Things seen by Shane Reiser

Where’s the Money? Top VC Firms in the US

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:01:57 -0600

Where’s the Money? Top VC Firms in the US

"Lifestyle Creep It is a very subtle occurrence that is closely related to the “Keeping Up With the..."

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 10:26:30 -0500

“

Lifestyle Creep

It is a very subtle occurrence that is closely related to the “Keeping Up With the Joneses” phenomenon. It happens so quickly that you don’t notice until it’s too late.

First, there’s an initial event…

You earn a promotion or raise at work, receive a windfall, or free up a little cash flow by paying off a lingering debt.

Then, of course, you have to congratulate yourself. Except, the one time celebration continues.

Feeling the wiggle room, you begin dining out more often and attending more social activities that don’t seem too expensive.

Next thing you know, you’re shopping in more upscale stores because you think you can afford better quality. Yes, you’ve adopted the mantra that more expensive equals better. Besides, you loved _____’s new shoes/handbag/sweater/etc. and you must have one.

Next up is a new car. You’ve changed your style, so you have to keep up with all other outside appearances. Actually, you tell yourself you want one because you can “afford” it now. The truth is, you really can’t, but you think your college car looks raggedy compared to your friends’ luxury cars.

Now, as you park your brand new car in front of your old apartment, you think your place is a dump, so you decide to redecorate for a new and refreshed look.

After you finish redecorating, you throw a dinner party to show off. By the end of the night, your apartment feels way too small and you hate your neighbors for blasting their strange music all night. So you make a mental note to begin searching for a bigger place on the better side of town.

Instead of looking for a bigger/better apartment, you find yourself in the car with a Realtor looking at houses because your friends have convinced you that paying rent is a waste of money. Everyone else owns a home, so you should too.

And the cycle continues…

Are you guilty of lifestyle creep?

I have been and it was a constant internal battle. Want to know how I fixed my problem? I found some poor(er than me) friends! LOL! No, I’m just kidding. Next post, I’ll explain what I did (and continue to do) to avoid lifestyle creep and maintain self control.

”

- Fabulous Financials » Lifestyle Creep

Stick a Chart in it → Put Things Off

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 11:28:59 -0500

Stick a Chart in it → Put Things Off

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 11:28:39 -0500

Stick a Chart in it → Put Things Off

"The One-Month Launch On its own, “just launch it” is pretty crappy advice. After all, launching a..."

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 08:47:17 -0500

“

The One-Month Launch

On its own, “just launch it” is pretty crappy advice. After all, launching a big project can be scary. Often, the way people deal with that fear is to spend months locked in circular planning cycles instead of taking action. Perhaps they hope that, if they put things off long enough, the wind might change and all their problems will be carried up the chimney on the breeze, like watching Mary Poppins in reverse.

What happens instead is this: The Plan consumes them. Their business becomes the business plan. Their company, grand scheme, or trip around the world never happens.

The problem with planning:
There are times when plans are worth making. But, more often than not, they’re simply a waste of time. There is no watertight plan. Leaking is part of life.

A week after you’ve stapled your 50 pages of slaved-over manuscript complete with five-year projections, it will be almost meaningless. Planning is a dynamic thing – there is no such thing as a finished plan. You can’t print it out and be done. You have to plan while you’re running your business and adapting to the environment, not before you even know if it’s going to work or not.

A week after you’ve ‘finished’ your plan, your competition will have adapted; that ski resort will have been booked up; a new product will have changed the game; those designer stilettos you saw in Oxfam will be out of fashion.

How to launch faster:
Forget great big lists. Forget what you know about business. Forget start-up school. Forget plans. Forget endless preparation. Forget the “what ifs?” and the “but what abouts?” When it comes to launching fast and reducing fear, there’s only one rule you need to remember.

To make it easier, I’ve cut it down to three words and spent four whole seconds of my life making sure that the only rule you need to remember very nearly rhymes:

Less is best.

It couldn’t be less complex, could it? But it’s true: less is best. Here’s why.

The magic of less:
When you reduce your launch time to one month and force yourself to start thinking in terms of less instead than more, the magic of less flutters into life:2

* Less means no excuses to sit around dreaming
* Less means you can make it better later
* Less means less unnecessary planning
* Less means less emotional investment
* Less means less procrastination
* Less means less perfectionism
* Less means less upfront costs
* Less means less to go wrong
* Less means less questions
* Less means less decisions
* Less means less features
* Less means less risk
* Less really is best

What are you waiting for? Dream. Scheme. Simplify. You’ve got a month to launch something. Anything! Just make it something that you love.

”

- The One-Month Launch → Put Things Off

via www.landartgenerator.org

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 13:02:04 -0500

via www.landartgenerator.org

Coordinated motorcycle performance video from the 1950s - Boing...

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 08:29:56 -0500

Coordinated motorcycle performance video from the 1950s - Boing Boing

Left vs Right (World) | David McCandless & Stefanie Posavec...

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 08:24:08 -0500

Left vs Right (World) | David McCandless & Stefanie Posavec | Information Is Beautiful

"It’s a brisk Saturday afternoon in San Francisco, and I’m standing outside of Sports..."

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 08:04:21 -0500

“

It’s a brisk Saturday afternoon in San Francisco, and I’m standing outside of Sports Basement with a metronome in my hand. Several hundred feet away, a guy in a funny hat is running around the empty parking lot at a consistent 85 steps per minute. His upper body angles forward as his legs cycle backwards to the beat… beep beep beep. It looks kind of ridiculous, but the guy is actually demonstrating an innovative exercise regime that combines the concepts of Tai Chi and mindfulness meditation with athletic techniques used by Kenyan Olympic sprinters. It’s called Chi Running, and it’s directly related to recent debates around natural vs power running and the case against heavy-duty sneakers.

Most conventional athletic coaches and sports apparel companies advocate power running — running for max speed, personal records, high performance, lots of muscle (think European sprinters with giant legs surging forward and arms pumping furiously). Chi Running takes advantage of a force that comes naturally to all of us — gravity.

The funny runner guy is Chris Griffin; he’s my instructor. I’m training for my first half-marathon right now, so I figured now would be a good a time as ever to learn good form and try to stay pain-free. Earlier, lying on the floor of the Triathlon department on a gaudy red carpet, me and a dozen others — including an injury-prone high school track star and a 60-year old grandma — learned the basic tenets of this unique running philosophy. By using what Griffin calls “the lean,” we create momentum through gravitational pull, using the arms as levers and the legs as wheels revolve naturally behind us. “If you ever watch the Kenyans running in the Olympics,” he says, “they’re practicing Chi Running. It’s the most natural way to run.” There are some simple rules to follow — core tight, butt relaxed, calves relaxed, head straight, feet straight (a lot of people run with their feet pointed slightly outward, which causes stress on the knees and toes), weight balanced in the middle of the feet, cadence consistent no matter what the speed. And it works.

One of Chi Running founder Danny Dreyer’s first group of clients in 1999 was a group of rocket scientists at NASA’s Ames campus in Silicon Valley. “One physicist came up to me after class and said, ‘I don’t believe in Tai Chi woo woo stuff, but what you’re teaching is straight down the line good physics,’” Dreyer recalls. “Nobody had applied physics to running before, but this made sense to them.”

In 1972, American marathoner Frank Shorter won a gold at the Olympics and started advocating the idea that anybody could run for exercise. This led to the dawn of the running sneaker industry — by the end of that decade, the first Nike Air product had hit the market, New Balance had earned a reputation as the best running shoe ever, and UK company Reebok entered the US market with the most expensive running shoe to date.

The problem is that most running shoes are designed with a half-inch heel lift. “George Sheehan, a cardiologist who wrote for Runner’s World in the 70s, proposed quite correctly that by increasing the height of the shoe, you could increase stride length,” Ian Adamson, a world champion adventure racer who now directs product development at running shoe company Newton, tells me. “But this can cause a couple of unfortunate results. Changing the biomechanical ratio between the fibula, tibia, and femur causes you to strike the ground too soon. Also, the 1/2 inch lift means you’re effectively always running down a 15-degree slope. So you end up constantly over-striding; your joints lock out and it causes immense shock on the body.” These performance-enhancing shoes have played a tangible role in the number of injuries caused by running. This has also inadvertently led to the rise of the running injury treatment industry — think braces and surgery and PT.

The sneaker industry, though, has been showing signs of change. Newton currently sells about a dozen running shoe models exclusively designed for a mid- and forefoot strike. New Balance’s 800s are made specifically for Chi Running, with shock absorption cushioning at the midfoot. Nike’s Frees, though still with the half inch heel lift, are designed to mimic the sensation of barefoot running. And if you really want to get close to running with no shoes on there’s Vibram Five Fingers. “There are a lot of options out there,” Griffin, the instructor, tells our class. “But remember, technique has to precede gear.”

It’s been about a month since I took the Chi Running workshop, and I’m happy to report that the 100+ miles that I’ve run since then have been injury-free. The hardest thing for me to incorporate was the mindfulness aspect. Most of us have gotten accustomed to listening to music or podcasts while running, so when Griffin suggested we ditch the iPod and treat running as a practice like yoga or meditation, I was hesitant. The whole reason I’d been able to start running distances in the first place was thanks to Nike Plus, so I just wasn’t sure how I’d feel to run without knowing how fast and how long. One day, though, I forgot my iPod at home and was forced to run without metrics or music — it ended up being one of my most refreshing runs ever. I just listened to the wind and focused on my breathing. It reminded me of a passage I read in novelist and runner Haruki Murakami’s memoir, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running:

“I just run. I run in a void. Or maybe I should put it the other way: I run in order to acquire a void… The thoughts that occur to me while I’m running are like clouds in the sky. Clouds of all different sizes. They come and they go, while the sky remains the same sky as always.”

I still like to run with my iPod when I remember it, but I think that’s okay. Like with any practice, it’s important to be comfortable where you are while acknowledging that you’re on the road to improvement. That’s how I feel about my running now.

”

- How to run, meditate, and not get hurt - Boing Boing

The cast of Seinfeld on Twitter. - By Frank Ferri - Slate Magazine

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 08:00:37 -0500

The cast of Seinfeld on Twitter. - By Frank Ferri - Slate Magazine

"…nearly one-third of American households don’t have any retirement savings, according to..."

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 10:40:29 -0500

“…nearly one-third of American households don’t have any retirement savings, according to a McKinsey & Co. report. And only 4% of middle-income married couples who don’t have a pension and are nearing retirement are likely to have enough money to last their lifetime, according to a new report by Ernst & Young.”

- Group seeks answers for retirement ‘crisis’ - USATODAY.com

via images.businessweek.com

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 13:03:09 -0500

via images.businessweek.com

Google Reader (1000+)

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 14:41:56 -0500

Google Reader (1000+)

GET ON MY HORSE

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 09:31:03 -0500

GET ON MY HORSE

via www.mint.com

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 10:37:13 -0500

via www.mint.com

John Lloyd inventories the invisible | Video on TED.com

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 13:59:48 -0500

John Lloyd inventories the invisible | Video on TED.com

Cell Phones by The Numbers - Mobile Maven

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 16:19:03 -0500

Cell Phones by The Numbers - Mobile Maven

"Of the gladdest moments in human life, methinks is the departure upon a distant journey to unknown..."

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 09:27:05 -0500

““Of the gladdest moments in human life, methinks is the departure upon a distant journey to unknown lands. Shaking off with one mighty effort the fetters of habit, the leaden weight of Routine, the cloak of many Cares and the Slavery of Home, man feels once more happy. The blood flows with the fast circulation of childhood….afresh dawns the morn of life…””

- Sir Richard Francis Burton | The Art of Manliness

Amusing Ourselves to Death by Stuart McMillen - cartoon...

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 08:18:46 -0500

Amusing Ourselves to Death by Stuart McMillen - cartoon Recombinant Records

One Special Evening

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 21:28:55 -0500

sparknight:

In case you missed our Des Moines Startup Weekend presentation, here’s just a taste of what SparkNight can do for you:

At 4 p.m. the doorbell rings. Sara opens the door to find a bright bouquet of daisies - her favorite. As she picks them up, she finds a note:

Looking forward to our night on the town. Love, Matt

“What’s gotten into him?” she thinks. “It’s usually the same old date - dinner and a movie, just blah…Matt must have something up his sleeve.”

Two hours later, she arrives at Dos Rios in downtown Des Moines. The host escorts her in and says “Hi Sara, Matt has a table waiting for you in the corner. He’ll be here in just a few minutes.”

As she sits down, she finds a bottle of her favorite red wine. “Wow,” she thinks, “This is shaping up to be an amazing evening…”

After dinner…

Sara and Matt head over to a salsa dancing class at Hotel Fort Des Moines. After an hour of learning and intense dance, they’re exhausted. As they step outside, they find a beautiful limo, ready to take them home.

Exchanging shy grins over breakfast the next morning, Sara and Matt realize they haven’t felt this blissful in years…