Happy Saturday! Here are your 5 things from the mind of Miles for this week.
Do Your Startup Now. In August 2020, I wrote a piece for Venture Patterns that argued if you’re “dreaming of creating a startup and have the opportunity..Don’t wait.” Since then we’ve had a strong venture capital funding market and lots of startups getting launched. I think the piece holds up well. Feedback? If you are thinking of starting something but worry now isn’t the right time, let’s talk.
Communication and Attention. In starting a new organization, one of the questions these days is what to do about chat. Is persistent chat (like Slack) a productivity and presence killer or an essential work tool? I’m still a big email user and while I use chat, I am a chat skeptic. I worry that it blends the urgent with the non-urgent. I like to use messaging (like SMS, iMessage, etc.) for urgent and/or non-actionable messages. In one of my startups we tried Slack instead of email internally and I’m not sure it was a plus. Don’t see why it matters? Then check out Cal Newport’s book on the topic.
Inherited Politics. There is evidence that political preferences are somewhat heritable. If true, how does that change your perspective on political conversations? And if genes meaningfully influence political preferences, could moral views be as well?
Yale Entrepreneurship Czar. Yale has educated many successful founders. We list some of the startups created by Yalies on the Y Startup Index website. Yet, Yale’s reputation for entrepreneurship lags reality. I’m excited that the university has created a new entrepreneurship czar. Congratulations to loyal reader Josh Geballe on his appointment. The administration recognizes the importance of investing in entrepreneurship to attract the best students and faculty. We’ve made good progress with the Yale SOM Program on Entrepreneurship, Tsai CITY and much more. And now this role. Let’s get after it.
Shout Out. Congratulations to my brother for his blog posts ranked highly on Hacker News. If you’re a software developer or wonder what software developers like to talk about, check out AWS Tools Suck and Write Shitty Code.
Until next week,
Miles