Posts filed under 'Business'
Mike Burry wrote a letter to Greenspan in this Sunday’s NYTimes explaining how he saw the crisis coming, how he bet it would happen, and how he made tons of money. His basic point is that he (and others) saw this coming and could demonstrate it. Yet the Fed maintained that nobody could have predicted this crisis. Once the details are outlined, it seems like the looming crisis was blatantly clear, yet everyone was blindly following the crowd out of short-term greed.
The conclusion of Burry’s letter is powerful and necessary:
“at this point there is no reason to reflexively dismiss the analysis of those who foresaw the crisis. Mr. Greenspan should use his substantial intellect and unsurpassed knowledge of government to ascertain and explain exactly how he and other officials missed the boat. If the mistakes were properly outlined, that might both inform Congress’s efforts to improve financial regulation and help keep future Fed chairmen from making the same errors again.”
When Mr. Greenspan was asked about Burry’s letter on “This Week,” (04/04/2010) he reflexively dismissed Burry as a statistical anomaly. Basically, Greenspan’s reasoning was that nobody agreed or saw the same problem. In other words, he was following the crowd, which is exactly what produced the problem. He should have known better.
This response by Greenspan was inadequate. Clear reasons have been given why some people did see the crisis coming. He has never given a content-rich analysis of those reasons (and why the Fed missed them). If financial reform is going to be successful, the leaders of our country need to start explaining things in clear terms, rather than use the same complexity to hide their own mistakes.
April 4th, 2010
Above is American Airlines unbelievably bad website. Read a case study by Dustin Curtis who asked American’s design team about this. Interestingly, the problem stems from the leadership of the company. It starts at the top, and works its way down throughout the company and the website too. The UX team is completely sabotaged by the company as a whole. And while Dustin’s approach may not have been the best, John Gruber points out:
The point is that American Airlines is clearly a failing company. They’re losing hundreds of millions of dollars every quarter. The experience of traveling on one of their flights is terrible. Their website is terrible. These facts are not unrelated.
November 6th, 2009
My artistic needs are met these days with a little photography and graphic design. I am not a graphic designer, but I have many ideas that I need to communicate. Ultimately I rely on professionals for design and implementation, but I really enjoy trying to convey my concepts to these people, providing the general framework for business needs.
Recently, I thought it would be fun/useful to have an iPhone app for SlideRoom. This would be a mobile way for applicants to receive updates about pending deadlines, status notifications, or even to review their submission materials. Below is a sketch exploring some ideas and then a few actual comps to demonstrate the look.
While I have designed every page of this app, these designs are simply to communicate my ideas to the pros. They will keep some of it and rework most of it. (But it really helps to get everything half-way there). I love kicking off the design process this way and also doing final edits in the end.
October 5th, 2009
Starting a business takes more than just business-skill (although that must be developed at some point). It takes a variety of personal characteristics that most artists already embody. Many people with “Ideas” don’t take the plunge because of some intimidating hurdle (like they don’t know how to write a business plan, raise money or something else which is probably easy to learn). So I would like to focus on those traits which turn out to be very difficult, but artists already do well:
1) Know how to live cheaply. They are accustomed to creating a cool lifestyle without spending much money. This is essential for any start-up. The founders cannot be taking huge salaries and rob the company of essential funds for growth. Rather, the founders must be content living with low expensens for a few years. It is surprising how many business people are incapable of doing this.
2) Have a passion for making things. Making a product/business is requires much of the same temperament as making an art object. One must be willing to:
- enjoy creating something from scratch
- enjoy the process of trial & error
- have the stamina for 15 hour days
- engineer things with sensitivity for how it will affect a larger audience
- be flexible enough to experiment
- be strong enough to survive setbacks.
3) Think outside the box. More important than having a “great idea” for a business, is the ability to be creative once a business is underway. When you start with no money, no connections, no advantages … you still have to figure out how to progress. This means taking every advantage of new technologies (which are free), not having any waste and figuring out how accomplish things outside the normal channels of doing things. This is where innovation is born.
June 15th, 2009
The NY Times Magazine just published an article titled “The Self-Employed Depression.” It examines the difficulty of self-employed workers who sell their time: like independent yoga instructors, tutors, programmers, therapists, drivers, personal chefs, etc … However, I have a gripe about confusing the concepts of freelance workers and entrepreneurs … they are very different.
This article quotes people confusing these two concepts: “I thought I could catch this entrepreneurial dream. I could tutor for a living.” The author also seems to confuse the concepts: “When cities were flush, the clients rolled in and the perks of self-employment — freedom, flexibility, entrepreneurship — seemed to outweigh more traditional benefits like job security and insurance.”
SO, why are these statements wrong? What is the difference between these terms?
A freelancer owns a job. They work for pay. They may be their own boss, but they are essentially selling their time. If they don’t work, they don’t make money. These people usually enjoy what they are doing, and enjoy being the “technician.” The world needs freelancers, and this can be a very successful practice that generates cash right away. However, this is not entrepreneurship.
An entrepreneur sets up a systematic model that can make recurring revenue, and this model can ultimately perform without the founder. While the founder needs to work at first, the entire mind-set is to pave the way so others can easily step into these roles, and run all the various operations. If an owner is tying to be the technician indefinitely, they are operating with a “tactical view” rather than a “strategic view.” “The technical work of a business and a business that does technical work are two totally different things!” (E-Myth).
Both of these practices are valuable enterprises, but they are really different. And knowing the difference will really affect how you go about making & executing plans within your day-to-day operations.
June 7th, 2009
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