How to Count in Sklansky Dollars
Here’s a neat concept that everyone can use, from professional poker players to Warren Buffett. In Alice Schroeder’s biography, The Snowball, she describes how in his youth, Warren was good at assigning odds to each horse in a race. This is called “handicapping.” Schroeder uses this as an analogy to explain how Buffett calculates investment probabilities. It’s […]
How to Make $1 Million in Six Months
No, it’s not a scam, it’s called entrepreneurship. Qualified startups seeking their first angel funding usually get valued at between $1 million and $3 million and usually have little or no corporate track record. So what are the attributes of such valuable new companies? Surprisingly, it’s not so much the product, nor is it real […]
Too Few (likable) Women at the Top
Sheryl Sandberg is the Chief Operating Officer of Facebook. If you haven’t heard about her new book, Lean In, you’re missing out. Her fifteen minute TED talk gives a recap. At 7 minutes 30 seconds in she cites a Harvard Business School case study, which you can listen to her describe, or read my summary […]
What Entrepreneurs can learn from Vaseline
Marketing will make or break a new venture, so why not study some good examples? Here’s a new commercial I like a lot, with features any startup should emulate: Why I like it: Lead with the product Get folks thinking along the right lines. This commercial leads with a shiny bottle featuring the brand prominently, […]
How NOT to treat your employees
A company I’ve done some work for in the past recently lost a major bid. The super-boss called the entire team into a conference room and said, “You lost the bid, you’re all fired.” Some of the team had been with the company for over thirty years. The carnage hit multiple rungs of the ladder, […]
How much is my startup worth?
This is the question for any startup looking to measure their personal wealth creation, take on additional capital, or sell their business. Unfortunately, the answer is usually, “Somewhere between nothing and a whole lot.” You can do better. Working Backwards: Step One Think about what your business is going to look like when it’s big […]
Who gets to choose their customers?
Well, pretty much every service or knowledge business. Let’s look at landlording, manufacturing, and small business consulting as three examples. Landlording is one of those embarrassingly interpersonal businesses: “Hello? I’m here to unclog your toilet.” “I’m not dressed! Just take care of it please!” Even with toilets that flush buckets of golf balls and other […]
Financial Figuring for Landlords: Real Estate Moats
A moat was a medieval form of security. Just pull up the drawbridge and watch as your enemies fail to get across the water, or if they do, to scale the wall of your castle. Although physical moats have no place in modern real estate (can you imagine the lawsuits?), an “economic moat” is Warren […]
How to Predict (part of) the Future
For complex projects, it’s hard to know whether you’re going to finish under budget. The signal that you’re going over usually comes too late. Ever tell a customer you need another $50,000? They’ll probably say, “$50 K? I don’t have $50 K! Where am I going to get $50 K?!” It’s not fun for either […]
