At a recent accelerator demo day, someone asked me what I look for in a founder. It took a bit of soul searching to construct my answer. Here’s what I came up with. Mission driven: startups are such a rollercoaster ride that it takes someone who won’t get distracted by…

It’s been a little more than three years since I took my first tentative steps into the world of investing in early stage tech startups. I was a bit apprehensive. I wasn’t sure if my experience and skill as an operator running large companies would help or hurt in my…

The news for grocery store chains has not been good recently. Amazon bought Whole Foods after its valuation declined by 50% over the last two years as sales declined Discount German grocery chains Aldi and Lidl are coming to the US Walmart reduced its threshold for free shipping from $50…

In early 2011, while I was working at Maxim, I signed up for a “Design Thinking Boot Camp” at Stanford’s d.school. I hoped it would help make my group more innovative. I forgot about it until a few months later; I was surprised to get an email with the d.school…

It was in the Fall of 2011 that I was rushing out of a stressful meeting to my company-sponsored health check-up. My blood pressure was too high, I was at least twenty pounds overweight and my cholesterol and triglycerides were off the chart. After the physical tests, I answered the…

A Timeline of Resources From every great era of civilization, a new technology has emerged that gave humans new capabilities. Each technology has been associated with a resource that was initially extremely valuable, while humans were learning to harness its power, but later turned into a commodity as the technology became commonplace. …