On the 8 Spot

Every start-up is in a furious race against time. The start-up must find the product-market fit that leads to a great business and substantially take the market before running out of cash. As a result, the top two priorities are always to:

1. Find the product that 1,000 enterprise or 50 million consumers want to buy and grab those customers before your competitors do.

2. Raise enough cash and spend it intelligently so that you don’t go broke along the way.

Clearly, you can’t succeed if you don’t achieve both priority No. 1 and priority No. 2. So why is taking the market more important than not running out of cash? Because the only thing worse for an entrepreneur than start-up hell (bankruptcy) is start-up purgatory.

via The Case for the Fat Start-Up | Ben Horowitz | Voices | AllThingsD.

But again, it's a mistake to judge men's interactions by assuming we need to be like women. Research shows that men often open up about emotional issues to wives, mothers, sisters and platonic female friends. That's partly because they assume male friends will be of little help. It may also be due to fears of seeming effeminate or gay. But it's also an indication that men compartmentalize their needs; they'd rather turn to male friends to momentarily escape from their problems. The new buzzword is “bromance.”

via Why Men’s Friendships Are Different – WSJ.com.

Every summer for 25 years, Mark Vasu has gotten together for a weekend getaway with old friends from Duke University. The 15 men, who graduated in 1984, gather in the same cabin in Highlands, N.C.

“It’s a judgment-free, action-packed, adventure-based weekend,” says Mr. Vasu. “We go hiking, whitewater rafting, rock climbing, fly-fishing.”

What they don’t do is sit around as a group, the way women do, sharing their deepest feelings.

Male friendships like these are absolutely typical, but don’t assume they’re inferior to female friendships. “If we use a women’s paradigm for friendship, we’re making a mistake,” says Geoffrey Greif, a professor at the University of Maryland’s School of Social Work, who has studied how 386 men made, kept and nurtured friendships. Men might not be physically or emotionally expressive, he says, but we derive great support from our friendships.

Researchers say women’s friendships are face to face: They talk, cry together, share secrets. Men’s friendships are side by side: We play golf. We go to football games.

For several years, I’ve reported on the friendships women share, first for this column and then for “The Girls From Ames,” a book about the 40-year friendship of 11 women from Ames, Iowa. And though I envy women’s easy intimacy, I also know it wouldn’t work for me and my friends.

via Why Men’s Friendships Are Different – WSJ.com.

Interesting anecdote on the value of Ron Conway on the linked site .

Why Ron is Unique

Now that we understand Ron’s value, a good question is why don’t more people run a network like Ron? Why is Ron unique? In my view there are four key ingredients to Ron’s business:

1. A ridonkulous work ethic—If Ron’s awake, he’s working. He can be at a party, in his pajamas, or at the Super Bowl. Ron is always on the job and the network is always on.

2. Pure motives—Ron does what he does, because he likes helping people succeed in business. He gives most of the money that he earns away to charity, so greed never clouds his vision or his mission. In fact, the investment component is almost an aside to his primary purpose.

3. Super human courage—Ron fears no man and he definitely fears no phone call. When you ask Ron for help, you don’t have to wait a week while he warms up a connection. Ron’s network is always on.

4. A way of doing business—This is the unspoken key to Ron’s success. He’s not judgmental in the conventional sense, but he acts with extreme prejudice when it comes to the proper way to conduct oneself in a relationship. If you behave below Ron’s standards in this respect, you will not be allowed to participate. As a result, Ron’s social network is a fantastic place to conduct business. Everyone is courteous, timely, and straightforward. Ron gets rid of the friction and enables his business partners to focus on what’s important.

So, the next time somebody asks you: “why should I try to get an investment from Ron Conway?”, let them know that (as The Game would put it) “if they are slipping in Silicon Valley and they get their deal snatched…”

via Ron Conway Explained // ben’s blog.

Interesting take.

But I am going to argue that the “internal” factors (a student’s interest in science and technology, i.e. whether or not a student suffers from math-phobia, which in turn depends on the styles of pedagogy) matter too. Here’s why. Clearly someone who is math-phobic and has an aversion to mathematics will not opt for an engineering degree in college. So at the very least, something must happen that makes the best and the brightest in India less prone to math-phobia. Clearly that something cannot be the style of science pedagogy, which, if anything, is even more authoritarian in India.

The difference, I will argue, lies in the way that other subjects — the non-technical ones — are taught in India. In these subjects, students are asked to learn a lot of things by heart (a.k.a. rote learning) and there is an emphasis on facts rather than method. When compared with this, the best and the brightest often find the problem-solving methods of mathematics and science strangely appealing.

via Reflections on Cog Sci: Math-phobia, pedagogy and the choice of occupations.

About 83 percent say TV. Less than 10 percent say radio, only 2 percent say the papers.

But here’s the clincher. What then are the top trusted sources of news? Two out of three won’t surprise you: “TV Patrol,” and its rival, “24 Oras.” But the third top trusted source of news is “Wowowee.”

The question then becomes: Is one citizen’s definition of a news source very different from that of others? The figures can apply to radio, where Bombo Radyo and DZRH find themselves as trusted news sources together with Love Radio on FM; or to the broadsheets, where the Inquirer and Manila Bulletin are in the company of the tabloid Bulgar.

via Manuel L. Quezon III: The Daily Dose.

Okay, this is yikes. argh.

The highlights are, indeed, a joy to behold, squeeze tightly, and never, ever let go. The perfect wife is five years younger than her husband. She is from the same cultural background. And, please stare at this very carefully: she is at least 27 percent smarter than her husband. Yes, 35 percent smarter seems to be tolerable. But 12 percent smarter seems unacceptable. In an ideal world–which is the goal of every scientist–your wife should have a college degree, and you should not. At least that's what these scientists believe.

I know your bit will already be chomped with your enthusiasm for learning these learned scientists' methodology. Well, they interviewed 1,074 married and cohabiting couples. And they declared, “To produce our optimization model, we use the assumption of a central 'agency' that would coordinate the matching of couples.” Indeed.

via Why your wife should be 27% smarter than you | Technically Incorrect – CNET News.

In the paper, Seltzer argues that “federal law, through copyright and the DMCA, bears direct responsibility for the chilling restriction on online speech… Depriving speakers of opportunities for publication and dissemination can be tantamount to banning speech; pressuring distribution points can cut them off.”One of her key points is that the law gives rightsholders the power to demand takedowns, but copyright infringement is often unclear. “Copyright law and its fair use provisions, of course, are far from a bright line,” she writes. “Many of the cases ISPs are called in to adjudicate pursuant to DMCA notices are fact-specific disputes even courts would be unable to decide on summary judgment.”

via DMCA takedowns: trampling on free speech rights?.