After climbing Mt Kilimanjaro with IMG in 2014, Mt Rainier was still on my bucket list. This year I got to cross it off the list (thanks to my lovely wife for

Honored to be presenting on the topic of Big Data at the WorldFuture 2015 Conference with Dr. Tim Persons, Chief Scientist US Government Accountability Office!

Earlier this year I was out?for my usual Saturday ride with a friend and a group of other riders. I was pushing it hard going into Nicasio, 30 miles outside

In December, 2014 I completed a six night, seven day climb of Mt Kilimanjaro via the Machame Route. We reached the summit at 6:15am on December 27. I had heard

Barcelona, Spain?Sunday, October 5, 2014.   The morning started out with a torrential downpour, thunder and lightning. But the race conditions were perfect?nice temperature, not too hot, which made for

Dear Ashton, I?m looking forward to watching your movie, Dude, Where?s My Car? Because, seriously, dude, where's my car?! We just lived through a real-life version of the movie when

While I was in China, one of the questions I got asked a lot was "Why did you write Big Data Demystified?" I talked about my own very personal experience

Announcing The Big Data Landscape Conference 2014 Registration for The Big Data Landscape Conference 2014 is now available at http://www.thebigdataconference.com. The Big Data Landscape Conference 2014 brings together some of

The Everything Store is a must-read for anyone interested in understanding Amazon and in growing their own business. Even if you don't aspire to build a web site as large

If you haven't read Mark Suster's post How to Shorten Your Sales Cycle and Avoid Wasting Time, you should. In it he talks about whether the best salespeople call high

Starting a new venture? Here are 5 recent posts you absolutely have to read. 5. If you want to know how Jeff Bezos and team mint money, read no further

This fall I completed my third full Ironman distance event. Ironman Tahoe (IMT) stands out as one of the hardest goals I have ever set for myself and achieved. If

Getaround is a great idea. That?s what makes it so painful that the current experience leaves so much to be desired. I expect a lot more from Getaround, especially considering

I read Danny Sullivan's post on the Quantified Self and Big Data with great interest. His terrific article is entitled How my body rejected activity trackers and the ‘quantified self'.

Mashable predicted that Responsive Web Design would be 2013?s trend for many websites. On the other hand, community-based approaches, or shall we say ?social networking?, has become the main focus

I'm introducing a new feature of my blog called "Dear VCDave." I advise many entrepreneurs and each week I receive a number of practical, real-world questions. These are day to

As regular readers of this blog will know, I've been on a customer service tear lately. That's because we've been scaling up customers at Speechpad at a record rate and

I was speaking with a Speechpad customer yesterday–let's call him John–who said, "I was just so happy to get a response. Some of the companies I contact I don't even

Sometimes, you have to fire a customer. When you're in the business of making customers happy, it's a very difficult realization to come to. It's painful, but there is a

Picplz and Path are the ones you've heard of. But there are dozens more you haven't heard of. How did Instagram beat them out? Back in September of 2010 I

When we started Speechpad, we had this idea that we could transform a large, established industry–transcription–by bringing it online, making it easy to access, and opening the work up to

"This has been an easy process and it's been a pleasure working with you. ?I will recommend Speechpad to my other colleagues." I admit it. I love getting this kind

Steven Levy's article today, Living on a Stream: The Rise of Real-Time Video reminded me of a post I've been meaning to write about Speechpad. Speechpad turns audio and video

For the past while now, I've been advising the founders of SendHub. Before Ash and his c0-founders got into YC, we'd get together and work through various ideas. We'd talk

I?ve started six companies and sold three of them (this just published: EMC Acquires Storage Software Partner Likewise). I?ve been developing software since age 12. Building great product teams has

There's a lot to be learned from Draw Something, the simple but fantastic mobile game that's making hundreds of thousands of dollars a day.?And yes, I did just include the

Check out 13 Reasons Your Startup Will Fail and learn how to succeed on?BusinessInsider!

Entrepreneurs spend a lot of time building great products. But in today's competitive startup environment, it's not enough just to build a great product. You have to build a product

I was speaking with a Product Manager at a large tech company today. He's looking for small, local development teams he can plug into his existing projects/teams. In talking about

Last week I got an email from an Interaction Designer at oDesk who wanted to meet with me to understand how oDesk ?fits into my life.? oDesk describes itself as

And now for a few words on that most painful yet critical of startup topics, billing and payments! Working on billing and payments feels incredibly far from strategic objectives like

Most startups fail. That?s why when Jeff Olson at Apress (publishers of Founders at Work) approached me about turning my Why Startups Fail blog post into a full-fledged book, it

My very first ?real? job, that is, a job other than shoveling snow, cleaning the school pool, or writing my own software programs, was at Microsoft. At 16, the company

Startup CEO?s can learn a lot about how not to lead from Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou. 1. Don?t surprise your investors. Investors hate surprises. Especially when things are already

There have been plenty of articles written questioning Groupon's economics. The company has changed its accounting methods. It restated its revenue for 2010 from $713M down to $313M. The company

Are you building a big-idea company or a company of ideas? Marshall Poe, who first brought to light the transformational nature of crowd-sourced publishing with his article The Hive in

Why did Apple 1.0 fail but Apple 2.0 succeed? That, of course, is the $350B question. 1. Economics. Although Apple is now known for introducing premium priced products, at the

There are a lot of articles on startup Founder/CEO?s, but very few on startup COO?s. Ben Horowitz had an interesting post last week on the challenges of founders who pitch

What?s great about daily deals is that everyone has an opinion on what could make them better. The Groupon S-1 certainly has something to do with that. So too does

The Idea You might be wondering what I?m doing building a game called BabySitter on Facebook. We all have our hobbies and one of mine is building apps for fun.

Several posts ago I talked about using offshore development resources to build an entire product. Recently, a good friend and entrepreneur contacted me about doing something narrower: using a service

I just finished one of the most compelling books on pitching I've read in a long time. It?s called Pitch Anything. I heard about it through Andrew Warner?s interview of

I recently met with an investor who bemoaned the fact that consumer tech companies get higher valuations than business tech companies. Many business tech companies have fantastic revenue growth, experienced

The advantages of category leadership are obvious. Investors (private and later, public) want in and are willing to pay for the privilege. As a result, category leaders can raise more

Spending time on various projects, from social games to B2B services, I work with a lot of offshore developers. Many people have heard about services like ODesk and Rent A

A great pitch is all about telling a great story well.?Recently, a number of entrepreneurs have asked me to help them with their pitch, business strategy, and market positioning. An

Startups spend a lot of their hard-earned venture dollars on customer acquisition. A few years ago it was enough to be smart about search engine marketing and optimization. Buy keywords,