Why Tech WON'T Fix Your Business A while back, a friend asked me what I thought about him taking a job offer at MIX. “They’re the reboot of StumbledUpon,” he’d told me. “They want me to improve their recommendation engine, to keep the users they have with better recs, and to get new users by … Continue reading What Happened at MIX
My husband caught his married CEO kissing an employee, setting the Butterfly Effect in motion... “I’m screwed,” my husband said, calling me from his job at a well-known Silicon Valley startup. He’d entered the stairwell and saw the married CEO of his company sucking face with an employee. He had a right to be upset. The CEO is putting … Continue reading The Butterfly Effect
Need an IDEA [that will likely SELL] to Startup? Many want to be entrepreneurs, but most people lack product ideas, or can’t think of a service (or app) that isn’t already available. For over a decade, I taught entrepreneurship at Stanford and Cal Berkeley/Haas. I designed a course to teach the process of turning an IDEA (or … Continue reading How to Generate Product IDEAS
What motivates people to RESPOND (click, like, share, comment), and CONVERT (buy, try, sign-up, subscribe) from your marketing efforts? This is a very important question, because the point of marketing is to get people to [think or] do what our campaigns [suggest or] direct them to do. At the foundation of all marketing is Psychology. … Continue reading Marketing Data Science
According to Zuckerberg: “Young people are just smarter.” True or false? I responded to an ad for a Traffic Manager position at an ad agency in San Francisco 25 years ago. Downtown, in one of those glass monoliths. Eighteenth floor. Made me nauseous being up there. I couldn't stop thinking about an earthquake waiting for … Continue reading The Problem with 20-something Brains
Startup MVPs are a FAILED biz model, but I did one anyway... “Looks like cancer to me,” the PA said while I wiped off the ultrasound goop. She’d just taken samples of the 15mm ‘lesion’ in my neck with a fine needle. I stared at her trying to process what she’d just said while she … Continue reading My First, Last, and Only MVP
IMAGINE working your ass off all through high school, studying instead of partying, volunteering with school and community groups so you can get into a good college. You send out your applications, to Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, as you have a 4.8 GPA, and all the right clubs on your resume. Your mom kisses each envelope before … Continue reading The TRUTH about Mark Zuckerberg
I’m on Facebook, whining to my friend about a fight with my husband through their IM. In my typical “melodramatic,” (my husband claims, but I call “passionate”) fashion, I’m furiously typing how much of a jerk he is, how often we fight, basically questioning if the sanctity of marriage is sustainable. My friend is empathetic. … Continue reading The AI in Your Pocket or WHY TO BAN TIKTOK
It’s surprising how little I think of my daughter now that she’s living 2,000 miles away at school. We talk on the phone frequently, but since she’s not involved in my daily life anymore, she’s more of an abstraction (when we’re not directly talking), a pleasant thought when she crosses my mind. I figured she … Continue reading The Cost of Convenience
Saas Apps that Screw You or Why U Can’t Get that House, that Job, those Tickets… I’ve been house hunting on REDFIN for over 5 yrs with no luck. The homes I want are either too expensive, a flat-out ripoff, or an offer is accepted within 24 hrs of listing. We’ve bid on 5 houses, … Continue reading SaaS Apps that F**k You
