“First, manage your executives. It’s not that uncommon to see startup founders, especially first-timers, who hire executives and are then reluctant to manage them. You can see the thought process: I just hired this really great, really experienced VP of Engineering who has way more experience running development teams than I ever did — I should just let him go do his thing!

That’s a bad idea. While respecting someone’s experience and skills, you should nevertheless manage every executive as if she were a normal employee. This means weekly 1:1’s, performance reviews, written objectives, career development plans, the whole nine yards. Skimp on this and it is very easy for both your relationship with her and her effectiveness in the company to skew sideways.”

“Second, give your executives the latitude to run their organizations. This is the balancing act with the previous point, but it’s equally important. Don’t micromanage. The whole point of having an executive is to have someone who can figure out how to build and run an organization so that you don’t have to. Manage her, understand what she is doing, be very clear on the results you expect, but let her do the job.

Here’s the key corollary to that: if you want to give an executive full latitude, but you’re reluctant to do so because you’re not sure she can make it happen, then it’s probably time to fire her.”

“This will be controversial, but I am a big fan of promoting talented people as fast as you can — promoting up and comers into executive roles, and promoting executives into bigger and broader responsibilities.”

“However, life is short, startups move fast, and you have stuff to get done. You aren’t going to have the privilege of working with that many great, talented, high-potential people in your career. When you find one, promote her as fast as you can. Great for her, great for the company, and great for you.”

“Money talks, hype walks — when you’re hitting your numbers, everyone thinks you’re a genius and believes everything you say, no matter how silly. When you’re not hitting your numbers, everyone thinks you’re a moron and won’t believe anything you say, no matter how true. So go dark, focus on the business, and don’t talk publicly for at least six months.”

“Ninth, shake things up. Directly on Powell’s curiosity point — change the story to something new. Overhaul the organization, move people around, fire people, promote other people, cancel products, double down on other products, do some acquisitions, cut some big deals, do some spinoffs, whatever — but change the story. Reintroduce curiosity. When all else fails, do a “shake and bake” — do a big transformative deal that you’re not sure will work but which you think has a real shot. That will at the very least inject energy back into the situation.”

In contrast to going to a mediocre small or mid-sized company that’s not growing: those are great places to go if you don’t want to go anywhere yourself. If you find yourself stuck in one, either figure out how to get the company unstuck and on a fast growth path, or get yourself unstuck.

There is a caveat to all this, which is as follows:

Don’t just be a “summertime soldier” — don’t go someplace because it’s already successful, and then bail when things get tough. Any hiring manager for the rest of your career will be able to read that on your resume just by looking at the dates.

The techniques that follow work together as an integrated set for me, but they probably won’t for you. Maybe you’ll get one or two ideas — probably out of the ideas I stole from other people. If so, I have succeeded.

“And here we go; let’s start with a bang: Don’t keep a schedule”

“Keep three and only three lists: a Todo List, a Watch List, and a Later List.

The more into lists you are, the more important this is.

Into the Todo List goes all the stuff you “must” do — commitments, obligations, things that have to be done. A single list, possibly subcategorized by timeframe (today, this week, next week, next month).

Into the Watch List goes all the stuff going on in your life that you have to follow up on, wait for someone else to get back to you on, remind yourself of in the future, or otherwise remember.

Into the Later List goes everything else — everything you might want to do or will do when you have time or wish you could do.

If it doesn’t go on one of those three lists, it goes away.

Each night before you go to bed, prepare a 3×5 index card with a short list of 3 to 5 things that you will do the next day.

And then, the next day, do those things.

I sit down at my desk before I go to sleep, pull up my Todo List”

“Then, throughout the rest of the day, use the back of the 3×5 card as your Anti-Todo List.

This isn’t a real list. And the name is tongue firmly in cheek.

What you do is this: every time you do something — anything — useful during the day, write it down in your Anti-Todo List on the card.

Each time you do something, you get to write it down and you get that little rush of endorphins that the mouse gets every time he presses the button in his cage and gets a food pellet.

And then at the end of the day, before you prepare tomorrow’s 3×5 card, take a look at today’s card and its Anti-Todo list and marvel at all the things you actually got done that day.

Then tear it up and throw it away.

Another day well spent, and productive.

“Louis Pasteur characterized it for all time when he said, “Chance favors the prepared mind.”

“Chance II favors those who have a persistent curiosity about many things coupled with an energetic willingness to experiment and explore.

Chance III favors those who have a sufficient background of sound knowledge plus special abilities in observing, remembering, recall- ing, and quickly forming signiXcant new associations.

Chance IV favors those with distinctive, if not eccentric hobbies, personal lifestyles, and motor behaviors.”

“Let’s examine the theory of a new bubble from a few different angles.

First, recall that economist Paul Samuelson once quipped, “Economists have successfully predicted nine of the last five recessions.”

The human psyche seems to have a powerful underlying need to predict doom and gloom.”

“On Wall Street, investors who have this habit are known as “perma-bears” and generally are predicting the imminent col- lapse of the stock market. This habit keeps them from being fully invested. Sure, they’re well protected during the occasional crash of 1929 or 2000, but by and large they massively under- perform their peers who take advantage of the fact that most years, the economy grows, and the market goes up. They have disappointing careers and die unhappy and bitter."

“In reality it seems very difficult to predict either a bubble or a crash.

Lots of people predicted a stock market crash... in 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, and 1999. They were correct in 2000. But as soon as the stock market recovered in 2003 and 2004, they were back at it, and there have been similar predictions from noted pundits ever since — incorrectly.”

“Similarly, in the technology industry, there were people calling a bubble starting in 1995 and continuing through to 2000, with a short break for about two years, and then more bubble-calling ever since.”

“If you’re going to listen to people who predict bubbles or crashes, you have to be ready to stay completely out of the market — the stock market, and the technology industry — almost every year of your life.

Second, historically, bubbles are very, very rare.

It’s significant that in books and papers that talk about bubbles, there are simply not that many examples over the past 500 years of capitalism. “

“People laughed when Fox bought MySpace for $580 million, but that’s a business that will generate nearly $300 million in revenue in 2007, and more in 2008.

As an independent asset today, MySpace would probably be valued at between $3 billion and $5 billion today — perhaps higher.

Call that the deal of the decade.

Similarly, Facebook is bringing in a lot more revenue than people think.

And then there’s Google.

These companies aren’t pulling in all that revenue via some kind of Ponzi scheme.

This is money coming from real advertisers and real users for real services with real value. Which makes total sense, amid the enormous mass migration of consumer time and attention away from traditional media towards online media.

These same factors apply all the way down the foodchain.”