November 1st, 2006 | 
I’ve been totally swamped for the last two weeks and blogging – both reading and writing – took a back seat to just about everything. If I were a better writer or a faster reader, this may not have had to be the case, but that’s another story.
In my hours-long effort to catch up on my reading today, I came across many excellent posts. Is it possible that bloggers are becoming smarter and more inciteful as they they continue to blog? Perhaps the group, as a whole, is learning how to better convert thoughts to text.
In any event, if you haven’t had a chance to read the following posts, I highly recommend that you do so. Very interesting reading.
- Will Price has an excellent post titled, How Pure is Your Model? His post discusses various product distribution and sales models and the hidden complexity in supporting several instead of focusing on one. As usually, Will’s post is well written and thought provoking.
- Jeff Bussgang has an educational post titled, The Banker, The Broker and The Candlestick Maker. Jeff’s post discusses when and whether entrepreneurs should hire investment bankers. Rather than generalizing, he outlines the value (or lack of value) that a banker can bring to the table in funding the company at the beginning and selling the company on the way out. Jeff’s post stirred up memories for me - both good and bad – from my many experiences with bankers. I’ll try to write about them in the near future.
- Guy Kawaski has a book review, The No Asshole Rule by Robert Sutton, that makes the book (The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t) sound like required reading for anyone developing a new enterprise. Guy’s review gives a great overview of the book. I can tell if a person’s an asshole at 100 paces. As Guy points out, if they’re an asshole away from work, they’re going to be at least as big an asshole on the job.
- Daniel Scocco has a great post titled, What do Google, Apple and Harley Davidson Have in Common? In the post, Daniel uses these companies as examples of ones that excel at creating great user experiences instead of just products. He shows how the loyalty that is given by customers in return is of far greater value than what can be achieved by simply focusing on product features. As a rider of a Victory motorcycle, I see this all the time. My bike is, arguably, better than a similar Harley (no flaming please), but very few Harley owners would ever jump over to ride a Victory, even if it were a better implementation of the same concept. I see Harley tattoos on men and woman all the time. I don’t think I’ve seen a Victory tattoo on anyone’s shoulder yet.
Hopefully, I’ll get some breathing room in the coming week to write some more myself.
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