Chris Yeh
VP Enterprise Marketing for PBworks, first investor in and previously interim CEO of Ustream.TV. Chris is an active angel investor and the founder and Chairman of the Harvard Business School Technology Alumni Association (HBSTECH). Chris earned two degrees from Stanford University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. His personal blogs are Adventures in Capitalism and Ask the Harvard MBA.
The $2,000 Customer Service Call
This morning, I had the misfortune of having my car’s transmission conk out while I was on the freeway. Fortunately, I was able to exit the freeway and park on the street, where I could safely call GEICO for roadside assistance. But this post isn’t about the $2,000+ I’m going to have to spend on […]
What Entrepreneurs Should Learn From WhatsApp
Facebook’s acquisition of WhatsApp for $19 billion has dominated all news in Silicon Valley for the past 48 hours. Yesterday, I was at a urinal, and a group of people asked me what I thought. Most of the discussion seems to be around whether Mark Zuckerberg was crazy to pay so much for a relatively […]
So You’re Shutting Down Your Startup And You’re Scared…
I ran across Startups Anonymous, and a post entitled, “We’re Shutting Down and I’m Scared” caught my eye. For better or worse, I’ve either been through or participated in shutting many companies down, so I thought it would be fun and potentially useful to provide my blow-by-blow advice: *** After over two years, backing from […]
You can be a dick and be right
Venture Capital legend Tom Perkins stirred up quite a bit of outrage with his letter to the editor in the Wall Street Journal: http://on.wsj.com/1aGMGJy In this editorial (which Perkins presumably dashed off without showing it to any competent public relations professional), he criticizes what he perceives as a rise in unfair criticism of the wealthy. […]
Should entrepreneurs blog?
Keith Rabois touched off a mini-Twitter firestorm the other day when he posted a tweet saying, “I don’t know of a single successful CEO or entrepreneur who blogs regularly.”http://bit.ly/1b0gv4VSadly, as I often note, 140 characters isn’t enough for a …
Will Success Ruin Silicon Valley?
Everywhere one looks, Silicon Valley seems ascendant. Tech companies like Apple and Google are among the world’s most valuable and admired, while tech titans like Larry and Sergey, and Mark and Sheryl are given the first-name-only treatment of offline celebrities. Silicon Valley has even stuck its nose into broader society, helped by the fact that […]
Stop Shooting The Messenger, Silicon Valley
On Sunday, I weighed in on the Twitter board controversy: My argument then was that there is a dangerous tendency on the part of Silicon Valley’s power players to think that those who have achieved less than they (read: everyone) don’t have the right to criticize them. Then I read an editorial by Pando Daily […]
Finance Should Be a First-Class Discipline for Startups
Tim O’Reilly, the founder of the O’Reilly media empire, published a great longform essay recently titled, “How I Failed“. It’s a phenomenal read which covers a wide variety of topics, including how O’Reilly sold GNN to AOL for $15 million in stock, sold that stock as soon as the lockup expired for $30 million, and […]
The Hidden Assumptions That Neuter Criticism in Silicon Valley
The contretemps of the day comes courtesy of TechCrunch, where Professor Vivek Wadhwa has published a guest post addressing a Twitter debate he had with Twitter CEO Dick Costolo (now how’s that for meta?):http://tcrn.ch/GD0570The controversy began with…
What job are people hiring your product to do?
I am a product guy, dating back to my days as a design student at Stanford. I’ve been a fan of Clay Christensen ever since “The Innovator’s Dilemma,” and even interviewed him for the student newspaper when I was a Harvard Business School student. Which is why I’m shocked that I hadn’t heard of Clay’s […]
The Internet is a Rage Virus
James Hong penned a thoughtful essay on an important topic: “Why there are so many assholes on the Internet.” “There are hard ways to get attention, and there are easy ways. The hard ways are more meaningful, but almost by definition they are more scarce and harder to generate. The easy stuff on the other […]
Carte Blanche and the Creativity of Constraint
As Los Angeles native, I can’t help but see parallels between my home town’s industry (movies) and my adopted home’s (startups). Today’s parallel concerns the problem with having too much money. In Hollywood, studios love to work with successful directors. When a director produces a critical and commercial smash, a studio or production company is […]
Why Businesspeople Should Learn To Code (But Not Write Software)
The “everyone should learn how to code” meme has probably reached the point of absurdity. My favorite (humorous) example is the “Dear Miss Disruption” advice column, in which every question, no matter what the topic, concludes with the answer, “learn to code.” But my old professor Tom Eisenmann of HBS did something that few others […]
The Troll Economy
Q: What do you get when journalists get paid by the number of pageviews their stories generate? A: The Troll economy. Not to sound like a grumpy old man (though I am) but what passes for journalism has sunk to a new low. As far as I can tell, headlines are now chosen based on […]
It’s Cheaper In The Long Run To Pay For A Professional
I firmly believe in the truth of the old saying, “It’s cheaper in the long run to pay for a professional.” It’s an axiom that applies in nearly any situation, from decide whether or not to attempt to fix your own plumbing problems, to dealing with groupies if you’re a young All-Star. Yet while most […]
