Startups

A few weeks back I read a great post from Hiten Shah on mentoring. In it he calls out that 99% of mentors are doing it wrong. At first it got me thinking about how I go about mentoring. At Amplify I’m in a position to do this on a regular basis for the first [...]

So it’s been just about three months since we launched Amplify. I can’t fully express in words how fulfilling the experience has been, but I’m going to try. I’ve started and built several companies; some have succeeded and some have failed. I’ve learned a lot over the years. I’ve come to know what I’m good [...]

One of the interesting things about sitting on the receiving end of lots of Amplify applications and pitches is that I get to see trends unfold in real-time, on a micro level. Looking across the 100+ applications we’ve reviewed thus far, I’ve seen a handful of commonalities among companies; many oft them trying to solve [...]

It’s been way too long since I was in the thick of things at a very early stage startup. I’d forgotten how many things there are to do, fundamental things and strategic things. It’s like there are a million little Lego pieces strewn about the ground and it’s my job to pick them up, one [...]

This is the first video from my 10 part series on Docstoc. I like the style of the videos they produce, they’re short and to the point with good nuggets; not just mine, all of them, and there are hundreds from other smarter guys than me. That said, the stuff in my videos is pretty [...]

In my experience it’s the exact opposite. Sure, there are those that have a passion for money, but for most people, like me, passion is about things we just love to do; and we don’t always see dollar signs when we think of doing it. But there is a lot of evidence to support that [...]

As many of you know I’ve been working on a few kids mobile games in my spare time. My first game, called Where’s Mommy has nearly 200,000 installs on Android and almost 50,000 on iPhone. Just today I released my second game called “Lil’ Drummer” for the iPhone. I originally intended this game to be [...]

So I’m a big fan to Twitter, partly for reasons I can explain, which I have, but also for reasons yet to be discovered. I guess that’s what intrigues me so much, that there is so much still to be created on that platform. To that avail, here is my opinion about what Twitter should [...]

I’m pretty fired up about all the activity with incubators and co-working space for startups and entrepreneurs. There is a bit of this going in in Los Angeles, but it’s really happening in the Bay area, Seattle and New York. I’ve started organizing my travel schedule so I can visit these places wherever I go. [...]

When I was a boy I loved LEGO. I mean I really loved LEGO. I was an only child and was often by myself; but I always had my LEGO. My mom accumulated literally two trash cans (well, those small 15 gallon ones anyway) full of the stuff over the course of 3 or 4 [...]