who cofounded top-tier law firm Munger, Tolles & Olson and is Warren Buffett's long-time partner and Vice-Chairman at Berkshire Hathaway, one of the most successful companies of all time. Some people, including me, consider Mr. Munger to be an even more interesting thinker and writer than Mr. Buffett, and recently a group of Mr. Mr. In this series of blog posts, I will walk through all 25 of the biases Mr. One: Reward and Punishment Superresponse Tendency I place this tendency first in my discussion because almost everyone thinks he fully recognizes how important incentives and disincentives are in changing cognition and behavior. Human response to incentives is indeed a huge behavioral motivator, and I think Mr. There is a wrong-headed and dangerous theory afoot that restricted stock (grants of fully in-the-money shares of stock) is a more appropriate motivator of employees of tech companies than stock options: Mr. ...
My 7 Steps to Getting More Done How to Think Like an Entrepreneur The One Thing Successful People Never Do 100 Must See Interviews With the World's Most Successful Entrepreneurs At Under30CEO we think big. We recently published a list of our Top 50 Most Motivational People on the web and things got a little nuts. The article created incredible buzz all over the web and most importantly we fired up our audience to go out and make something happen. As young entrepreneurs it’s important that we keep swinging for the fences. Super successful investors like Ron Conway say they’d rather invest in an 18 year old Mark Zuckerberg than a 31 year old seasoned entrepreneur because the young Sean Parker types truly think the sky is the limit. At Under30CEO we’re going to carry that mentality into the interviews that we conduct on the site. The list below is the most incredible people to learn from as entrepreneurs and we intend to interview them all…somehow. Introducing our Top 100 Entrepreneurs to Learn from and their best interviews from around the web…1.) 2.) 3.) 4.) 5.) 6.) 7.) 8.) 9.) 10.) 11.) 12.) 13.) 14.) 15.) 16.) 17.) 18.) 19.) 20.) 21.) 22.) 23.) 24.) 25.) 26.)
Could You Lead the World? 5 Questions to Ask Yourself Can Building Great Products Help You Build Great Teams? - Deep Nishar Silicon Valley was built on amazing products, not on stellar leadership skills. In fact, veterans of some of the world’s most successful tech companies often look with skepticism, even disdain, on efforts to build strong management skills. The premise is that all energy should be focused solely on turning fabulous ideas into hyper growth. It’s true that if a start-up fails — or is sold — the need for enduring leadership may never arise. And in the earliest stages of a company, the need to organize, motivate and inspire large groups of people to accomplish shared goals may not be obvious. But neglecting the art of people management has significant costs for any company that aspires to be around for a while. In my 20 years leading product and user experience teams at several world-class companies, including LinkedIn and Google, I’ve come to adopt what I call my “Seven Principles to Product Bliss.” Rule 1: Know your audience. Rule 2: Simplify. Simple is a feature of great management too.
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