kaa2102

Profit. It's far easier to cut costs, reduce taxes, and expand existing products/services into new markets than it is to conduct applied research and commercialize new products.

Data is data. The most important data is the the data that impacts the strategic objectives of your business or organization. There is zero value in boiling the ocean.

Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug is a good start on principles of usability and web design. Also, you can find website layouts, graphic designs, and get help with infographics from istockphoto.com, gettyimages.com, themeforest.net and visual.ly.

Wow! Thank you!

I think the presentation does an amazing job informing entrepreneurs how to sell to companies once they're in your sales pipeline. How do you get their attention in the first place? I asked Bill Campbell and Ben Horowitz this question at an entrepreneurship forum and they responded press and business connections. I imagine that SEO, search marketing, conferences, trade shows, print ads, and viral marketing could be helpful. Has anyone had success using other marketing methods to sell to large companies?

Clarifying the scope of a project or data collection & analysis effort is paramount. You never want to attempt to boil the ocean. The key is to figure out the data the matters most per your company or organization's strategy.

Customers shouldn't be forced to do what's best for companies.

I studied Industrial Engineering & Operations Research (OR) in undergrad and grad school. Traveling Salesman is one of the classic OR problems. It's fun to see OR make it on the silver screen.

I feel like the kitchen can be an entrepreneur's playground. Cooking (and eating) was always a very social affair with my friends and family. I started learning to cook as a child when I helped my mom and dad make Sunday dinner for a family of 6. I often cooked for myself when I went to college. I even cooked big Sunday dinners and charged guys in my dorm $5 bucks. I guess you could say this was my first venture.

Treating people with respect and motivating folks to do better than their best are traits of an effective leader. I think we somehow confuse "people-shaming/screaming asshole" with a good leader.

There are a lot of negative comments about LivingSocial's business model. The irony is that a lot of what I see on HN and in tech is about mobile, social media, and games.

The Vault has provided this type of information for aspiring consulting, investment banking, and legal professionals. I used it to evaluate opportunities at management consulting firms. The Vault has information about interviewing, salaries by position, and life at the firm.

I recently went to a presentation by Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence. He lead the audience in an exercise that he called "mindfulness". He asked us to close our eyes, breathe in and out, and focus our minds only on our breath. When a stray thought entered our minds we were advised to shoo it away and shift focus back to our breathing.

I've read about meditation and found the practices to be similar. Dr. Goleman mentioned that the aim of practicing mindfulness was to improve one's self-awareness and self-motivation capabilities.

I found that meditation or mindfulness has helped me gain great control of my thoughts and emotions. I have been able to calm myself down, heighten my focus, understand and disrupt negative thought patterns, and much more.

"Nobody relies on [mail delivery, a national highway system, telephones, wireless spectrum, police, libraries, etc] to get to work so they can feed their children."

Necessity for sustenance or transportation does not drive the need for something to be a public utility. I think we are really talking about the tragedy of the commons. This has been a political and legal debate for centuries. The private market is not able to maximize the average utility of citizens in every market and AND earn profit.

This isn't an apples to apples comparison. Asian Americans have never systematically disenfranchised white Americans.

However, you bring up some interesting points but that I have a couple of issues with including probationary whiteness, survivor-ship bias, and performance vs. access. I don't think Asian Americans had to drink from the "colored" fountain. It's easier to win the game if you are allowed to play. In many cases, Asians are considered probationary white so should we be talking about a White/White achievement gap?

Children of immigrants are highly motivated to achieve by parents who selected to come to the US. The folks that immigrate were motivated enough to come here and be successful. This is the essence of survivor-ship bias.

There was a study a couple years ago that showed that having an black-sounding name on your resume lead to fewer callbacks. You have a better shot at batting .300 if you are allowed to pick up a bat.

I would say that racism is about hate, ignorance, and creating systematic barriers to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Women are considered a minority group; yet, white women still retain the privilege of being white. It sounds like the essay echoes the sentiment of being privileged and not wanting to be sub-grouped. I've noticed that some white friends didn't consider themselves to belong to any special "ethnic group" - they considered themselves to be "normal".

The point of the Civil Rights movement, the Voting Rights Act, and implementation of affirmative action policies was that hatred and bigotry gave way to the people creating barriers that prevented minorities from pursuing life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Affirmative action is needed because the impact of centuries of systemic discrimination cannot be undone in just one generation.

The solution to ending racism, homophobia, and sexism cannot be to ignore these evils. Shine a light on them.

I think that entrepreneurs should build to ship to customers rather than to court VCs.

Having options is not immoral - it is a moral imperative. Private sector executives are willing to lay off employees for the sake of profitability. Public sector employees (even Feds #Sequester) aren't safe from layoffs or furloughs. It's not cheating to do what's in your best interest - your Employer will certainly do what's best for them.

I applaud your desire to seek out help (and your creativity). I am clearly not a professional but depression is an evolutionary response to loss, trauma, and/or change. The mind realizes that the current map of reality is off. Ultimately, as Dr. Peck wrote in The Road Less Traveled: "life is difficult". There are many problems to be solved in the journey of life. Life is about solving problems and things can get a bit brighter when we decide to become active problem solvers.

I think that you actually may have made progress in therapy because of the mere fact that you stuck with it for 7 years. You may be further on your journey than you realize. I wish you the best of luck.

You could go to an accounting firm that specializes in valuation for tech businesses. They could help value the business and leverage their network to find potential buyers.

It appears that the gist of the article is: don't plan, just be awesome and lucky. The article also drips with survivorship bias,e.g., the "good relationships happen without a plan" concept does not taken into account those who don't plan and don't end up in relationships. The author could just say "being awesome and lucky worked for me, I bet it could work wonders for you, too!"

The prospects for NYC as an entrepreneurial tech hub are looking better. I think Stanford and Cornell just want a piece of the action.

I would suggest A First Course in Probability, 8th Edition by Sheldon Ross

I think I cleared up this error. Thank you for taking the time to comment.

Thanks for the feedback. I wish you the best of luck on your current and future projects. Cheers!

Good luck to you! I previously worked at Booz as well. You may be surprised but your experience (and connections) in consulting will help down the road. A friend of mine (Booz alum) is also transitioning from software development at a consulting firm to the start up world - he is in b-school at the moment.

Are we trying to make University trustees rich or have a well-educated and civil society? I don't think 4 years of college are required to teach someone to think critically, be rational, and right/speak well.

"I would like to say, though, that if you hold beliefs that seem to make you a favourite "lulz target" then you should probably re-examine them"

The only way to not be a target is to believe in "nothing". He who stands for nothing will fall for anything. That's not a good way to live.