Tag: business

Mastering the Machine and The Billion-Dollar Aphorisms of Ray Dalio. Two articles from a while back that take a look inside Bridgewater Associates, a Connecticut-based hedge fund known for its aggressively transparent and honest company culture. via Matt.

Economic Power in the Age of Abundance:

The obvious reaction to this case, as with the Belgian one, is to marvel at the publisher’s nerve; after all, as we saw with the Belgians, Google is driving traffic from which the publishers profit. “Ganz im Gegenteil!” say the publishers. “Google would not exist without our content.” And, at a very high level, I suppose that’s true, but it’s true in a way that doesn’t matter, and understanding why it doesn’t matter gets at the core reason why traditional journalistic institutions are having so much trouble in the Internet era.

The Expendables: How the Temps Who Power Corporate Giants Are Getting Crushed. In-depth look by ProPublica at the temp worker industry. Includes some geographic and socioeconomic breakdowns of the impact of temp work.

Don’t Lie. You Don’t Care.

In the drive to derive value from each customer, we are forgetting that our goal as entrepreneurs is to solve problems for life, not for the first $10.

What I learned bootstrapping a 6-figure business from school:

It’s true that if your business is taking off you’re going to get lots of investor interest and lots of press opportunities. But lots of investor interest and press does not create a successful business.

Poor Quality Will Kill You:

consumers don’t give a shit about how small you are, how hard your product is to build, or that you are running out of money. All they really care is that they paid you and now they expect your product to not only deliver on the promise you offered, but surpass it.

What Clayton Christensen Got Wrong. Fantastic essay from Ben Thompson about Clayton Christensen, Apple, and theories of disruption.

Measuring without measuring:

Measurement is fabulous. Unless you’re busy measuring what’s easy to measure as opposed to what’s important.

Peter Thiel’s CS183: Startup – Class 9 Notes Essay. A fantastic set of notes from Peter Thiel’s CS:183 class on startups. This session was specifically about distribution and Blake has 18 more class sessions worth of notes.

The Employee Is The Company:

The employee is the company. Meet someone who treats you like you are a visiting alien from Uranus, and you will have a low opinion of the company. When a salesperson is rude, the company is rude. But when an employee provides outstanding service, we view the company itself as outstanding.