Michael Arrington’s move to these parts has reignited the old debate about what Seattle has to offer as an alternative to Silicon Valley. But the point isn’t just to say what is genuinely different and good about Seattle, but also to figure out what ideas and institutional characteristics we can take from Silicon Valley so we… Read More
Hauling myself out of bed this morning, I jabbed my foot into a sharp piece of plastic. I peered into the gloom to see what it was and remembered that Redfin just won the Seattle 2.0 award for “Best Startup.” Our trophy had started the night in bed and then been cast aside — until I… Read More
Roger Ehrenberg just posted an essay about why Harvard students prefer Goldman Sachs to a 15-person startup, which I found via Chris Dixon’s excellent Twitter feed. Roger speculates that “many equate start-up enterprises with uncertainty and fear, and only appropriate for those with massive risk tolerances.” This seems to me like the thinking of someone with… Read More
Almost every event at Redfin can be divided into two categories: success-disasters and disaster-disasters. In a success-disaster, the best-case scenario is so unexpected that it results in a fiasco. The web servers crash under the load. The dog catches the car. The Democrats win Congress. You wear the same outfit Sunday morning as on Saturday… Read More
My favorite essay published this weekend was Michael Arrington’s post on our increasingly public reputations, and his hopes for increasingly forgiving attitudes about the youthful bong hit or the disgruntled ex-colleague that now inevitably show up on Facebook or Twitter. As I read Mike’s post, I thought about how shame and community are magnified for… Read More
People do strange, wonderful things. Maveron’s Dan Levitan, for example, sent me a note two weeks ago asking if I’d like to go to Starbucks’s annual meeting, despite his having no stake in Redfin’s success. Wednesday morning, I rode over to Seattle Center, and filed into a huge theater, taking a seat next to Dan…. Read More
So, I’ve written this blog entry about five times. I’m not certain I know what I’m doing. I mean, I’m an amateur when it comes to real estate. I’m like that kid in the back of the classroom who ate paste. And I don’t mean the kid in second grade. I mean the kid in… Read More
Two executive MBA students just came by the house to interview me for a class on entrepreneurship. Answering questions about the #1 quality of an entrepreneur, my #1 weakness, my #1 advice, I found myself translating true stories about what has worked for me into aphorisms that felt made up. We have begun to think… Read More
Most technology companies shamelessly value raw brain-power at the expense of social grace, common courtesy or any sense of style. As someone who wore head-gear for his entire adolescence, I’ve embraced this approach. Starting out as an entrepreneur, I once tried to hire an engineer who was so engrossed in the brain-teasers we had given… Read More
A few comments about Dave McClure’s Sunday post encouraging entrepreneurs under 30 to sell at the earliest opportunity, from someone who was a founder under 30. I won’t go into the full rant, since I already wrote that last year, but can’t help but comment on a few of Dave’s claims. (Dave already knows I… Read More