I am 47 years old and I am in the best shape of my life. I recently dropped about 35 pounds and about 5 inches off my waist. I have more muscle definition and less body fat than I have had since college. My cholesterol is through the floor. I have more energy than I […]
Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer Read More »
The basic thrust of pitching your business to investors — or to co-founders, or indeed, to yourself — is to portray confidence about what you are going to do with the investor’s money. Investors invest in people. They seek strong, capable navigators of their financial future. You must demonstrate the skill and will to succeed,
Notes on Pitching Investors Read More »
The Florida Bar Standing Committee on Advertising recently released its Guidelines for Networking Sites, which are meant to give Florida lawyers some guidance as to how the Bar Rules apply to social media sites like Facebook, Linkedin, Google+, and Twitter. Communications from a Florida lawyer that promote the lawyer’s legal services are regulated by the
Lawyers Using Social Media Read More »
Remarks delivered at the TechVenture conference. December 6, 2011. Hard Rock Cafe, Universal Studios, Orlando. [The audio is here: techventure2011] On December 17, 2010, Mohammad Bouazizi, a 26 year-old street vendor in Tunisia, was harassed, beaten, and humiliated by police for selling vegetables in the street without a permit, which is a euphemistic way of
TechVenture… human adventure. Read More »
Is this seat saved? So I’m sitting in a movie theater and this guy comes up to me and says, “Excuse me, is this seat saved?” And I say, “Well if Thomas Aquinas reasoned that even animals have no souls… how can an inanimate object like a chair expect to attain eternal salvation!?” And he
Playful Detachment Read More »
An executive summary is often the first document potential investors see about your company. Think of it as a 1-3 page advertisement for your company to investors. Its purpose is to cause the investor to want to learn more about the opportunity. It should contain no trade secrets or confidential information. Here’s what I look
Elements of an Executive Summary for Startups Read More »
A dear friend turned me on to this mind-bending post about why we’re all just AI’s running around a virtual world, a Matrix, if you will. Brains in a vat. I alluded to this possibility in my remarks delivered to open the Internet Technology Summit last June. The basic argument goes: if we can create
Remarks delivered in Pecha Kucha style (20 seconds per slide) at the Orlando B.I.G. Summit, 18 Nov 2010. Blasting through the sky at 30 thousand feet in a pressurized metal tube… is a lot like life. And it’s also a lot like business, depending on your willingness to overtax a metaphor. What lessons for life
Put On Your Own Oxygen Mask Before Helping Those Around You Read More »
My friend Michael Trout says: Fourteen million business plans are submitted each year in the U.S. (according to Google Aardvark) and only 2000-3000 (according to Adeo of TheFunded.com) are deemed successful! So, if you are submitting a business plan then you have a 0.0214% of getting funding each year! From a systemic perspective, most startups
A lot of people come to me with the question, “I’ve got a great business/product/service idea. What do I do next?” If you find yourself asking this question, my advice is to become a full-time entrepreneur and start a company to make and sell your product or service. In my experience, that is the best
A 12-Step Program for Quitting Your Day Job Read More »
