25iq

My views on the market, tech, and everything else

Business Lessons from Katrina Lake of Stitch Fix

Katrina Lake is the founder and CEO of Stitch Fix. The magnitude of what she accomplished in building this business is highly underappreciated: She took a clothing retailer public in November 2017. This is a remarkable accomplishment given the financial state of retail in the United States and the challenges facing Nordstrom, Macy’s  and others. Lake did so by finding sustainable competitive advantage using some of the most advanced technology in the […]

Continue Reading →

Business Lessons from Ben Thompson of Stratechery

Ben Thompson is the founder of the subscription newsletter Stratechery. He previously worked at Apple, Microsoft, and Automattic, where he focused on strategy, developer relations, and marketing. I love the way he thinks and writes. I always look at something in a new way after I read his writing. Thompson has said about the nature of his work: “I don’t think there are enough writers talking about how things work […]

Continue Reading →

The 1990s Telecom Bubble. What Can We Learn?

My goal when I started writing this blog post was to write a review of The Startup Way. In this new book Eric Ries writes about the application of Lean Startup principles to established businesses and organizations. Rather than write a dry book review, I will try to tell a story in this blog post about a phenomenon I lived through called the Telecom Bubble in order to illustrate a […]

Continue Reading →

Business Lessons from Alton Brown

  I decided to write a blog post about Alton Brown (“AB”) not just because he is interesting, but because he is an entrepreneur who built a business without venture capital. AB has on several occasions talked about how he needed to get bank loans to grow his business. Since bank loans, together with personal savings, loans from friends/family and cash flow from operations are the way most entrepreneurs finance […]

Continue Reading →

A Dozen Business Lessons from Waffle House

I enjoy being challenged to write a post on a topic like Waffle House since it is an opportunity to show that you can learn from anyone or anything. That is why I have written blog posts about people like Rza, Biggie Smalls and Louis CK. In some cases what you learn is what not to do, which can be a very valuable thing. Waffle House co-founder Joe Rogers got […]

Continue Reading →

A Dozen Lessons from Megan Quinn about a Growth Mindset

  Megan Quinn is a General Partner at Spark Capital. She was a previously a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Quinn joined KPCB from Square, where she was Director of Products. Before joining Square she spent seven years at Google working on products like Google Maps. Quinn has invested in many businesses, including Clover Health, Handshake, Pendo, Rover, and Slack. I thought it would be useful and fun […]

Continue Reading →

What Killed Post-Break Up AT&T? What Lessons can be Learned from this Titanic Modern Failure?

  While it is impossible to say that any one event started the process that resulted in the breakup of  AT&T, one important personality who was involved was “Jack the Giant Killer” Goeken.  He was the founder of many businesses including the long-distance provider MCI, two air-to-ground communications providers and the communications system used by FTD florists. The Washington Post wrote about him: “Beneath Mr. Goeken’s frumpy appearance — he […]

Continue Reading →

A Dozen Lessons about Business from Anthony Bourdain

  “The absolute certainty that nobody was going to care about, read or buy Kitchen Confidential was what allowed me to write it. I didn’t have to think about what people expected. I didn’t care. As a result I was able to write the book, quickly and without tormenting myself. That was in many ways a very liberating place to be. I’ve kind of tried to stick with that business […]

Continue Reading →

A Half Dozen Lessons about the Right Burn Rate (Post Product/Market Fit in a Connected World)

Mark Suster, Fred Wilson, Tomasz Tunguz and Danielle Morrill have written blog posts on burn rates. These posts and others are linked to in the Notes to this blog post as is usual. This post will focus on the optimal burn rate after product/market fit has been proven by a business. In other words, the assumption in the discussion that follows is that the value hypothesis has been proven and […]

Continue Reading →

A Half Dozen Lessons About Writing and Getting a Book Published

“To write what is worth publishing, to find honest people to publish it, and get sensible people to read it, are the three great difficulties in being an author.” Charles Caleb Colton (1780 – 1832)  Write a book proposal first. I have now written and found a publisher for seven books. Most of them are listed on my Amazon author page. I have learned a fair amount during that process, which […]

Continue Reading →