“You are not alone.” Over the years I have received and given so much advice about how to build and run a company. Things about hiring, fundraising, leading, and growing. But of all the advice those four words always rang as the most important. “You are not alone.” It is…

Recently, there has been a lot of discussion around what types of company is venture capital helpful. A few years back, Bryce and his partners at OATV asked the same question. They came to a realization that there is an entire swath of companies that either isn’t right for traditional…

Everyone I know has some activity that when everything else is lost, they can find solace within. That when the world is burning around them, they can find respite within that activity and say, “I am fine.” That activity provides sanity, support and the freedom from all the difficulties that…

When people ask me what's special about Silicon Valley, I answer: “success begets success, and entrepreneurship perpetuates entrepreneurs.” For any startup ecosystem, there are three phases to its maturation: First Raise; Messy Middle; Repeatable Exits. First Raise Before I went to Amazon, I spent a lot of time flying around the US…

As you can see from the screenshot, this post is from a little while ago. I am updating it because things haven’t gotten better and in many ways, Dark UX has gotten worse. As product people, we can do better. It began simply enough. A post in my Facebook feed…

An on-going series taking a look at the Amazon Leadership Principles from a startup point of view. Start here to see others. The Amazon Leadership Principles are a set of 14 statements that drive the culture of innovation at Amazon. Each focuses on a different aspect of that culture and…

Back in September, I wrote a post titled, Want to Start a Company? Work at a Big One First with the intent of exploring the Amazon Leadership Principles from a startup’s perspective. What I realized soon after writing that post, that my customer was me, and so I obsessed over…

When someone asks me how they should go about deciding what to build, I always answer the same way: “Build something you wish always existed.” Over the years, I have spoken to thousands of startup founders across the country, been involved with Techstars and other accelerators, worked at a big…