Category: Startups

Psychologist Kelly Flanagan wrote a paragraph I loved so much, I thought about framing it: The third kind of marriage is not perfect, not even close. But a decision has been made, and two people have decided to love each other to the limit, and to sacrifice the most important thing of all—themselves. In these marriages, losing becomes a way…

One of my least favorite qualities in many of the “successful” individuals I meet (those who’ve achieved wealth, notoriety or a combination) is their insistence that they’ve “made their own luck.” That’s why I loved Michael Lewis’ commencement speech from Princeton this year: This isn’t just false humility. It’s false humility with a point. My case illustrates how success is…

There’s a common refrain that entrepreneurs are, by nature, optimists. I certainly fit in that classification. I’m optimistic about people, about companies, about technology, about the progress we’ve made as a species in the past 200 years vs. the prior 20,000 and the past 20 years vs. the prior 200. Reading Foreign Policy’s analysis of the global middle class gave…

I truly enjoyed Sheryl Sandberg’s commencement speech given at Barnard College last week. It was not only inspiring but featured a call to action that I love and support – that women can and should reach for higher heights in their careers, and that there are specific tactics they can employ to get there. However, one part of the speech…

It’s universally accepted in startup-land that “hire slow, fire fast” is a mantra to live by. The benefits are clear – by adding only the best to your team, and constantly pruning for non-cultural or skill fits, you can build the best possible team. And, of course, the best teams always win. This universal advice, though, might be in direct…

Someday, if you achieve great things, a man will show up at the door with a clipboard, ask you some questions and take away the life you’ve built and love, to replace it with the one you dreaded. If you’ve achieved any modicum of success or happiness in your professional life, you almost certainly fear this already. Here’s Neil Gaiman…

We run monthly managers’ meetings at SEOmoz with the goal to improve communication between managers, hone individual skills and discuss issues that can help make all of us better at our jobs. Unlike the weekly eTeam meeting (which I need to write about), the managers’ meeting includes anyone in the company who has a direct report, even just one. At…

The article 11 Sexy Girls with Star Wars Tattoos that You Don’t Have the Right to Publish should be scaring marketers and content creators at least as much as algorithmic updates from Google like Penguin and Panda scare SEOs. Content marketing is a phenomenal tactic, but this type of thing has real potential to ruin the power of great content…