americandesi333

He did break the rules, but these rules were irrational and he didn't hurt anyone in the process. Thats the ethical and moral dilemma that hustlers have to deal with every day.

This is an inspiring story, but when I hear about founders cheating, backstabbing and hurting others in the process, that is not inspiring... and there is a fine line between the two.

Why doesn't Facebook just buy Spotify...

Its amazing to see what impacts a great educator can make on you... I have never met Gerald, but can tell you that there are these gems of educators out there that have single handedly impacted the lives of so many.

I will never forget how my economics professor at my small state college kept a WSJ out for me every day so I could learn about the world outside of our town in Missouri. Every week he would meet with me and would ask me what I learned from it. At a college where 80% students were first generation college students, it was him that really got a lot of people excited about the world...

His name is Dr. Viran Kharadia

The problem is in the distribution of wealth. The nation is growing at 7-8% a year compared to 0-2% growth in US, but most of the wealth in India is in the hands of 5% of the population. The middle class is slowly growing, but not at the rate to close the disparity.

Democracy in its core is the reason for the slow infrastructure, government and social reforms because its like moving a big elephant. China on the other hand is able to be quite nimble with communism. Its interesting. I dont advocate communism because it sounds great in theory but rarely works practically, but it is working for China.

The article also reveals that as Americans now that our country has evolved over past around 300 years of democracy, there is a sense of 'entitlement' that has come with it.

This entitlement is in opposition to fostering curiosity and risk taking mentality. People that feel they are entitled to have food, shelter and clothing will never work creatively towards it and will be reluctant in taking risks or understanding failure.

This needs to be fostered at a young age, when kids should be working on projects and understanding the value of resilience instead of having things handed down to them. I came to this country at a young age and had to fend for myself. Thats when I learned the real meaning of 'resilience'.

Seems like there are some states that have this program in place- Delaware, Maine, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Oregon and Pennsylvania.

http://workforcesecurity.doleta.gov/unemploy/self.asp

Unfortunately, not California

One thing that makes great leaders is to understand your value in an organization. Some founders are better suited to run an agile below 100 startups but dont have the capacity to deal with the ops complexities that come with scaling a business.

If you look closely, the successful founder CEOs had a strong ops person by their side helping them scale. Understanding yourself and your weaknesses earlier on and enlisting people that would complement you is the key. Otherwise, even your passion, vision and right incentives won't help you be a great leader.

One thing I want to mention is that this article sheds a lot of negative light on adjunct faculty with no strong arguments of why.

From my university experience, I actually got a lot more out of faculty that were loaned from the business world because they were great at sharing practical relevent knowledge and examples.

Full-time faculty on the other hand lacked the knowledge of the outside practical world and were outdated in their teaching.

Thats why I have Sprint. It does not have any data cap and Sprint service is actually pretty good in the San Francisco bay area.

This article never mentions the demographic makeup of the test group that was used for this research. I think thats a critical missing piece of information.

I wonder if this holds true for a the millennials, who are brilliant at multitasking with listening to music, texting and also conversing at the same time.

The vision behind this (I think) is to make math accessible to common man by taking away the abstract nature of teaching and understanding math theorems.

Human brain responds to associations that explain things using something you can relate to or easily visualize. The archaic nature of math doesn't lend itself to do that unfortunately. The variable 'x' is just a made up concept with no grounding in realism. Data visualization on the other hand triggers human brain to make association, therefore making it easier to understand math.

Math is of no use unless put in practice...

I think what he could do to close that gap is re-train himself. There are unemployment agencies in every city (called WIB) that provide free training resources to people who are looking for jobs.

But the biggest deterrent is the motivation to go out there and really push hard to make yourself relevant. He did couple of times mention the 'color' and it seems that he is feeling like a victim. In order to succeed, you need to get out of that mentality and start thinking positively about the value you can bring to an org.

I don't see how they are mentioning a possibility of 'What if'. This article seems a little misleading. Its clear from reading this that the founders did not want to sell themselves to Yahoo. Also, hindsight is always 20/20 :)

Google says "we want to bring the nuance and richness of real-life sharing to the web"

I don't quite understand the richness in playing Angry Birds or Farmville. Real life is not like these games and therefore, people are momentarily attracted by this alternate world. I wonder if real farmers would play farmville?

I think this article stops just short of making a leap and saying that game elements are now used as marketing tool to create 'stickiness'. When I ask most entrepreneurs the question- what will make people come back to their website, majority of them tell me that they are thinking of adding a gamification angle to keep getting people back.

I agree that gamification brings out the human values of competitiveness, trust, credibility. But I don't think gamification by itself creates a long lasting business advantage. After all, people will get tired of playing these games some day.

Great post and makes me think about the 'herd mentality'!

You are mixing my quotes with the previous commenter's

Just to clarify, I never said that top-performers are driven by 'skills and education'. I said that they are driven by 'passion' for their area of work. That means they will go above and beyond to learn more, they are innovators and are willing to take risks.

And yes I agree that charisma does have a secondary role in making them a 'top performer' as you mentioned!

I don't think you are propagating that others should follow the path you chose to take, but your theory does sound flawed to me. Here is a better way to put why a company should promote egalitarian work culture:

Men and women generally (not always) bring different perspectives in approaching similar problems. If you are a startup launching new products, this provides you an ability to take in different view points and collaborate to figure out the best path. Therefore, its in best advantage to have top notch women on your team, not just because it creates a 'pleasant' workplace environment, but it will help you succeed.

To answer the top-performers behavior question, I am sure there is a difference in behavior in mixed vs. single gender environment and I think the reason for that is they now have a set of individuals amongst them with different perspectives, thats it :)

Sorry to hear that you chose your 4 years of school based on meeting someone from the opp gender. Hoped that worked out for you :)

Have to say that your theory seems shortsighted to me and does not apply to top performers of either genders, especially if you look at professional environment. I have met quite a few women who go into certain educational path to meet partners (medical school is a good example), but they are not passionate about the field and therefore, never become the top performers.

On the other hand, if you look at top performing women in startups, they are passionate about their work and are not there to find partners.

A startup should hire talent regardless of their gender... being a woman myself in the tech field, I dont want to be hired because a startup is trying to cultivate a 'enjoyable' work environment. Its about who brings the chops to the table.

Thanks for sharing the Amazon logo timeline. I have never seen that before and am surprised to see how much it has evolved...

Now this would be more powerful if it was 3 Dimensional... Another weekend project :)

I want to believe that its because Facebook is showing them a bigger 'vision' but this smells like $$ to me...

People can be smart but sometimes the short-term allure of happiness (in this case the payout) can harm their long-term growth and impact to the world.

Patio11- Design is not just about pretty colors and interface... its more about understanding the audience and their interaction before delving into creating the best user experience. Therefore, what you suggest could be a temporary quick fix that will not give you the results for a sustaining business.

You can never expect a kickass programmer to also have the best design chops. They require different forms of thinking. So stop giving false advise to programmers on enlisting design skills and instead partner with the best designers!

There is a reason why Steve Jobs is successful :)

As a programming single-founder, you have already taken the first major step! You realize your core competency and your weakness and the importance of filling that gap. I wouldn't be that disappointed because I know of a lot of programmers that don't even take that first step. Most of them don't value design because its a foreign world to them.

The biggest recommendation I would have for you is to find a designer that will take your framework and elevate it to the user experience that makes sense to the world...

The Groove team definitely nailed it when they said that design is an important element...

I wonder how Mike Matas would feel after a year of being at Facebook...

When I first read about them and heard his TED talk, I really believed in what he was saying, that they aspired to change the way the world reads. I believed in his revolution...

So, this is definitely a let down...

Solving for those 'challenges' people pose is the key. However, you have to figure out how to prioritize what to solve. Keep the product CORE intact and have a good vision. You cannot change that all the time. Certainly a great post!

This prediction only holds true if the market has enough viable options of electric cars. As for now, Tesla and Nissan are the only two all electric cars.

I just purchased a diesel car and diesel fuel IS at around $4.40 per gallon... I would have gladly purchased a electric car.

Tesla's price point is too high and their lower priced model is still a little ways away from release. Nissan Leaf can run only for 100 miles before it needs to be charged. This makes it a difficult substitute for a regular gasoline car because it will not be able to satisfy most Americans driving needs.

Therefore, for this prediction to hold true, its important to have enough viable options in market.

The article does a great job highlighting the stark reality of today's labor market.

I was at the unemployment agency in silicon valley doing some research, and they informed me that even though unemployment rate is around 9-10%, there is this whole category of 'under-employed' and they make up 20% of workforce population in silicon valley. Therefore, there are around 30% workforce that are looking for jobs...

One part of it is training, but most urgent is the need to recognize value of 'informal' learning; thats learning outside the university structure. The ever increasing costs of degrees has made it difficult for common Americans to pursue or even justify college education. As a result, these people are not developing skill sets through traditional means. These are the ones that need help.

Once we start recognizing continuous learning (certifications, workshops, books, events) as a medium to build a skills portfolio and get jobs, this skills 'gap' will start diminishing.

We in the tech world can create tools to help answer these challenges. Help people create their informal learning, let them track progress and share that progress with the rest of the world. Thats what the unemployed need and the employers will value.

Very timely article. I spoke to an entrepreneur couple of weeks ago and his view was that raising VC funding would validate his company and make sure its a viable business. I was surprised to hear that from him, especially when building a successful business should be about 'bootstrapping' and getting paying customers. It should not be about getting validation from 'group thinking'.

VCs have a place in the startup world, but they should only be used if and when needed...

That is exactly whats being done in the countries referenced in the article.