Josh Maher's Blog » Archive
John Malone
Tweet If you haven’t read up on John Malone, you should read John covers running companies, mergers & acquisitions, private equity, venture capital, the list goes on and on. It is an hour and a half with a very experienced company operator and capital allocator. Regardless of what you are doing with your life – if you have an interest in business this is a great video to watch. … Read entire article »
Filed under: Economics, Entrepreneurship, Investing, Startups, stocks
Letters to my kids – confidence
Tweet Sixth in the series letters to my kids… Hey kids, I hope you are thoughtfully reading these emails, I do spend time thinking about how you could benefit from thoughtfully reading the content before deciding to send it to you. I think about the things I wish I knew more about or had someone talk to me about earlier in life… now that I know more about what matters in navigating the world we live in and only send things that I think are useful. Confidence is one of those difficult topics. Sure some people don’t need to practice having confidence, just like some people don’t have to practice that hard at reading. As with anything though – practice is what levels the playing field. Only with practice can any skill rise to … Read entire article »
Filed under: career
5 Investing Lessons from Mark Suster
Tweet On this quest to learn how the great VCs invest, I came across this video interview from January 2011 with Mark Suster and Mark Jeffrey (yes I’m jealous of Mark’s book series). The interview is titled – Going to Raise VC? Here’s a Primer on Process, People & PowerPoint Deck. I thought… meh – probably not a lot of investing lessons there, more operational stuff for entrepreneurs getting ready to walk into the doors of VCs. I saved the link back before I wrote the first installment of the series and tried to watch it three or four times since then. I finally had the opportunity to watch the video (it had nothing to do with the flight to Greece). I was impressed that there were some nuggets in there worth … Read entire article »
Filed under: Entrepreneurship, Investing, Startups
Rules for startup ideas
Tweet Here are 10 interesting rules that the Founders Institute lives by. I would qualify that these are great for internet based startups, but as you start to move away from that a lot of these ideas don’t apply as uniformly. Even the occasional internet startup won’t follow these rules strictly and still be a great business model. The ones that are my favorites though are the last two. I have heard so many ideas where the founder has not tried to kill or not shared broadly enough and as a result has gotten further along in building the business than they likely should. 10 Rules to a Great Startup Idea infographic … Read entire article »
Filed under: Entrepreneurship
The #1 Investing Lesson From Seth Levine
Tweet Seth recently wrote a blog post about the all the parties and events he is seeing in the startup industry, he rants and raves about the bullshit of the new tech bubble. It got me thinking though, what Seth was saying to all entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and investors is that the #1 thing to look at… the first bar that all investments should be able to hurdle is… Invest in great companies Now Seth doesn’t really qualify what a great company is or anything and only mentions the fact that investors are there to support people who are actually building great companies. This is different than the view that he indicates is becoming more common… that investors are just as hip as founders. Of course his evidence that investors think they are … Read entire article »
Filed under: Entrepreneurship, Investing, Startups
Letters to my kids – future
Tweet Fifth in the series letters to my kids… Hey guys, Zillow is a great example of a local startup that is doing well. This interview though has one phrase that goes well beyond building a great startup and has more to do with evaluating your future. The statement was directed at the students at Seattle University and I wish someone had given me this advice when I was younger. Instead I hear from my teachers “hey your pretty good at computers, you know you can make a lot of money in computers”… at the time the only thing I was interested in was business law but no one said “hey your pretty good at business law, you know you can make a lot of money as a lawyer”. Looking back, I think … Read entire article »
Filed under: career
5 Investing Lessons from Chris Dixon
Tweet Adding another one to the Investing Lessons from Venture Capitalist series. This time I am looking at Chris Dixon. Chris is a brilliant and interesting character, he shares pretty broadly on his blog and twitter account. He doesn’t usually get into too much depth on what he looks for in investments in general, but with enough patience there were loads of good places to find the lessons he has to share on investing. If it looks like a duck and acts like a duck You still better make sure it is a duck. As we found with the financial crisis of 2008 and as Chris mentions is a problem for a lot of Venture Capitalists, investing in something because it matches a derivative pattern that seems as though it has been successful does not … Read entire article »
Filed under: Entrepreneurship, Investing, Startups, stocks, Technology
Letters to my kids – arbitrage
Tweet Third in the series letters to my kids… Hey kids, I saw this article and couldn’t help but to pass it along. After reading it, I immediately thought of Macklemore’s Thrift Shop being all the rage – here is a woman who is literally taking the ideas in Thrift Shop and turning them into Rich Shop! This woman is taking her unique knowledge – what are the brands/styles that people will pay for – and monetizing that knowledge with the discrepancy between her local thrift shop marketplace and the national marketplace. This is what is called arbitrage – where she is simply making the profits (nearly guaranteed) from buying at a normal price in one market and selling at a normal price in another market. These don’t crop up all the time, … Read entire article »
Filed under: career
