Getting 2013 Off to a Good Start…Investing, Entrepreneuering and Connecting

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  • on January 2nd, 2013

I plan on running 700 plus miles this year…so I started with 3.5 yesterday AND will do a quick 3 this morning. I want to get off to a good start and be very conscious of pacing myself. I have been running very consistently small distances building a huge base for some longer runs a few times a month.

I also want to get to Iceland, Israel, Japan and Amsterdam this year with the family so I am already thinking that through.

There are some great posts that have caught my attention during all the down time the last few weeks. They all really have helped me think through my own strategies, strength and weaknesses as I dive into 2013.

The first was from Paul Graham. If you are an investor in start-ups or an entrepreneur, it’s just a must bookmark and read. Save it and put a note on your calendar to read it every quarter. I am in the ‘go to college’ and school camp with Paul and agree on almost everything in the long essay. It just covers so much.

In Summary:

Finding startup ideas is a subtle business, and that’s why most people who try fail so miserably. It doesn’t work well simply to try to think of startup ideas. If you do that, you get bad ones that sound dangerously plausible. The best approach is more indirect: if you have the right sort of background, good startup ideas will seem obvious to you. But even then, not immediately. It takes time to come across situations where you notice something missing. And often these gaps won’t seem to be ideas for companies, just things that would be interesting to build. Which is why it’s good to have the time and the inclination to build things just because they’re interesting.

Live in the future and build what seems interesting. Strange as it sounds, that’s the real recipe.

Next up is ‘The Future of You‘. I live the three principes covered in the article:

1. Self-Branding,
2. Entrepreneurship
3. Hyperconnectivity

I have been preaching this since I started my blog in 2005. It is NOT TOO LATE. There are so many choices for light or heavy publishing. Obviously, Stocktwits is a manifestation of all this for people in the financial industry that love to journal and share. The upside of all of this has been community and the ‘data exhaust’ that we share in the form of trending tickers, a popular iPhone app and our heatmaps (way more to come). As a team we are thinking about curation, who’s interesting, fresh, consistent, community driven, and of course right and wrong. We are all on Stocktwits to find profits (i hope too some joy). We all start this ‘Future of You’ process somewhere on the web. I personally will continue to invest in publishing platforms that help me express myself, journal and connect.

A new investment Tom and I made (SocialLeverage) revently is in a product called NewHive. It’s a blank white page that allows you pretty full control and easy sharing. Simply put, a nother way to ‘express yourself’. Artists love it of course, but I think it will be a cool way to organize and share tons of market and stock research. You can organize topical media and place into your pages…than share into your favorite networks.

Finally, I loved this post from Bryan Goldberg, founder of The Bleacher Report. Engineering has been all the rage the last 8 years and MBA’s (like me) have become a bit of a joke. That trade may have been pushed too far and Bryan has a great take on all this.

Let’s get to work.

The information in this blog post represents my own opinions and does not contain a recommendation for any particular security or investment. I or my affiliates may hold positions or other interests in securities mentioned in the Blog, please see my Disclaimer page for my full disclaimer.

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