Decision Making… The Power Law: Energizing Returns on Chance in Innovation and Investing 7 Jan 2026 The Power Law reminds us to think bigger. People systematically misperceive long tail risk, which creates arbitrage opportunities for those who manage uncertainty well. We discuss five strategies to identify…
Investing… Impact Investing: Socially Responsible Investing Reimagined 4 Jan 2026 IImpact Investing is a hot market. Long the domain of development finance institutions, impact investing has moved mainstream, with the likes of Bain Capital, Calvert, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Merrill…
Corporate… New Year’s Resolution: The Two Purposes of Forcing Functions 2 Jan 2026 Happy new year! The holiday season is a time of reflection. I hope that past year was a good one and wish you even more success in the year ahead!…
Decision Making… Entrepreneurial Intent: No Regret Decisions 21 Nov 2025 Entrepreneurship is a latent trait lying dormant in many and activated by intent to identify an opportunity and launch a startup. As fortune favors a prepared mind, this article presents…
Corporate… Cultivating Cohesive Startup Boards to Thrive in Crucible Moments 19 Nov 202522 Dec 2025 In 2000, amidst the DotCom bust, I was asked to mediate a dispute between a CEO and his Board. The company, having raised $100 million and on the brink of…
Financial… Chess, Computers and the Time Value of Money 19 Oct 2025 Venture fund partners are rewarded for Return on Investment. Limited partners in venture funds focus on Internal Rate of Return. Interests are generally but not always aligned. Differences emerge when…
Management… When to Launch Your Startup: Fortune Favors the Prepared Mind 13 Oct 2025 Entrepreneurship awakens when ambition converges on a lucrative opportunity. Insight inspires latent entrepreneurial intent. This describes a four-step process to convert passion into the skill and insight needed to launch…
Investing… Founder’s Dilemmas: Strategies to Avoid Pitfalls that can Sink a Startup 28 Sep 20257 Jan 2026 Founding teams must align on three Rs: Relationships, Roles & Rewards. Startups that do have resilient founding teams but misalignment on any of these are hidden, ticking bombs that explode…
Investing… Seeking Alpha: Second Level Thinking in Venture Capital 9 Sep 2025 Contrarian thinking is required for investors to outperform the public markets. Innovation also relies on contrarian thinking. Yet the Gartner Hype Cycle shows that mimicry is prevalent in venture capital.…
Financial… Total Available Market: Assessing Opportunity in Emerging and Invisible Markets 4 Aug 202512 Aug 2025 TAM can be a valuable tool for founders, but it is often misused, especially when startups pursue markets that do not yet exist. This article explains how founders and investors…
Investing… Seeking Alpha: Thesis Driven v. Thematic Investing 28 Jul 2025 As noted last week, Investment Filters establish boundary conditions for investment. Investment Filters conserve energy both for investors and entrepreneurs by quickly eliminating over 90% of investment opportunities. But Investment…
Financial… Six Product Market Fit Principles That Drive Startup Success 21 Jul 2025 Product Market Fit progresses through three phases: product, business and financial validation. We discuss six practices that improve startup success by accelerating progress through these three stages. “We don’t have…
Corporate… Who Scorecard: Executive Recruitment and Assessment 20 Jul 2025 Who is your number one problem. Not what. Talent is the key success factor for any startup. No other factor is close. The Who Scorecard aligns views on job qualifications…
Author… Investment Filters: Simple Rules to Hit Investment Targets 20 Jul 202520 Jul 2025 Investment Filters set boundary conditions and provide simple guidelines for investments consistent with fund strategy. Filters coordinate fund activity to focus on investments that matter most while permitting flexibility to…
Author… THINK: Make Comments Count 18 Jan 202519 Jan 2025 THINK was the one engraved sign that adorned the desk of Thomas Watson, founder of the world’s most powerful technology company. In the 1950s, IBM had over a 50% market…
Author… Be Exothermic: Igniting the Startup Flywheel 16 Jan 202523 Jan 2025 Last week was a reawakening of sorts. A four-hour drive for my first in person business meeting since last March seemed a minor inconvenience after a lockdown that included nearly…
Author… Founder Fit: Insight Driven Innovation 16 Jan 202523 Jan 2025 Founder Opportunity Fit Framework Venture investors profess preference for industry disruptors, yet this review finds that investors more readily back incremental innovation with credentialed founders than industry disruptors sponsored by…
Business Area… Experience vs. Insight: What Makes a Successful Founder? 16 Jan 202523 Jan 2025 What do Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Michael Dell have in common? These founders of Microsoft, Facebook, Tesla, Google and Dell have created pathbreaking…
Business Area… Seeking Alpha: How Investors Derive Signal from Noise 16 Jan 202519 Jan 2025 In recent months, the investment community observed the passing of Charlie Munger and Daniel Kahneman. Munger and Kahneman came from different disciplines but shared the same objective: improving judgment in…
Business Area… Superforecasting: Ten Investment Practices to Improve Performance 16 Jan 202523 Jan 2025 Investing requires good judgment, which is blurred by bounded rationality in an uncertain world. Early-stage venture investing is further complicated by scant information in highly competitive, rapidly changing markets. Even…
Business Area… The Checklist Manifesto: Three Practices to Improve Venture Capital Performance 16 Jan 202519 Jan 2025 Summit day on Mount McKinley! Tent bound at 18,000 feet for two days in blizzard conditions, we were eager for our summit bid on the highest mountain in North America.…
Business Area… Investing in Generative Artificial Intelligence & the Gartner Hype Cycle: Is the Hype Worth It? 15 Jan 202519 Jan 2025 “We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.” Warren Buffett, 1998 Berkshire Hathaway annual report Is now a good…
Business Area… Turning the Flywheel to Reach Escape Velocity 15 Jan 202523 Jan 2025 Achieving escape velocity is essential for startups to deliver venture returns. Escape velocity is a compelling image for an entrepreneur, as it refers to the speed – 25,020 miles per…
Business Area… Startup Pacing: Accelerate Growth to Win New Markets 15 Jan 202523 Jan 2025 Pacing and Performance: Be Quick but Don’t Be in a Hurry As we enjoy March Madness, the college basketball tournament is a clinic in clock management. In games calibrated for…
Business Area… Seeing Clearly: Three Startup Strategies to Survive & Thrive the Gartner Hype Cycle 15 Jan 202523 Jan 2025 Apple Vision Pro, released in February, presents a bold vision for augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR). AR/VR has promised for decades to supercharge gaming, enhance education, inform work, and enliven…
Business Area… Three Cardinal Sins of Investing: How Artificial Intelligence Can Help Identify Founder Fit 15 Jan 202519 Jan 2025 What do Amazon, Alibaba, AirBnB, Bentley Systems, Cisco, DataDog, PagerDuty, Peloton, Pinterest, Robinhood, SquareSpace, Uber, Udemy and UIPath have in common? In Secrets of Sand Hill Road, Scott Kupor described…
Business Area… Regulatory Capture: Navigating the Third Rail of Innovation 15 Jan 202523 Jan 2025 Trailing through the darkened corridors of political power are the insidious tendrils of corporate and elite influence. A particularly pervasive and pernicious form of political influence is regulatory capture where…
Business Area… Atomic Habits: Forcing Functions to Fulfill New Year’s Resolutions 14 Jan 202519 Jan 2025 ‘The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.’ Samuel Johnson “Champions don’t do extraordinary things. They do ordinary things, but…
Corporate… Social Capital: Six Startup Strategies to Upend Incumbents 14 Jan 202523 Jan 2025 In 2015, thousands of taxi drivers in Paris rioted blocking thoroughfares, damaging cars, and threatening Uber drivers while seeking a ban of Uber in France. Local authorities responded by jailing…
Business Area… Paradigm Shifts: Ten Winning Strategies for Disruptive Innovators 14 Jan 202523 Jan 2025 “There is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than the creation of a new order of things … Whenever his enemies have…
Business Area… Dominant Design: The Superhighway to Industry Growth 14 Jan 202523 Jan 2025 Though Apple Vision Pro has disappointed on sales, the product is a significant step forward and the future of AR/VR remains bright. When augmented by artificial intelligence, AR/VR promises to…
Business Area… The Five Forces: Five Startup Strategies for Winner Take Most Markets 14 Jan 202523 Jan 2025 “Full many a flower was meant to blush unseen and waste its fragrance on the desert air, Full many a man was meant to scale the heights but faint of…
Business Area… Exit Strategy: Reverse Engineering Successful Outcomes from the Outset 14 Jan 202523 Jan 2025 The above want ad applies as well to startups as the Antarctic: “hazardous journey, small wages … long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful.” Ernest Shackleton offered…
Business Area… Mapping the Territory: Exploring Uncharted Markets 14 Jan 202523 Jan 2025 “The Earth’s surface is 70% water. That water is uncarbonated. Therefore, the Earth is … flat.” When Mapping the Territory, beware of maps and mental models used out of context.…
Startup Cairns 