Archive for February, 2010
Entrepreneurs Aren’t Born — They’re Made
Silicon Valley investors often have a picture in their heads of the type of person who is worthy of funding: young, brash, stubborn, and arrogant. They believe that successful entrepreneurs come from entrepreneurial families and that they start their entrepreneurial journey by selling lemonade while in grade school.
Angel investor and entrepreneur, Jason Calacanis said as much in his recent talk
to Penn State students. And after meeting Wharton students, VC Fred Wilson expressed shock when a professor told him that you could teach people to be entrepreneurs. Wilson wrote, “I’ve been working with entrepreneurs for almost 25 years now and it is ingrained in my mind that someone is either born an entrepreneur or is not.”
Jason, Fred, and Silicon Valley VCs, I’ve got news for you: you’ve got it all wrong. Entrepreneurs aren’t born, they’re made. And they aren’t anything like you think they are. My team surveyed 549 successful entrepreneurs. We found that the majority didn’t have entrepreneurial parents. They didn’t even have entrepreneurial aspirations while going to school. They simply got tired of working for others, had a great idea they wanted to commercialize, or woke up one day with an urgent desire to build wealth before they retired. So they took the big leap.
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See Also:
- Here’s What I Hate About The iPad
- Twitter Rolling Out New Web Site To Kill TweetDeck And Other Third-Party Clients
Quote Of The Day: This Song Is Not Always About You
The best and most thorough breakdown of the venue issue to be argued tomorrow in Jeff Skilling’s appeal* to the Supreme Court was authored by The New York Times Supreme Court reporter, Adam Liptak.
The piece, which explores the impact of the Internet age on the venue issue, is here.
In digging through the various high-profile venue cases, Liptak came across a gem of a quote from a 1976 opinion and relayed it as support for the judges and jury experts who say finding unbiased, or, as Liptak wrote, “indeed profoundly uninformed” jurors is not always as difficult as one might think.
NYT: “This may come as a surprise to lawyers and judges,” the full United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit wrote in an unsigned decision affirming the convictions of top aides of President Richard Nixon in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, “but is simply a fact of life that matters which interest them may be less fascinating to the public generally.”
Read Liptak’s full report here.
*Skilling’s lawyers will also be arguing that the so-called “honest services fraud” law is unconstitutionally vague. Our quick cheat sheet on Monday’s argument is here.
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See Also:
- Next Up For The Unstoppable Sri Srinivasan: Jeff Skilling Defense
- Houston, It’s Here! Supreme Court To Hear Skilling Case On Monday
- Skilling’s Honest Services Law Takes A Beating At Supreme Court
Actually, The US Is Massively Bailing Out California, And You Should Be Relieved About That
Last week we compared our situation in regards to states like California’s to the EU’s Greek situation, and grimly noted that the main difference seemed to be size: California is a much bigger deal to the US than Greece is to the EU.
Other than that, there didn’t seem to be much of a difference: Both systems have a common currency, while states are forced to manage their own budgets.
However, this was not exactly correct, and it’s worth clarifying.
We do actually have a automatic mechanisms for bailing out the states. As George Soros noted today in a CNN interview, we do have various transfer/welfare mechanisms that are funded in part by the federal government. Unemployment benefits, for example, are coordinated at the state level, though the Federal Government replenishes these funds with loans. Federal health programs serve a similar effect. These aren’t considered “bailouts” per se, but that’s exactly what they are.
Granted, California is nowhere near “bailed out,” but without these various mechanisms, the situation wou ild obviously be much worse, and a Greek-style crisis here would be much more acute. (It could happen anyway here, we don’t know, but the point is for now we do have some curbs and limits that take some of the edge off).
Now of course, some will react that we should “let ‘em fail,” which is fine so far as it goes, though holders of that view should be aware that big, liberal states like California and New York have long ben net payers to the Federal Government, while more conservative “red states” have been net recipients in the tax system. This is not good or bad, it’s just what it is, and it out to be considered.
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See Also:
- Is The US About To Adopt A "Maastricht Treaty" To Restrict States’ Rights And Their Ability To Run Deficits?
- Jamie Dimon: We Don’t See The EU Falling Apart, It’s California You Need To Worry About
- Krugman: California Is In A Death Spiral And Illustrates Perfectly Why We Need To Keep Talking About Healthcare
CHARTS OF THE WEEK: Banks Continue To Pull The Rug Out From Under The Economy
Click to see a slideshow of our charts from the week →
Or select individually:
- Banks Continue To Pull The Rug Out From Under The Economy
- Bankers Getting Paid A Lot To Sit On Their Hands And Do Jack Squat
- History Shows Why Another Sovereign Debt Crisis Is Right Around The Corner
- The Unemployment Chart You’ll Love And Hate
- Yep, The Great Money Bubble Has Come To Its End
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Why Is The Business Model Of Buying Digital Content Failing?
Matt Mason, Author, The Pirate’s Dilemma
Digital Content Distribution (6 min)
- Varying price points in the eBook industry
- Digital rights management on the iPad
- How can the publishing industry avoid mistakes made by the music industry?
- What can the consumer do in the midst of all this piracy?
Produced By: Kamelia Angelova & William Wei
See More:
– Companies Should Take Cue From Piracy, If They Want To Be Competitive
– Foursquare CEO: “Check-In” Functionality Will Be A Commodity
– Forcing Google Buzz Into Gmail Was A Mistake
More Video: Click HERE >
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See Also:
- The Case For Movie Piracy
- iPhone App Piracy Has Not ‘Cost’ Apple And Developers Anything Like $450 Million
- Med Student Pays Steep Price For Piracy