Sustained Writing

My friend Jerry Harrison introduced me to the phrase “time to magic” as the critical signal for onboarding. But in the process of onboarding, “activation” is not the same as “magic.”  Activation in a self-serve SaaS context is getting the client “onboarded” to the point where they c... Read More

Complexity is hard. A framework called cynefin helps me break it into chunks to describe systems based on their complexity. There are four states of a system: simple, complicated, complex and chaotic. There is another situation where t... Read More

Stop building. Start learning. Most of my advice to fellow entrepreneurs boils down to these two statements. It is tempting to build. The process of building is fun! For social approval, one can “build in public” for likes and retweets. With some (usually UI) flourishes, eliciting ... Read More

In the movie City Slickers, Jack Palance keeps trying to teach Billy Crystal that the secret to everything is "one thing." It takes the whole film for the scatterbrained, high-pressure New Yorker to understand this lesson. We laugh at how slow he was on this uptake.<... Read More

Sixteen years ago, I visited my doctor with fright in my voice. I explained that I heard a tone whenever I was in quiet spaces. I never liked them, but I now found loud rooms much more off-putting. She chuckled wryly and said this was to be expected and would last the rest of my nat... Read More