Pensive: Recent Episodes
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Emerson was an American essayist and poet who led the 19th century transcendentalist movement. In this adapted essay called “Self-Reliance”, he champions self-reliance and individualism as a virtue, and contrasts it with other concepts such as dependence or conformity. He emphasizes to follow your own voice. Because the original can be difficult to read, I … Continue reading Self-Reliance: An Introduction to Ralph Waldo Emerson →
Since he quit his investment banking job, Brian Smith has built and sold a multimillion dollar portfolio of businesses. He has built, bought, and sold businesses in the retail, service, and commercial real estate sectors. Now Brian coaches and studies entrepreneurs, helping them to make transformations at both the personal and organizational levels. Brian’s clients … Continue reading Brian Smith, Serial Entrepreneur Turned Executive Coach →
Bryan Johnson made a decision at age 21 and never looked back. He told his family and friends that he would start a company and retire by age 30. In 2013, he sold his company Braintree, an online and mobile payments provider, to eBay for $800 million in cash. One year later, he dedicated $100 … Continue reading Bryan Johnson, Entrepreneur Extraordinaire →
Nick Hanauer is co-founder and partner in Seattle-based venture capital firm, Second Avenue Partners. He has managed, founded and financed over thirty companies, creating aggregate market value of tens of billions of dollars. For example, he co-founded aQuantive, which sold to Microsoft for $6.4 billion, and was the first non-family investor in Amazon. He also … Continue reading Nick Hanauer and How To Think Independently →
At the Exponential Finance conference hosted by Singularity University in New York, I had the opportunity to talk with Peter Diamandis, co-founder & Executive Chairman of Singularity University. Diamandis counsels the world’s top enterprises on how to utilize exponential technologies and incentivized innovation to dramatically accelerate their business objectives. Diamandis is also the Chairman and … Continue reading Peter Diamandis and Exponential Thinking →
Bob McDonald is eighth Secretary of Veterans Affairs. Prior to joining VA, he was Chairman, President, and CEO of The Procter&Gamble Company (P&G) He graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in the top 2 percent of the Class of 1975. He is personally committed to values-based leadership and to improving the … Continue reading Bob McDonald and Value-Based Leadership →
Eric Ries is the creator of the Lean Startup methodology and was named as one of the Best Young Entrepreneurs of Tech by BusinessWeek Ries serves on the advisory board of a number of technology startups, and has worked as a consultant to a number of startups, companies, and venture capital firms. He was also … Continue reading Eric Ries and The Lean Startup →
A pioneer in applying social data analysis to investing and also the co-founder of Ticker Tags, which is a crowdsourced association taxonomy that connects trending social content to investable companies. I first heard about Camillo on CNBC where he talked about how he turned 20K into 2M. By now he has grown this figure to … Continue reading Chris Camillo and Social Arbitrage Investing →
Tetrick started Hampton Creek, a San Francisco food startup that is going to make it easier for millions of people to eat better. Bill Gates selected his company as one of three companies that will shape the future of food. He has led a United Nations business initiative in Kenya and worked for former President … Continue reading The Food Revolutionary, Josh Tetrick →
The second part of the interview of Doug Carmichael, a strategy consultant at the Institute for New Economic Thinking. We talk about his advice to younger people, news media consumption, what he did to understand the world, his regular get togethers in Palo Alto, his experience as a psychoanalyst and his daily ritual. Carmichael started … Continue reading Doug Carmichael (Part 2) and How to Understand The World →