What We’re Reading
A few good articles the Collab team came across this week …
Lessons
Fred Wilson offers guidance:
Most VCs think that the investors in their limited partnership funds are their clients, the people they need to cater to. “That’s wrong. Our customers are the entrepreneurs and the companies they build. Our investors are our shareholders,” he says.
“VCs are a service provider to entrepreneurs. We ride their coattails.” Don’t forget the pom-poms before getting on that ride.
Demographics
The biggest single age cohort today in the U.S. is 26-year-olds, who number 4.8 million, according to Torsten Slok, chief international economist forDeutsche Bank.People 25, 27 and 24 follow close behind, in that order. Many are on the verge of life-defining moments such as choosing a career, buying a house and having children.
Publishing
On writing a book:
Books should be written by missionaries not mercenaries…Given that financial returns for book authors reflects a power law as is the case on most creative endeavors, your motivation for writing a book should not be monetary.
Said another way:
The only book you should write is the book that is trapped inside of you, banging with both its fists on the inside of your rib cage, demanding to be let out. –
Friends
How to get people to hate you:
Humblebragging
The hallmark of someone who wants to boast, but doesn’t want to get caught doing it is the humblebrag. Yes, we get that your Tesla is hard to keep clean on your ranch’s dusty roads. A study by Harvard Business Reviewput it this way: “Despite the belief that combining bragging with complaining or humility confers the benefits of each strategy, we find that humblebragging confers the benefits of neither, instead backfiring because it is seen as insincere.”
Issues
Good piece on two pressing problems:
I think it’s fair to say that capitalism is a petri dish for income inequality. On the other hand, capitalism has done incredible things for our society. How do we square these circles? I don’t know. But unfortunately, the less black and white issues are, the less reasonable people become. Tribalism immediately replaces reason.
Future
A 1998 interview with Steve Case:
Have a good weekend.