An excellent article by Maya on her Blog – “Money is on my mind a lot these days. It is the first time in years that I am not bringing a pay check home. We are paying our bills, thanks to my husband having a job, but I never imagined I’d ever go this long without contributing to the family income (or cash-flow) …” Read more here – Are you rich but unhappy? Or poor and happy Or something else?
“Do what you love.”
We’ve all heard this advice before. It’s great advice, though not many people truly take it to heart.
But sometimes doing what you love isn’t enough to keep you going. Inspiration, passion, and motivation are difficult things to hold on to. They always seem to slip away right when you need them most.
You know that feeling. Where you’re that close to finishing a project, or achieving a goal, or crossing a task off your to-do list … but you just can’t muster the energy. You’ve lost interest. You’re exhausted. Drained. And you don’t know why.
That’s burnout. It’s something many of us are all too familiar with. I’d like to share with you a few ways that I fight burnout – or prevent it from catching me in the first place.
1. Achieve in increments. When you only focus on a big goal someday, it’s easy to get burned out by the daily grind. It’s like driving toward a mountain in the distance. You can drive for hours, but the mountain doesn’t seem to get any closer. And spinning your wheels gets real tiring real fast.
The solution is to give yourself a way to measure and record every little step forward you take. Here’s how:
Learn to appreciate the little accomplishments. Let yourself enjoy the feeling of getting things done.
2. Train your muse. One of the biggest myths about inspiration that it’s random. One day you’re inspired and motivated, the next day you’re burned out – and there’s no way around it. Or so they say.
In fact, inspiration is just like any other skill. It may start out as unreliable, but it can be trained and developed into something you can rely on.
So how do you train your muse? The best way I’ve found is immersion. Surround yourself with things that inspire you and reflect your goals. Great composers listen to music. Great authors read voraciously. Great marketers attend seminars. Great productivity-ists subscribe to Zen Habits. And so on. Immersion trains your mind to work efficiently in the ways you need it to.
The more that your inspiration becomes a part of your life, the less likely it is to run out when you need it most. With that in mind, be creative. What ways can you connect with your inspiration on a daily basis?
3. Work less. Cut down on the amount of energy and time you spend working. If you have sick days or vacation days left, take advantage of them. Or, if you’re self-employed, force yourself to work fewer hours each day – even if that means turning down new projects.
Working less doesn’t mean you have to slack off or get less done. It does mean that you:
4. Define success realistically. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with having big dreams and big ambitions. But if you’re constantly frustrated by a lack of progress, it might be time to take a step back and examine your goals. Are they achievable? Are you holding yourself to a reasonable timeline?
Here’s a good way to do this. Get a piece of paper and write down your big, ambitious goal. Then write down at least 10 specific, concrete steps that will allow you to achieve that goal. Be as detailed as possible. If you can’t come up with a series of down-to-earth steps to get you from here to your dream, that’s a sign that you need to either redefine your goals or rethink the way you’re pursuing those goals.
5. Get more sleep. You’ve heard this before, I know. So have I. But that didn’t stop me from going against my better judgment and tiring myself out by staying up late to work. Getting enough sleep takes a conscious decision – and, just like any good habit, takes time to develop.
One of the biggest barriers for me in this area is procrastination. I have a tendency to put things off throughout the day, then stay up later as a result. What’s keeping you from getting the rest you need?
6. Take it slow(er). The world tells us to rush things: “Get there faster. Make money quicker. Retire sooner.” And while these things aren’t necessarily bad, they can easily get us in over our heads. If you’re feeling burned out and overwhelmed, it’s time to slow down.
A few ways to take yourself out of 24/7 high gear:
7. Get a second opinion. It’s hard to spot burnout from the inside. Your close friends and family are likely to identify the signs of burnout long before you do. So listen to what they’re saying. The next time your spouse, parent, or best friend tells you you’re working too hard, take it seriously.
8. Set clear boundaries. Burnout happens when we allow work to overflow its boundaries and interfere with every other part of our lives. So set strong boundaries. The clearer the better. In writing, if possible.
For example, instead of saying: “I’ll spend at three hours every night with my family,” make it clearer: “I won’t work after 8 o’clock. That’s 100% family time.” Clear boundaries are easier to stick to and harder to rationalize away.
Once you’ve set up your boundaries, make them public. Let your family know that you’ve set aside time just for them. They’ll hold you accountable to your promises. Let your clients know that you’ll be unavailable during certain hours. This will reduce the temptation to fudge on your boundaries.
9. When you’re working, focus. I’ve found that concentrating on work is actually less exhausting than allowing yourself to be wishy-washy about it. When you decide that it’s time to work, buckle down, eliminate distractions, and do it wholeheartedly. There’s something amazingly refreshing about pure, sharp focus.
10. Create outlets. If you’re a person of diverse interests (and really, who isn’t?), it’s likely that you have several very different goals and ideas bouncing around in your head at any given time. These ideas need outlets. If you hold them inside, they’ll eventually start interfering with your focus and creating unnecessary frustration, leading to burnout.
In other words, I think it’s okay – healthy, even – to start a few side projects as outlets for creative energy. Just make sure that you keep your priorities straight and your side projects fun. If these side projects become sources of stress, cut them out immediately.
11. Know when to power through it. This is going to sound out of place given what I’ve said above, but it’s powerful – if applied correctly. Sometimes the solution for burnout is just to power through it. Sometimes burnout can be an illusion. In these cases, the best choice is to refuse to use burnout as an excuse, ignore the fact that you feel burned out, and just work through it. It’s like a runner gaining her second wind and coming out stronger on the other side.
However, just as an experienced athlete knows when to push through the pain and when to pull back, you’ll need to be very careful how you take this particular piece of advice. Until you develop a keen awareness of your own tendencies, it’s usually better to err on the side of caution and pull back when you start feeling burned out.
12. Never accept defeat. Burnout is an obstacle like any other. It can hold you back for a while, but it’s not the end of the world – unless you let it defeat you.
If you have a great goal in mind, don’t give up on it, no matter how apathetic, exhausted, or frustrated you might feel. If everything I’ve said up until this point fails, do this: hold on to your dream – even if it doesn’t feel like much of a dream at the moment. Hold on to it anyway. That way, when the storm clears, your dream will still be intact, ready for another try.
Get more inspiration from Jeffrey at his blog, The Art of Great Things
The "perfect" date was a long time coming. After spending months online getting to know Josh, Annie decided he was her type and she was ready to meet him.
But Annie, not her real name, found that happiness could turn into heartbreak almost as quick as the click of a mouse.
She became increasingly anxious after plans to meet Josh were set, but when the day came and the date got underway, her nervousness melted away. The date was, in Annie’s words, "quite perfect."
The second date was less so. Instead of picking up where the first date left off, Josh took a bold step forward and discussed sexual fantasies. At Annie’s urging, conversation eventually returned to topics she felt were more fitting for a second date. Feeling the last half of that date was again "quite perfect," Annie was pretty confident when the two parted ways and said, "see you soon."
But Josh must have been on a different page. Not long after that second date, Josh called Annie, told her he’d met someone else around the same time and "decided to go with that instead." They never saw each other again.
This isn’t the only time Annie, 26, would spend months online with one man, only to be rejected shortly after meeting them in person.
"You start to wonder," Annie says. "Maybe I’m not worth it. Maybe I’m not good enough."
Annie is one of millions of people who have relocated their search for love — or lust — from the streets to the Internet. Her profile was on eHarmony, a site that boasts 20 million registered users from more than 200 countries.
Twenty million profiles is a lot of choice — and a lot of opportunities to get burned.
No one, save maybe for the masochists among us, likes rejection. Rejection hurts. And as Internet dating has become destigmatized over the past several years, millions of people have started casting nets into the massive, virtual online sea. Sure, these dating waters can offer a new world of opportunities for someone’s romantic life. But they can also open the door to new ways of being rejected.
An increasing number of clients who visit Montreal-based psychotherapist Cerise Morris come to her with stories of their online dating escapades.
She has heard countless tales of pain and suffering, and of joy and laughter. Morris says if you get attached too quickly, she said, you could be setting yourself up to be hurt.
In Annie’s mind, the man she is chatting with and sending messages to is part of her life.
"For me, I’ll only meet someone I’m genuinely interested in," she says. "So when I’m communicating with someone and we’re messaging, and we’ve been doing that for a few months, I’m really trying to get to know the person."
This approach to online dating — where you feel as though you’re getting to know someone and they’ve become a part of your life — is one that’s likely to land your ego in the dumps, Morris warns. When two people get in touch online, neither should feel as though they’re in a relationship or that they’re getting to know the other person, she says.
"There’s something ephemeral about communicating that way, without being face-to-face," Morris says, explaining that an Internet-based relationship can often be fleeting and illusory.
"Somewhere in that cyber world, people are more free to try and say things they wouldn’t otherwise," she says. "Who you are online can be very different than who you are in real life."
Tricia Smith, 35, has been dating online for several years. She says she doesn’t have a single tale of rejection from her years on Lavalife or Plenty of Fish.
Sure, she has had surprises, but she takes it all in stride, she said. She’s able to do this, she said, because she approaches online dating with "realistic frame of mind," and doesn’t hold any expectations for people she doesn’t know.
When Smith is contacted through her online profile, she never spends much time sending messages back and forth with a man.
"You don’t get to know anything about a person that way," she said. "We’ve all got egos and vanity. Everybody will look as good as they can, sound as smart and witty as possible and, basically, put their best foot forward."
With this in mind, Smith said she prefers to meet up in a face-to-face date as quickly as possible. Then she will decide if she likes him.
"There’s no point in spending so much time with messages and chats," she said. "You need to realize that guy who looks like he’s gorgeous and has an amazing body… that photo can be five years old," she says. "He might have a massive spare tire and lost all his hair in the meantime."
And the fallacies can go beyond physical appearances, Smith said.
"It happens a lot of the time, where people come off amazing in e-mails and instant messages, but then their personality totally falls flat when you get to them in person," she said.
"When you read something they write, you might think it’s a sarcastic joke because that’s how your mind works. But really, that person was serious, they’re a bigot, and you actually find them quite offensive."
Smith’s realistic approach to online dating is echoed in the guidance and advice Morris often gives her clients.
"Meeting someone in the flesh is so important," Morris said. "In person, there are so many cues we pick up. When the Internet is standing between two people, neither has the opportunity to pick up on body language or pheromones or anything."
- – -
Steps to Online Dating Success
Here are some points to keep in mind while travelling through the online dating circuit:
- If you find someone’s profile interesting, send them an e-mail. If you don’t get an answer, you can send them another within a few days. If they still don’t get back to you, let it go and move on to the next person.
- Casually chatting with a few people online at the same time isn’t taboo. If you prefer chatting with one person at a time, consider mentioning it to the person you’re communicating with.
- It is considered taboo to leave your profile active once you’ve started dating someone. When things start to look serious, remove your profile.
- Don’t plan three dates before you’ve even had one. Try not to make any commitments before actually meeting a person. If it turns out the person’s not exactly your cup of tea, you can end up hurting them when you break the plans.
- The adage "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" stands in the online world. Even though you’re communicating through tubes and satellites, you’re still communicating with real people who have real feelings.
- Don’t forget there are dishonest people online. Sometimes married people pose as singles; people can lie about their sex, sexual orientation, age, weight and height … for a couple of examples.
- Also, don’t forget if you lie, you’ll probably get caught. Your date will likely notice the six-inch difference in height and 30 pounds in weight.
- Beware of online predators who join dating sites to leach personal information.
- Most sites have a membership fee that’s required to gain full access to the site. Some offer free trial periods, but begin charging without notice once the trial period ends.
- Check the ratio of men to women on different sites you’re considering joining. Sometimes the gender ratio can be pretty off-balance.
- Some sites have been rumoured to have "bait profiles." These are fake profiles set up to lure users into using a particular service.
© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen
Dave Troy here with Kris Appel, our guest blogger for today. Kris is the founder of Encore Path, a medical technology start-up in Baltimore.
As a first-time entrepreneur, raising the money to launch launch a medical device was a significant undertaking.
I am not only a first-time entrepreneur, but I chose to start a company in an unfamiliar field. I have a background in linguistics, but my company develops medical technology for stroke rehabilitation.
So I started this endeavor with two strikes against me. This month, I will close my Series A round, and my first product was launched this summer, a rehabilitation device that improves arm function in survivors of stroke and other brain injury. Here is how I was able to attract investment:
• Humility — Everyone knows something I don’t. Why wouldn’t I want to learn from them? I am thankful that people care enough about me to offer their advice and give me their time. I’m sure they have other things to do, but they’ve chosen to spend this part of their day with me, and I’m going to listen to what they have to say.
• Be nice to everyone, all the time — I’ve met people everywhere who might turn out to be investors or important advisors. You never know when someone is going to help you, it could be weeks or even YEARS away, but you want them to remember you fondly, and to want to help you succeed.
• Meet with everyone who asks — Especially early on, I met with everyone who requested a meeting with me. And I didn’t mind asking each person for something — a referral, a market report, scientific data I couldn’t afford to buy, business advice. Some of those casual meetings turned into major investments later.
• Enter business plan competitions — I entered, and won, a few business plan competitions. In addition to winning cash for my business, I made a lot of contacts, got some very positive press, and got a TON of free advice about my business plan.
• Let people get to know you — All of my investors were strangers to me when I started this company. But I sought them out in the beginning as advisors, and spent time with them over months and years, talking about progress I’ve made and where I’m headed. It helped to build trust and credibility, and they eventually invested.
• Be patient — Every single aspect of this business has taken a lot longer than I thought it would. But so far everything has happened exactly as expected, just at a different time.
• Surround yourself with supportive people — This is the hardest thing I’ve ever tried to do. I needed all the courage I could muster, and support from friends and family. I dropped friends who couldn’t support me, and found new ones who understood. It made a difference.
• Keep your business plan current — This seems obvious but it’s harder than you think. Almost every month STILL I take time to update my business plan. You never know when you’ll need to email it to someone, or enter it into a business plan competition, or use parts of it for a grant or loan application.
Written on 10/02/2009 by Ali Hale. Ali is a professional writer and blogger, and a part-time postgraduate student of creative writing. If you need a hand with any sort of written project, drop her a line (ali@aliventures.com) or check out her website at Aliventures.
Even the introverts amongst us – myself included! – are social beings. It’s natural for us to pay attention to what other people might be thinking. The problem is, worrying about what other people think can lead us to take on too many commitments, deny our true goals and passions, settle for a life of “people-pleasing”.
On the other hand, paying no heed at all to how others might be thinking of us can lead to professional and personal relationships turning sour.
Here are some steps that’ll help you find a healthy balance.
Worrying rarely gets you anywhere in life. Don’t spend time feeling unhappy or anxious about how others might be thinking of you. Try not to let your emotions cloud the issue here, and don’t spend time trying to “mind-read” other people.
You’re often your own worst critic – and frankly, most people have far too much on your minds to care whether you’re slightly over/under-dressed for a situation, for instance.
Stop caring what random strangers think of you. If you like to sing as you walk round your local park, and someone passing gives you a weird look – it really doesn’t matter. Their opinion isn’t going to affect you in any way.
The same goes for all sorts of situations. For example, a problem that many overweight people have when they’re trying to get in shape is that they’d like to go to the gym or to an exercise class, but they’re worried what people will think of them. Ask yourself “can what they think hurt me?” or “does their opinion matter?” until you feel confident enough to go ahead with what you want.
If you get a negative reaction from a key figure in your life, like your boss, then pay attention. If your boss is fanatical about keeping a tidy desk and you couldn’t care less, it’s worth adjusting your behaviour – especially if your boss scowls every time s/he sees your desk.
Don’t make assumptions about what other people are thinking, though: make sure you really do have evidence. In the absence of any real evidence, try assuming the best! For example, if someone sends you a rather curt email, assume that they were just in a hurry – don’t start worrying over whether they dislike you.
Perhaps you have very different goals to your family and friends. Perhaps you’re keen to get a great grade in school, but your friends think you should just join them in partying and having a laugh. It doesn’t really matter what they think: your goals should be more important than their opinion.
The same goes for all sorts of situations. Maybe you’ve ended up in a career you hate because it’s what your parents wanted you to do. Your goals should never be dictated by other people.
(If you don’t have any explicit goals, that might be why you’re prone to worrying about what other people think – because you don’t have your own plan for your life. You might want to read 11 Useful Tips on Setting Goals and Achieving Them.)
If other people scoff at your values, ignore them. Perhaps you’d like to read more about personal development and self-improvement, but you’re worried your friends would just laugh at you if they found out. Maybe you’re keen to do your best at work even when the boss is away – but everyone else thinks you’re an idiot for not joining them in slacking off.
Whatever the situation, make sure you’re holding tight to your values, rather than being swept along by other people’s. Many people will actually be impressed (even if they don’t say so) – because you’ve had the conviction to stick to what you believe is important.
Life isn’t like high school: it doesn’t matter if you’re not popular. You can’t please everyone anyway – so don’t even try. Say “no” to commitments that you don’t want to take on. Be willing to do something that goes against the crowd, if it’s what you truly believe in.
Of course, there are a few people in life who you might want to be popular with – your spouse, your kids, and your boss, for example. But in general, most people’s opinions and thoughts about you are unlikely to have any real effect. Plus, if you behave as “yourself” and people don’t like you – would you really want them to be your friends anyway?
Do you find yourself worrying about what other people think? How do you work past these worries? Are there times when it is appropriate to pay attention to how other people think about you?
I have never been a great fan of reading books, at least those without any pictures…large pictures….maybe I should accept that I cant read anything except comic books!
I recently made a habit of reading books or at least buying them regularly. I used to have a lot of them by my ex-gf took most of them from me, when we moved away from each other…let me rephrase that, she took every single book I had, I bought and come to treasure them.
Enough of Ramayan… this is what I am planning to read this weekend – Robin Sharma’s The Greatness Guide 2
Every time I read one of his books, it really inspires me and I swear to god I need some inspiration right now.
Have a good weekend!
From http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/10216/Burning-Cash-Is-For-Toasting-Marshmallows-cartoon.aspx
I’m going to go on a bit of a rant here.
I’m miffed that the industry term for the process whereby startups invest in building their businesses is called “burning cash”. If your startup is burning cash (as shown in the cartoon above), you’re doing it wrong. You should’t be burning money, you should be investing money — with the goal of growing your business.
I find it interesting that when venture capitalists (VCs) take money from their limited partners (LPs), they don’t say: Hey, we’re going to take your money and go burn it on a bunch of different startups. Why? Because that’s not what they do (not the good ones anyways). What they do is invest the cash in the hopes of generating a good return.
So, I’m going to ask that all startups that have raised funding to no longer use the term “burn rate”. Instead, lets call it what it is (or should be): An investment rate. As in "our startup has an investment rate of about $400k/month".
Oh, and if you really are burning cash, please start using smaller bills.
Guy Kawasaki is a venture capitalist. He listens to hundreds of people trying to pitch potential products to him. In this article Guy evangelises a technique to keep all presentations to less than 10 slides and no more than 20 minutes and a font size of at least 30.
I suffer from something called Ménière’s disease—don’t worry, you cannot get it from reading my blog. The symptoms of Ménière’s include hearing loss, tinnitus (a constant ringing sound), and vertigo. There are many medical theories about its cause: too much salt, caffeine, or alcohol in one’s diet, too much stress, and allergies. Thus, I’ve worked to control all these factors.
However, I have another theory. As a venture capitalist, I have to listen to hundreds of entrepreneurs pitch their companies. Most of these pitches are crap: sixty slides about a “patent pending”, “first mover advantage”, “all we have to do is get 1% of the people in China to buy our product” startup. These pitches are so lousy that I’m losing my hearing, there’s a constant ringing in my ear, and every once in a while the world starts spinning.
Before there is an epidemic of Ménière’s in the venture capital community, I am trying to evangelise the 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint. It’s quite simple: a PowerPoint presentation should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points. While I’m in the venture capital business, this rule is applicable for any presentation to reach agreement: for example, raising capital, making a sale, forming a partnership, etc.
Ten is the optimal number of slides in a PowerPoint presentation because a normal human being cannot comprehend more than ten concepts in a meeting—and venture capitalists are very normal. (The only difference between you and a venture capitalist is that he is getting paid to gamble with someone else’s money). If you must use more than ten slides to explain your business, you probably don’t have a business. The ten topics that a venture capitalist cares about are:
You should give your ten slides in twenty minutes. Sure, you have an hour time slot, but you’re using a Windows laptop, so it will take forty minutes to make it work with the projector. Even if setup goes perfectly, people will arrive late and have to leave early. In a perfect world, you give your pitch in twenty minutes, and you have forty minutes left for discussion.
The majority of the presentations that I see have text in a ten point font. As much text as possible is jammed into the slide, and then the presenter reads it. However, as soon as the audience figures out that you’re reading the text, it reads ahead of you because it can read faster than you can speak. The result is that you and the audience are out of synch.
The reason people use a small font is twofold: first, they don’t know their material well enough; second, they think that more text is more convincing. Total bozosity. Force yourself to use no font smaller than thirty points. I guarantee it will make your presentations better because it requires you to find the most salient points and to know how to explain them well. If “thirty points” is too dogmatic, the I offer you an algorithm: find out the age of the oldest person in your audience and divide it by two. That’s your optimal font size.
So please observe the 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint. If nothing else, the next time someone in your audience complains of hearing loss, ringing, or vertigo, you’ll know what caused the problem. One last thing: to learn more about the zen of great presentations, check out a site called Presentation Zen by my buddy Garr Reynolds.
Guy is the author of eight books including The Art of the Start, Rules for Revolutionaries, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Selling the Dream, and The Macintosh Way.
You can read more articles like this on Guy’s Weblog atblog.guykawasaki.com
Media Credit: Sholten Singer – ony Szwilski, environmental engineering and science professor, demonstrates an Internet program that allows students to simulate mine safety scenarios.
The line between virtual and real world is becomming more blurred when teaching mine safety.
Marshall University College of Information Technology and Engineering has developed a program via Second Life, a free Internet program that allows users to create any conceivable virtual world. The virtual world is an island equipped with classrooms, meeting rooms and a virtual mine to teach safe mining practices.
Students can attend class in the virtual world using an avatar registered through Second Life. Currently, a graduate course called Advances in Internet Based Virtual Training, Learning and Collaboration Technology is being taught in this virtual world. A plan is in the works to offer an undergraduate version of this course.
"We have a multi-faceted project and one of the principal objectives is to produce the next generation of mine safety technology," said Tony Szwilski, environmental engineering and science professor and director for Environmental, Geotechnical and Applied Sciences.
Adjunct engineering professor Jack Smith and computer science students developed the virtual world. He and Swzilski have been working the project for approximately two years.
The virtual world is also used to conduct meetings with Mine Safety and Health Administration in Beckley.
Szwilski said one of the new ways to improve mine safety training is by using the Internet.
The virtual mine is two levels and has parts that regulators required be included. One of those devices is a refuge chamber, which protects miners from harmful situations, such as a gas leak.
One of the simulations used in Second Life is a roof collapse. Students have to figure out how to rescue a trapped miner. One of the safety tools used is a breathing apparatus. One student is placed in a safe spot while the other four look for the trapped miner.
The program helps accomplish a great objective.
"Our objective is to have the virtual world identical to the real world," Szwilski said.
"It’s good for education, collaboration, and some training," Szwilski said.
Kristen Hainkel can be contacted at hainkel@marshall.edu.
From: Mashinsky’s website – http://www.mashinsky.com/ventures.html#Failures
Failures
Most of what I have learned over the years came primary due to my failures. Looking back at the decisions I have made in both selecting ideas to work on and deciding how much to invest in them it is painful to see how many times I have repeated the same mistakes.
It all comes down to decision making and the ability to predict the future and the timing of when things will take off. It is also critical to either do it yourself or only entrust a person who is more passionate than you about the subject.
While most of the projects I failed in where good ideas I usually dramatically underestimated how long it will take for adoption to take place or how much money will be needed. I also have discounted the level of commitment and ability management have presented thinking I could solve things later.
The hardest part I had to deal with was learning to cut my losses and admit my mistakes quickly. Again and again I tried to save these ventures and paid the price of being distracted and drained of resources to only prolong the inevitable.
A focused mind is one of the most powerful forces in the universe my fortune cookie read in a recent trip to a local eatery in Manhattan and I could not agree more.
It is amazing how some lessons take 20 years to learn.
Here is a list of my most spectacular failures and misses. I review them again and again to see what else I can learn and each time as I visit them in a new context a new side of this learning process reveals itself.
May 2008
Novacure 2004 � had the opportunity to invest in this revolutionery cancer treatment process but decided it was too revolutionary.
Skype 2002 � I got a call from a VC asking about my opinion on a small startup doing a VOIP product, since I know the space too well I did not think they prospects were good.
ICG 1999 - ICG was the seed investor in Arbinet and I got pre IPO equity but wired the money too late to participate. Stock went from $7 to $212 in 6 months.
Google 1998 � I was introduced to Sergey by Ester Dyson and after listening to his presentation of how a link based algorithm would provide better search results I said “who needs another search engine, we have AltaVista”
Tradeum 1998 � I contracted to buy software and negotiated equity upside and co-investment but I switched at the last minute to another firm. Tradeum got sold for $1.2b just one year later.
ICQ 1996 – Yosi Vardi offered me equity in his company as barter for bandwidth from Arbinet. I said no and ICQ was sold to AOL for $450m a mere 8 months later.
Vocaltech 1996 � I had the opportunity to invest in the company twice before their IPO.
One day a farmer’s donkey fell down into a well. The animal cried piteously for hours as the farmer tried to figure out what to do. Finally, he decided the animal was old, and the well needed to be covered up anyway; it just wasn’t worth it to retrieve the donkey.
He invited all his neighbors to come over and help him. They all grabbed a shovel and began to shovel dirt into the well. At first, the donkey realized what was happening and cried horribly. Then, to every one’s amazement he quieted down.
A few shovel loads later, the farmer finally looked down the well. He was astonished at what he saw. With each shovel of dirt that hit his back, the donkey was doing something amazing. He would shake it off and take a step up.
As the farmer’s neighbors continued to shovel dirt on top of the animal, he would shake it off and take a step up. Pretty soon, everyone was amazed as the donkey stepped up over the edge of the well and happily trotted off!
MORAL :
Life is going to shovel dirt on you, all kinds of dirt. The trick to getting out of the well is to shake it off and take a step up. Each of our troubles is a steppingstone. We can get out of the deepest wells just by not stopping, never giving up! Shake it off and take a step up.
An original and aesthetic clip for the group being put Matt and Kim with the presence of two naked actors, while advancing towards the famous place Times Square in New York. Filmed entirely in idle, on the title “Let us injure Learned”.
