While it feels a bit incestuous to me, Malcolm Gladwell reviews Chris Anderson’s new book Free in the New Yorker. The review titled Priced to Sell: Is Free the Future. The book and the review hit on a lot of concepts we discuss here — digital readers, the value of information, and the future of media. As many of you know, my startup — FamilyFantasySports.com — is based in part on the free model as we offer free games to families interested in playing fantasy football t... Read Full Story

As a grad of U of M who buys one off tickets when I go visit, I find it to be insane when I read the UC Berkeley is asking 3,000 of its season ticket holders to purchase $225,000 personal seat license — (H/T Newmark’s Door). From the original USA Today Blog entry: So no, Berkeley hasn’t exactly been a football factory the last half-century. But that hasn’t hurt the self-esteem at Cal, where the university is asking fans to pay $225,000 — yes, $225,000! — fo... Read Full Story

Over the past 2 weeks I have been taking nothing but cold showers and have come to believe that entrepreneurs should only take cold showers. Here are the 3 (or 4) reasons why entrepreneurs should take cold showers. 1. Taking cold showers saves time. There is no lolly gagging, singing, or day dreaming while in a cold shower. This saved time allows entrepreneurs to get more done. It also reminds us that time is precious and shouldn’t be wasted in the shower or other places. I would have ... Read Full Story

The cover of the Wall Street Journal featured a story on Jack Welch and his involvement with a new online business school. Its clear to me that Welch is trying to cash in on one the few areas that have seen successful IPOS over the past few years — he has invested with an entrepreneur who was able to take online Golden Gate University public during the darkest days of the financial crisis. My favorite part of the story is the last line where Welch says, “I think its a real educati... Read Full Story

For years I have been reminding people that less than 5% of firms ever take any kind of venture investment — that is one of the reasons I find the growth of business plan competitions so odd. Why prepare students for pitching to Venture Capitalists when most of them will never do it? (We’ll answer that in another post). Well, there is a growing chorus of entrepreneurship bloggers sounding the alarm that policy makers are focusing too much on the VC model when talking about economi... Read Full Story

I was fortunate enough to be interviewed recently by a personal finance magazine writer (I will let you know which mag it is if I make it into the article) and was asked whether I thought a recession was a good time to start a biz. I thought yes because a) fewer people are willing [...] Read Full Story

Angela M. Eikenberry has an interesting piece (h/t Zoe Weil) at the Stanford Social Innovation Review questioning cause marketing — you know, pink flashlights supporting breast cancer or yogurt that ’saves’ trees by directing a portion of the profits to rain forests. Eikenberry aceepts many of the benefits of this growing part of philanthropy, but [...] Read Full Story

We have covered a lot of startups (& startups) and technologies going into the textbook market — the cost of books have been a pain for students and families for decades. Seth Godin, ‘marketing genius,’ has decided to enter the fray with his posting Textbook Rant. Godin claims professors who assign textbooks are practicing academic [...] Read Full Story

In yet another attack on free enterprise and entrepreneurs -see yesterday’s post on the Campaign for Free Enterprise — the government is considering taxing cell phone’s issued by business. According to the WSJ, the government is thinking about counting cell phones at ‘fringe benefits’ and thus eligible for taxation. Gotta love the US Government — tax a tool/technology that has brought incredible efficiency and opportunity to business users so that corporati... Read Full Story

The US Chamber of Commerce, under the leadership of Tom Donohue, has announced their Campaign for Free Enterprise (h/t SchumpetersCentury). Thank god someone is doing this. As regular readers of this blog know, we have grave concerns about how deeply the government has embedded itself into the marketplace. From the piece at the Politico by Jeanne Cummings: The Chamber’s efforts, budgeted for as much as $100 million, come at a time when the government’s influence in the automobile, banking an... Read Full Story