There are very few postings about startups that I agree with more than Paul Graham’s 18 Mistakes That Kill Startups. It came out a while ago and I saw it a while ago, but it popped up again in a friend’s del.icio.us feed and for some reason I clicked on it again, and was reminded… Read More
Guy Kawasaki takes it to the rack again today with a stunning piece about what it takes to be a great VC. But what about the things a VC shouldn’t do? 1. Pressure a small company do more than it can do well: less is more. 2. Try to run the company: if you don’t… Read More
We are experiencing some unseasonably cold weather in Seattle this week. Good for winter sports, bad for driving. During my rally-cross drive home, I caught tonight’s episode of Marketplace on NPR. They had a really entertaining segment about burying a statue of Saint Joseph to speed the sale of your house. Long story short, wherever… Read More
Blaine Harden of the The Washington Post today put Seattle on notice that a gigantic earthquake could liquify the southern half of the city, destroying homes built before 1975 and killing as many as 1,600 people. No one even noticed the fault that could cause such a quake until 1992. Monster quakes happen every 1,000… Read More
For those of you struggling to develop an alluring description of your listing, consider the personals ads of the British in The London Review of Books: –> A woman begins: “I’ve divorced better men than you.” –> Another says: “Tell me I’m pretty, then watch me cling.” –> A third writes an ad inspired by… Read More
Last week, seven computer science students from the University of Washington interviewed at Redfin. Remembering my own college interviews, when borrowing my brother’s prescription glasses led me to bypass an interviewer’s outstretched handshake for his navel, I dressed up for the occasion. Most of the candidates wore jeans. We catered a creamy Indian buffet for… Read More
Yesterday’s The Wall Street Journal article – “Do Real-Estate Agents Have a Secret Agenda?” – reported on the well-known, but often undisclosed, practice of sellers offering buyers’ agents additional incentives to close a deal. Sometimes when properties, typically new developments, are not selling as fast as the builder had anticipated they offer additional incentives. Similar… Read More
We complained last week that Google gets too much credit: it hasn’t brought to market a gigantic innovation since search, mail and map (acquisition), despite massive R&D investments, amazing engineers and a much-ballyhooed creative environment. You could even argue that Google hasn’t fundamentally improved its own search experience over how it was, say, four years… Read More
A few months ago we launched a feature called Ask an Agent and Ask About a Listing. Answers from our experienced real estate team are just a click away. Since launching the program we have answered hundreds of questions ranging in complexity from “When is the open house” to questions as vague as “Can you… Read More
Guy Kawasaki has one more excellent post on how to build a plan. His best advice is to make it bottoms-up (what’s likely to happen vs. what you want to happen, what your best sales rep thinks you can do), to limit variable costs to keep per-unit profits high (Kozmo’s variable costs were all those… Read More