The Glass Half Full CEO
Britain’s financial markets regulator undertakes an admirable amount of satisfaction surveying, the results of one such survey were released this week. All things considered, this is not the FSA’s finest hour.
Just one in 10 companies rated the FSA highly in terms of offering “value for money,” according to the survey, published today.
[From Bloomberg.com: U.K. & [...]
Tribune Co Bankruptcy UPDATED: Black Monday — Tribune Co. Files for Bankruptcy
I looked back at what I wrote when Zell first announced the deal to buy the Tribune Company. I was cautious at the time to not offer an opinion about the sanity of a newspaper company at that time, instead focusing on the fact that the guy staked the entire deal with $315m of his [...]
Rosedale to step down as Linden Lab CEO
“The company has the type of financial performance that if it wanted to it could become a public company,” said Benchmark’s Bill Gurley, who sits on the Linden Lab board. “I certainly think at some point in the future — and I’m certainly not announcing anything new here for the next 12 months [...]
People Costs vs. Stuff Costs
The fascination with Jason Calacanis as muse in this part of the tech industry is curious to me. He’s not particularly insightful while being exclusively self-serving and self-absorbed, but give him credit for being able to stoke a small brush fire with some regularity. At any rate, I don’t normally read his blog or feel [...]
Congratulations to Dan Farber
Dan is one of the people I have been fortunate to meet and get to know over the years. He is deserving of this promotion to CNET and I wish him good fortune going forward. I really can’t say enough good things about Dan so I’ll just leave it at that!
Big news at [...]
Tournament Theory for CEO Pay
Interesting way to put it.
That’s because many economists believe that CEO pay is structured as it is not to spur the CEO to ever greater heights of achievement, but rather pour encourager les autres. Michael Eisner might work just as hard for $1 million a year . . . but the gigantic payoff [...]
CTO Handbook — How to care for and feed your CTO
I go back and forth between thinking that a CTO can make or break a company. I think it depends on the overall bench strength of the organization, their personal style, and ultimately the degree to which technology is the critical enabler of the company. In many cases, “good enough” technology really is, while in [...]
The Danger of Incrementalism
The title of this post is a little cryptic, so allow me to explain. Big companies have repressive cultural dynamics and decision making cycle that result in important strategic initiatives taking a really long period of time to emerge and when they do the compromises that are made in order to get consensus from the [...]
Mattel’s CEO Should Think Before Answering
I watched an interview with Mattel CEO Bob Eckert about the massive toy recall(s) they have been undertaking as of late.
Interviewer: Mr. Eckert, should consumers feel confident about the safety of Mattel toys?
Eckert: Yes they should, we have the highest quality standards in the industry…”
My first thought was “if you have the highest quality [...]
E-Mail Bankruptcy
Fred Wilson did it yesterday, I’m filing it today. I have so many unread e-mails in my inbox that I can’t possibly get caught up. If you have sent me an e-mail in the last month and I have not yet responded, I apologize.
I am now calling people rather than going through the all-too-typical multiple [...]



