May 2013
3 posts
Blake Masters: Leap forward →
blakemasters:
In 1811, when Cornelius Vanderbilt was 17, he borrowed $100 from his mom to buy a small sailboat. He figured he could make some money by ferrying goods and people around New York Harbor. He was right. When the War of 1812 broke out, Vanderbilt’s competition nearly vanished (presumably, few…
None necessary
“ADHD is a fictitious disease”
– Remember, there are two ways drug companies can make money:
Invent new drugs
Invent new diseases already invented drugs can treat
In the past decade or so, Big Pharma has created less than 10 new novel drugs per year.
As an example of Big Pharma inventing diseases is “short, normal” children....
3 tags
Captain Obvious says "Logistics is the Killer App"
In the battle for Nigeria’s e-commerce, the latest weapon seems to be the eponymous packaged webshop. Like I suggested a year ago, the real GNBO would be helping Nigeria’s small businesses sell their goods online. The ecosystem seems to have risen to the challenge.
If you throw a rock today, you’re going to hit someone or something that’s working on a “platform...
April 2013
6 posts
4 tags
Going Into Debt Will Help Apple Avoid Taxes →
The statutory corporate income tax rate is quite high—35 percent—so it turns out to be cheaper to borrow the money and pay interest than to repatriate cash and pay taxes.
7 tags
[UPDATE] How Much Money was Made from the Hack of...
UPDATE: When I said you could make a few million from this maneouver, I might have been understating things a bit…
A false Tweet wiped out $136 BILLION from the S&P today in about two minutes: buswk.co/17greFb
— Bill Gross (@Bill_Gross) April 23, 2013
So if you’re a bit of a conspiracy theorist, you’d have a bit of a smile at the aftermath of the hack of AP’s...
Just me. Jason Njoku.: Value is in the eye of the... →
jasonnjoku:
My boy Bastian bought a car. It cost N8Mn ($47k). He found it via a brief search on Cheki, the most awesome car marketplace in Nigeria. But Cheki didn’t directly benefit from what, to most people, is a massive, massive purchase. That is after buying your own house. Easily the most…
Marketplaces aren’t for the faint-hearted.
The Power Law in Education
eaboyeji:
This will sound crazy to you right now but here is the deal :
In the next 10 years, the top 10% of teachers in the world will teach in 90% of the world’s Universities.
Read More
Just me. Jason Njoku.: Victory has defeated me. →
jasonnjoku:
Peace has cost you your strength. Victory has defeated you
The intensity of my work ethnic used to scare my then girlfriend and now wife. She would fall asleep and wake up and I was always, always at my laptop, worried about something. Terrified that someone else would happen on this…
March 2013
4 posts
“Be Bold And Mighty Forces Will Come To Your Aid”
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (via jasonnjoku)
Amen to that
February 2013
19 posts
3 tags
“Here’s the rub - I think Facebook has always understood that different...”
– http://www.hunterwalk.com/2012/12/trying-to-be-one-true-social-graph-is.html
“Failure is only romantic when you’ve made it.”
myexpertopinion asked: i loved your post on man of steel, do you think it will be done well?
10 tags
“If I were Amazon I’d be selling the hardware, not the content.”
– Shaun Rein, the managing director of China Market Research Group, speaking to Bloomberg.
It’s interesting just how poorly Amazon is doing in China. This can be seen two ways: either they’re being out-Amazon’d there by Alibaba and will never be able to crack the country (just as eBay couldn’t). Or...
Just me. Jason Njoku.: Real African Success - 20k... →
jasonnjoku:
Bastian and I were lost in Accra a few weeks back as I aimlessly attempted to drive / find my way to the MEST incubator in Accra. One wrong turn after another we serendipitously stumbled across the awesome folk at Rancard Solutions. We descended unannounced for a impromptu visit. Rancard are…
HUGE fan of Rancard. Love their business model and everything.
John's Tumblr: Mobile, mobile, mobile. →
parislemon:
lilly:
Look at that. Mobile hugely up, and personal computer usage for Facebook is actually down.
Take heed, and ignore this trend at your peril. Mobile isn’t the future anymore. It’s the present.
Right.
And I’ll just add that while there’s recently been quite a bit of talk about going back to “web first”, Facebook’s numbers are especially important here. Yes, a lot of early...
"And had it set on fire." →
parislemon:
One more link to Michal Lev-Ram’s story on Samsung for Fortune to highlight this tidbit:
In the late 1960s Samsung officially entered the electronics business. In the early years the company was known for cheap televisions and air conditioners. That all changed in 1995, when its chairman (and the elder Lee’s son), Kun-Hee Lee, paid a momentous visit to the company’s plant in Gumi,...
TarenSK: Why Aaron died →
tarensk:
Last week, I awoke to find Aaron with me. He was sitting next to my bed, grinning his cheekiest grin, holding my hand.
For a few minutes, I savored a sweet uncertainty: Were the last few weeks all a nightmare, and Aaron was still with me? Or was I awaking inside a dream state, and in the real…
And finally, from someone who should know… his girlfriend.
January 2013
3 posts
A Verizon/Android Siri Deal That Wasn't →
parislemon:
Bianca Bosker of The Huffington Post dives deep into the history of Siri:
“The way that Steve described it, speech recognition — and how to use it to create a speech interface for something like the iPhone — was an area of interest to him and Scott Forstall [then head of Apple’s mobile software] for some time,” recalls Kittlaus. “The story that I’m told is that he thought we’d...
THE REASON WHY 21/12/12 DIDN'T HAPPEN
kamwah-mcr:
The Fringe team reset the timeline. That’s why nothing happened to us..
6 tags
Clubs are the New National Teams
Football is increasingly becoming more about clubs and less about national pride. Club football, especially in Europe, evokes feelings that are far stronger than those brought about by nation and pride.
Arsenal, Chelsea, United, Barcelona and Madrid are the new powers in football. It used to be that you could not win the Ballon D’or without winning the World Cup. Tell that to Messi.
...
October 2012
4 posts
8 tags
What I Learnt from Hipstamatic & foursquare over...
Last week, Fast Company released a 3-part series on the “fall” of Hipstamatic (Instagram older, but less popular, sibling) called “No Filter” (part 1, part 2 and part 3). It makes for a gripping read.
Reading how they started flailing and going in a thousand product directions at once in response to Instagram’s acquisition seemed eerily familiar. I asked some of the smarter people I know what...
July 2012
1 post
4 tags
June 2012
2 posts
4 tags
SOTD: "Slip Out the Back" by Fort Minor
Depressing hip-hop/rock fusion with a brilliant cadence in the background. Some of Mike Shinoda’s best work. He has a way of making depression seem happy.
Another Fort Minor album would be great.
Slip out the back before they know you were there And at the worst you’ll see nobody cares Cos you don’t wanna be around when it all goes down Even heroes know when to be scared
...
1 tag
Catharsis, perhaps.
I feel so strange. Here we are again. It’s like the days after daddy died. The same people streaming in to say “sorry”. We wandering around the house. Me buying extra diesel so the generator would stay on longer. Just seems so surreal. I wonder if they’re thinking, “What’s wrong with these people? Why are we always coming to comfort them? Why can’t they...
May 2012
6 posts
1 tag
Startups, life, learning and happiness: What... →
Great post from Joel.
joelgascoigne:
Whilst researching for the Achieving overnight success: Kevin Systrom piece I published two weeks ago, I was excited to see that one of Systrom’s earliest recollections of something that impacted his journey with startups was that he played Doom II a lot:
“That was how I got into it…
tumblrbot asked: WHAT MAKES YOU FEEL BETTER WHEN YOU ARE IN A BAD MOOD?
3 tags
1 tag
The RiseTwitterview with Seyi Taylor
Information Arbitrage: Entrepreneurship and... →
I’ve been hearing and reading about this quite a bit for now. Interesting thoughts.
informationarbitrage:
Laser focus vs. keeping options open. This is an eternal struggle faced by start-up founders and corporate CEOs alike. While focus brings both purpose and increased odds of meeting a particular goal, leaders are plagued by the fear of “What if the goal I’ve achieved is the wrong...
April 2012
8 posts
5 tags
Blake Masters: Peter Thiel’s CS183: Startup -... →
blakemasters:
Here is an essay version of class notes from Class 7 of CS183: Startup. Errors and omissions are mine.
Roelof Botha, partner at Sequoia Capital and former CFO of PayPal, and Paul Graham, partner and co-founder of Y Combinator,joined this class as guest speakers. Credit for good stuff goes…
