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I saw this excellent answer on Quora about what Apple should do with its $51B cash hoard:

http://www.quora.com/What-would-make-sense-for-Apple-to-use-its-51-billion-in-cash-for-a-strategic-acquisition/answers/612608?srid=DH

I thought this answer was very thoughtful and nuanced. In summary, Apple uses its cash to get exclusive access to component technologies like flash memory and touch capacitive displays. They don't do big news making acquisitions typical of Google and Oracle.

Apple's strategy may appear less risky because they're buying hard assets. However, Apple's strategy isn't necessarily less risky. They're making huge technology bets that the components they support will be desirable to customers. For example, if Apple pays $1B for new aluminum machining technology and their customers don't like it, Apple is left holding the bag.

Very interesting strategy! Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

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After graduation, a couple trips and a move, I'm back!

Stay tuned for more frequent posts!

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I was at MIT today to do an errand and someone told me about this incredible area called the President's Courtyard. The offices of MIT's leadership (President Hockfield, etc.) look over this courtyard.

The best thing about the courtyard is this small, unassuming apple tree. This tree is a descendant of the tree under which Isaac Newton conceived the theory of gravity. Pretty incredible stuff and sitting under my nose all along!

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I saw this quote on Daring Fireball and had to share it.  Awesome.

"Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency. Remember that our sons and grandsons are going to do things that would stagger us. Let your watchword be order and your beacon beauty. Think big."

Daniel Burnham, Chicago architect. (1846-1912) 

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I found this video on Hacker News and had to share it. Someone posted it there because they perceived that Steve Jobs alluded to iCloud back in 1997. I think it's more important than that.

It shows you:

1) How to handle a hostile audience. Apple had recently bought Steve Jobs' company Next and announced their next generation OS, Rhapsody. This angered developers because for several years Apple had prepped them for a different OS called Copland. There's a particularly nasty question from a Java developer.

2) How to frame perceived conflicts. There was perceived conflict between Apple and Microsoft. Regardless of whether there was or not, it wasn't practical to piss off the largest tech company in the world, especially when Apple needed Microsoft to get on Rhapsody.

3) How to get people to buy-in on change. Steve's goal in this video is to get developers to write apps for Apple's next generation OS. He makes a clear case to a key audience.

4) Be pragmatic. Someone in the audience thanked Steve Jobs for turning Apple around (in 1997!). Steve said he didn't think the company had turned around yet. He was pragmatic that most of the work was ahead.

This video was taken before Steve was given the CEO role, so it's a great, unfiltered look into what he thought about Apple before he was in charge.

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Bing Gordon (former chief creative officer at EA and partner at Kleiner Perkins) did an interview with the NYT. There are a ton of great quotes in it, but this one resonated with me. As a recent MBA considering my next step, I think it's a great way to think about potential opportunities:

"It’s better to work with people who you would pay to be able to work with. So if you’re working with someone in an area that fascinates you, with people you can add value to and have good conversations with, who are capable and really motivated and you would pay to hang out with them, I’m pretty confident good things would happen."

Bottom line: work with great people on something you love.

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1. Embrace change: the world keeps changing quicker. 

2. Have fun: surround yourself with people who make you laugh, who you have fun with.

3. Don't do anything that wouldn't make your mom proud. Stay true to yourself. 

4. Set your sight on changing the world. At the end of your life know your time here was well spent and that you gave more than you got. To whom much is given, much is expected.

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Check out this great video from PBS NewsHour with my research advisor at MIT Sloan, Erik Brynjolfsson. If you watch carefully, you'll see me in a couple shots.

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As I mentioned before, I get a lot of email. Some of those emails require me to follow up. One way I remember to get back to people is with followupthen.com. Check it out - it's like having a personal email assistant.

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"Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is filled with educated derelicts. Persistence & determination are omnipotent. The slogan 'press on' has solved and will forever solve the problems of the human race." - Calvin Coolidge

(Check out Dustin Curtis' site - he has beautifully commemorated this quote)

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I had an opportunity to see one of my business heroes, Vinod Khosla, speak the other day at the finale of the MIT 100K Business Plan Competition. For those of you that don't know, Vinod Khosla is a co-founder of Sun Microsystems. In addition, he was a partner at Kleiner Perkins and led investments in several iconic Internet companies. He now runs Khosla Ventures, where his focus is on green technology. I wrote a lot of notes during his talk, so the following is pretty much a core dump of those notes. I will also write a post about how persistence got him into Stanford's GSB.

Vinod told us about persistence. Persistence is the essence of entrepreneurship. It's also about selling like crazy with guts and a degree of arrogance that's unwarranted for where you are, a premature confidence. Once you're building your company, unknown unknowns will hit you in the face. It is at this point that the persistent entrepreneur will rise to the occasion. Out of necessity they will invent themselves out of the problem.

He advised new entrepreneurs to go at it with irreverence and an intention to break the rules. He also encouraged us to have big hairy audacious goals. He warned that unless you have one you may be successful, but irrelevant. He dared us to be great.

The following quote resonated with me, "Everything that is an extrapolation of the past is a loser." Incremental improvements are less interesting than big game changers.

Thanks for coming to MIT Vinod!

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(via mikekarnj)

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You have a notebook full of ideas but the only thing you’ve done is stare sadly at them. One of your ideas has been gnawing at you every day but you can’t risk quitting your job to start a company. Starting a company could take up to five years of your life and you could fail! What to do?

Make a little bet. Test out your idea. See if your test is successful. If not, learn from it. Repeat. That’s the premise of Peter Sims’ new book Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge From Small Discoveries. Throughout the book, Sims talks about how different companies have made little bets throughout the years that have reaped dividends. For example, Pixar used to be an animation hardware company with a little bet: its animation studio. The animation studio was a cost center. Its sole purpose was to help Pixar demo the hardware. During the early years, Pixar wasn't doing well, but the management at Pixar was convinced that they needed to keep that little bet. Keeping the animation studio around paid off handsomely.

In addition to big companies, Sims says individuals can learn to make little bets. Having a growth mind set and being open to learning from a diversity of people can help you connect dots that you wouldn’t have otherwise connected. A key conclusion that resonated with me was to “do things to discover what to do.” This means make little bets to discover and develop ideas before betting the farm on them.

Excellent book, I highly recommend it!

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I just saw this excellent video about Push Pop Press' ebook solution. I wouldn't even call what they're making an ebook. There have been a lot of technologies over the past decade that claim to make the book better and more immersive. Usually those solutions distract from the content. I don't think Push Pop Press' solution improves the book. Books are a unique and beautiful medium is difficult to improve. However, I do believe they've created a new style of medium that is georgeous and engaging. I'm very excited to see this technology rolled out so more people can create more incredible, er, ebooks?

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See the full gallery on Posterous

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