In response to my post The Dynamics of Full Disclosure, Jeffrey Kalmikoff – one of the co-founders of Skinnycorp (the dudes who do Threadless) wrote an add-on titled On trust, transparency and disclosure.  Jeffrey came up to Keystone and spent Jewish Christmas with me and Micah Baldwin – we talked about a bunch of fun […]

A meme that regularly goes around the blogosphere is “full disclosure.”  When someone blogs about something they have a financial interest in (e.g. an equity interest in a company) or something they benefit from financially (e.g. affiliate fees), should they include a “formal disclosure.” I received the following email today: “I appreciate all your book […]

It’s been a while since Jason and I wrote an entry for our Letter of Intent series.  Yesterday, as I read through a confidentiality agreement that I had been asked to sign, I was inspired to address another typical part of an LOI – the dreaded confidentiality / non-disclosure agreement. While venture capitalists will almost never sign these […]

Over the weekend, I wrote about the top 10 bathrooms in the world according to Wallpaper* magazine.  A similarly obsessed reader pointed me to Urinal.net’s list of the top 100 urinals in the world.  Both of the lists left off my personal favorite, which until this point has remained incognito.  Pictures follow: In addition, the […]

I recently received a long email from a CEO, who I don’t know, about an anxiety attack he had. At the end, was a pertinent question that I don’t think I’ve ever addressed before. “What is my responsibility to openly communicate this important matter to the Board? And how do I balance what I feel […]

Amy and I were going to have a bunch of friends over to our house today but we got rained out. So, I read Glenn Greenwald’s book No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State instead. It was outstanding – 5 stars. Let’s start with the punchline from Warren and […]

Yesterday I read Kara Swisher’s post What Does the Recent Tech Stock Downturn Mean? The Truth Is Nobody Knows. It’s great. Go read it – I’ll wait for you. In the last two weeks there’s been a flurry of articles about the implications of a 25% decline in the public market value of a bunch of Internet […]

A few weeks ago a I wrote a post titled It’s Not Right vs. Left, It’s Old vs. New about the conflict between innovators and incumbents. As a society, we are just starting to wander into the real structural conflict around this and I don’t believe our government, either at the local, state, or federal level, really […]

Lots of people talk about being transparent. Lots of companies espouse principles of transparency. Lots of statements start out with “I like to be transparent” or “I’m being transparent when I say …” And several years ago the notion of transparency became the new in thing, especially around the VC and startup worlds. Most of […]