72 karma · joined January 5, 2014
But let's not judge the article and assertion based on our preconceived bias against Goldman Sachs. I think that their conclusion “We would argue that bitcoin, and other digital currencies, lie somewhere on the boundary between currency, commodity and financial asset” makes a lot of sense.
Really, Bitcoin does have more similarities to a commodity than a currency (especially a fiat currency). It's fungible, untraceable, and unregulated.
I wish every legal document carried a tl;dr.
The Public Speaking: Should be a few words, a picture, a quote...basically what this presentation advocates for. Very minimalist. The focus should be on what the presenter is saying.
The Pitch Deck: In my opinion, a startup pitch deck should be very minimalist, but should be enough for someone to understand the pitch. Often investors ask me for pitch decks before a meeting. If there's only 3 words per slide, lots of valuable content might be missed. I still never have more than 3 bullet points per slide.
The Consulting Deck: When I worked for a big 3 management consulting firm, we used decks to present all of our information. It was much more technical and in depth, and it needed to stand alone in case a CEO wanted to read the study two years down the line. Many times it would have multiple graphs or infographics, and several bullet points. The top right would have a tracker saying which part of the presentation we were in, and the title would be a tagline which states the takeaway from the slide. This type of deck would never be presented to a large public audience, but rather around a table with a few stakeholders with in-depth subject matter knowledge.
Clearly there are different types of powerpoints for different situations. My best professors did notes by hand, rather than try to put everything on a powerpoint.
The most important rule that holds true to all Powerpoints, in my humble opinion, is one point/takeaway per slide.
Too many people use powerpoints as a crutch rather than a tool, and it gives the slideshow a bad name.
But clearly depth perception and movement, not to mention infared, would help distinguish them.
I'm a fan of LinkedIn replacing the Rolodex. LinkedIn makes networking a whole lot easier. Maybe all your "technical" friends don't need to network, but I do.
If you want to work a normal work week and a normal life, great. But sometimes to achieve great things you have to make sacrifices.
My experience with one of the banks you mentioned has not changed since it's been acquired.
However, he does a good job of wearing hats of other types of investors, which is why I enjoy his analyses.
Bottom line is that social media companies will either have to sustain these valuations forever, or they will eventually fail. When times of turmoil hit, user base and engagement will not be enough save a company. Cashflow is the only surefire metric that indicates a company's success.
But, building a company is interesting to me. Creating culture, cultivating talent, contributing to GDP and changing an industry are the motivational factors behind me creating a company. And it's extremely challenging. Anybody can create interesting technology; turning it into an self sustaining business is the hard part.
Just my two cents. I agree that ideas are not worthless. Some are plain bad. I've always wanted to ask a VC, "If ideas are so worthless, and the focus is on the founders, why do you have them pitch their company to judge them? Wouldn't another interview process be better."
When I became a founder I clearly worked quite a bit more, but also found myself watching less TV and doing more reading, exercise...productive things.
The most successful entrepreneurs I know work a lot, not because they think more hours=more output. It's just that they are so passionate about their product that they live and breathe it. If you aren't a founder, you simply don't understand.