Follow Your Different
183 Life Is In The Transitions | Bruce Feiler, 7X NY Times Bestselling Author
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:25:48 — 58.9MB) | Embed
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | RSS | More
Bruce Feiler is a legendary thinker and writer and unlike in a normal interview, we go deep in this episode. Bruce has a monster new book out called Life Is in the Transitions. Today, we have a very big conversation about what Bruce calls “life quakes,” both voluntary (new job, getting married, moving) and involuntary (death of a loved one, loss of a job, divorce, etc).
We also talk about why the linear, up and to the right “hero story” we get told about life is bullshit, why C19 is a collective, involuntary, life quake, what that means for all of us, and much more!
Life Quakes
Bruce shares how all the events that have occurred in his life led to his professional career today. He shares what he calls “life quakes” which pertains to a moment of big wrenching change that happens in one’s life.
This pandemic has coincided with his book, Life is in The Transitions, which asks “how do you deal with the life quakes that happen in your lives?” Bruce even shares the “life quake” that he went through in order to have this mindset.
Involuntary and Voluntary
Bruce talks about how reading helped him discover the false narrative that is being blocked into human beings. He speaks about the narrative of life, being a linear path with only one bump along the way to success and happiness.
This has led Bruce to believe that 53% of life quakes are involuntary and only 47% are voluntary, which he further explains in this episode.
“I had to figure out what is going on now. How we see the world and how we need to update the way we look at our life. How do people tell their stories? This is what I uncovered. The linear life is dead. It’s been replaced by nonlinear life. The nonlinear life involves many more life transitions. That became the big idea that emerged from my experience.” – Bruce Feiler
Life Transitions
Bruce shares how life quakes can either be voluntary or involuntary. Life transitions, on the other hand, must be voluntary. He advises people to make decisions that will bring back the power to control one’s life.
In addition, he discusses how finding a higher calling can make you feel part of the team. A team that will help you get through your life transition together. It may rather be a rough and painful journey but it is a road paved with growth and renewal.
“If we look at life transitions as periods that we have to suffer our way through, we are wasting half of our life. If we look at them as periods, they’re going to be difficult and painful, but there’s also opportunities for growth and renewal. That’s the story of your life.” – Bruce Feiler
To know more about life quakes and the transitions that come with it, listen to this episode.
Bio:
BRUCE FEILER is one of America’s most popular voices in contemporary life.
He is the author of seven New York Times bestsellers; the presenter of two prime-time series on PBS; and the inspiration for the drama COUNCIL OF DADS on NBC.
Bruce’s two TED Talks have been viewed more than two million times. Employing a firsthand approach to his work, Bruce is known for living the experiences he writes about. His work combines timeless wisdom with timely knowledge turned into practical, positive messages that allow people to live with more meaning, passion, and joy.
His new book, LIFE IS IN THE TRANSITIONS: Mastering Change at Any Age, describes his journey across America, collecting hundreds of life stories, exploring how we can navigate the growing number of life transitions with greater purpose and skill. “One of those books that’s so profoundly aligned with the zeitgeist that you end up underlining the whole book,” wrote Arianna Huffington in Thrive Global. “Bruce Feiler is the perfect person to lead us on this journey.”
The book was a Top 10 New York Times bestseller.
For more than a decade, Bruce has explored the intersection of families, relationships, health, and happiness. His book THE SECRETS OF HAPPY FAMILIES collects best practices from some of the country’s most creative minds. The book was featured on World News, GMA, and TODAY and excerpted in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and Parade. THE COUNCIL OF DADS describes how, faced with one of life’s greatest challenges, he asked six friends to support his young daughters.
The book was profiled in PEOPLE, USA Today, and Time and was the subject of a CNN documentary hosted by Dr. Sanjay Gupta.
Links:
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes! Get amazing, different stories on business, marketing, and life. Subscribe to our newsletter The Difference.
182 From Unicorn Companies To Camels w/ Matthew Cowan, Next47 Venture Capitalist
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 55:58 — 38.4MB) | Embed
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | RSS | More
Today, we have none other than Matthew Cowan of Next47. Matthew and Chris have known each other for almost 20 years now. He’s been both an investor and an entrepreneur and has invested in a lot of category queens and kings companies.
In this episode, we have a wide-ranging conversation with Matthew about venture capital, entrepreneurship, and a whole lot more.
How The Future Looks Like
Matthew shares that the first question we have to take into consideration is with respect to opportunities. Every evaluation should start with the question: can businesses scale and grow in the current economic environment?
He cites his company as an example, Visible, a platform that has an event management software. Prior to Covid19, they had their fair share of challenges. However, they found themselves on the positive side of this “new normal” as most companies shifted their conferences and events virtually.
“All of our customers said, ‘look, I know we can’t do these events in person, we still have to do these events. These are mission-critical for our customer relationships, and our forward progress. So we need you to help us figure out how to do events in a virtual construct.’ So very quickly Visible figured out a way to deliver you know, near term and experience that satisfies, you know, the key market requirements, and they just closed their best quarter ever by a factor of two x.” – Matthew Cowan
Invest In Product Development
Today is a great time for investors to think about the early stages of a new product. Further, Matthew says this is a good time to invest in a team of engineers, lock them in, and come out with a new product to launch. He further shares why this stage of focus is critical for businesses.
“It’s okay to lose a lot of money building a company you have to, but if your unit economics have never been positive, the only metric you’re going to do is figure out how fast you can burn cash.” – Matthew Cowan
The Wrong and Right Way In Investing
Chris cites that there is a wrong and the right way in investing. Obviously the right way is investing in things that hopefully payoff overtime and the wrong way is in unit economics that will not be fixed. Matthew agrees to Chris saying that the greater fool theory is asking: “how do I just get this to the next level and get someone else to buy it — market investors, private equity firms, and others.
“I think we’re at the beginning of what’s going to be an incredible wave of continued consolidation. We’ll probably see that with the scooter companies, as well. Ride-sharing. Companies have to figure out how to create, you know, improve utilization. The way that these businesses could succeed is delivery, density, and utilization. For them to figure out a way to keep the cars full.” – Matthew Cowan on Uber
To know more about Matthew Cowan and unicorn and camel VCs, download and listen to this episode.
Bio:
Matthew joined Next47 in 2018 and is based in Palo Alto. His investment focus runs the gamut from the high-growth supply and logistics market to vertical software applications for the enterprise.
Though Matthew is a General Partner in the U.S., he also leads the firm’s activities in Israel and views the region as a vital source for deep tech startup activity.
Before joining Next47, Matthew was the CEO and co-founder of Breezeworks, a mobile CRM platform for small business owners.
Prior to Breezeworks, he was the co-founder of Bridgescale Partners, a late-stage venture capital fund with investments in companies such as BitGo, Jasper Wireless, Plum Organics and Proofpoint.
Matthew was also the founding General Partner of Bowman Capital’s venture capital group, where he was responsible for leading investments in Arrowpoint Communications (sold to Cisco), Atheros (NASDAQ: ATHR), Broadbase (sold to Kana), epinions (sold to eBay), FastForward Networks (sold to Inktomi), Onebox (sold to Phone.com), ONI Systems (sold to Ciena), RemarQ (sold to Critical Path), SupportSoft (NASDAQ: SPRT), Sycamore Networks (NASDAQ: SCMR) and The Street.com (NASDAQ: TSCM).
Matthew spent the earlier part of his career at Intel Corporation, where he was responsible for investments in CMGI (NASDAQ: CMGI), CNET (sold to CBS), Geocities (sold to Yahoo!), Illustra (sold to Informix), iVillage (sold to NBC), Launch Media (sold to Yahoo!), Liquid Audio and Sportsline, among others.
Matthew holds a BA from Tufts University.
Links:
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes! Get amazing, different stories on business, marketing, and life. Subscribe to our newsletter The Difference.
181 How To Build Legendary Software | Tim Tully CTO of Splunk
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 57:45 — 39.7MB) | Embed
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | RSS | More
Tim Tully is one of the most legendary technologies and product leaders of this generation. He is the Chief Technology Officer of $35 billion market cap company Splunk. He also runs the engineering, product, and tech operations.
In this episode, we get into all of it, how to execute a big, bold product vision, what it takes to run a major technology organization in the era of COVID. Find out why Tim thinks that software needs to be indulgent in the way that it delivers an experience and much more.
Born To Code
Tim was at Yahoo for years. He did a ton for Yahoo’s modern business. Most notably, Tim was on the team that helped to create the open-source database Hadoop. If you’re in the tech world, you know how big a deal that is. If you’re not, well Google it and you’ll see but Hadoop is a major contribution to the data world.
He shares in this episode how he grew up from a “tech household,” as both his parents were programmers from Silicon Valley in the 70s.
“Obviously coding is one way that I can do a lot of things in a very flexible way and have a lot of control over a system.” – Tim Tully
Inside Tim’s Mind
Tim shares that his thoughts are classified into two things: what he wants to try to do next or what am he wants to try to improve. He is in constant search of how to improve things and how to solve a problem in front of him. He shares that although its innate in him to solve problems on his own, the real challenge of leading a team is how to help your team solve the problems with you.
“If you’re like a true engineer, it’s really hard to let go of just solving every problem yourself. You have to very quickly learn that there’s a team that needs to get the job done. You’re not helping the team by solving the problem for them. What your job is to remove roadblocks and help them solve the problem and bring them along.” – Tim Tully
Leading The Team
Tim also shares how he as Splunk’s CTO is responsible not only for vision but also for delivering products since he is also the head of engineering. He gave a great insight into how his team works and ultimately, how he leads his team of champions.
“I learned over time is the very best architects that you can have in a company, I think we have that here at Splunk. You know, they obviously have high IQ, but they have to have high EQ because the problem is they have to be able to influence and persuade large swaths of people without directly managing them.” – Tim Tully
To know more about Tim Tully and how to build a legendary software, download and listen to this episode.
Bio:
Tim has served as Splunk’s Chief Technology Officer since 2017.
Prior to joining Splunk, he spent 14 years at Yahoo in various roles, including leading engineering for the Media Organization, where his teams developed leading brands such as Yahoo.com, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, Yahoo Fantasy, Tumblr, Huffington Post, and Flurry.
He previously served as Yahoo’s Chief Data Architect, where he led architecture across all data teams and developed much of that stack as well.
Before that, Tim served as a Member of Technical Staff at Sun Microsystems in the JavaSoft team.
Tim holds an M.S. from Carnegie Mellon University and a B.S. from the University of California, Davis.
Links:
Linkedin: Timothy Tully
Splunk CEO Doug Merritt on Episode 166
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes! Get amazing, different stories on business, marketing, and life. Subscribe to our newsletter The Difference.
180 Feel Good Voting | Andy Roo Forrest
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:21:43 — 56.1MB) | Embed
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | RSS | More
Today, we speak with entrepreneur turned activist Andy Roo Forrest. He is the founder of a fascinating nonprofit called FeelGoodVoting.org who is on a mission is to get more people in the United States to vote. We dig into why there is a low voter turnout in the past elections, and most importantly, what can be done about it now.
Andy and Chris also talk about how political attacks actually destroy the category called “politician.” Moreover, why this “attacks” drives disengagement and dissatisfaction among the voters. Lastly, find out how Feel Good Voting is creatively and innovatively using social media to encourage people to register and to vote.
Apathy For President
Did you know who won the last election in the United States? We all know that President Donald Trump won the electoral college and that’s why he’s president, garnering a total of 63 million votes. Hillary Clinton got 66 million votes.
“But here’s the truth. Neither one of them is the real winner of the last election in the United States. You see, apathy got 100 million votes because 100 million people did not vote in the 2016 US presidential election in the United States.” – Christopher Lochhead
Age and Family Background
Andy shares about a recent study from Knight Foundation, surveying 14,000 people and why they didn’t vote. One thing was clear, most of those belong to the 18 to 30 age group. The participants also noted a few more reasons such as “my vote won’t matter,” it doesn’t make a difference,” or “I don’t understand what’s going on,” and “I shouldn’t vote because I don’t know enough.”
“A lot of people voted because they grew up in a family where their parents took them to the polling station. They remember their mom voting, and they went into a booth and pulled the curtain, and flipped the levers. A lot of people who don’t vote have no tradition of that in their family.” – Andy Roo Forrest
Old, White Voters
There are a lot of factors at play for the upcoming elections since Covid-19 happened. The average voting age is 58 years old. It can be noted that over 65-year old, white voters take a huge chunk of the voting turn-up.
“It boggles some of our minds that there’s many white, older Americans who are right now deciding whether they’re going to vote for Trump or Biden, that might seem that decision might seem preposterous to many of us. But most of the money in this campaign, upwards of $2 billion is going to be spent on that demographic because they show up and vote. – Andy Roo Forrest
To know more about Andy Roo Forrest and his organization Feel Good Voting, download and listen to this episode.
Bio:
Andy Roo Forrest is a serial entrepreneur, songwriter, and social change activist.
He has created restaurants, nightclubs, design studios, publishing companies, Disney Theme Park attractions, and a few experiences that don’t have names.
In 1999 Andy co-founded the world’s most prolific board game design studio, which he sold in 2019.
At the moment, he is currently the Executive Director of Feel Good Voting, an issues-based media initiative dedicated to the advancement of social justice and environmental action.
Links:
Feel Good Voting 3-minute video
Feel Good Voting Strategy Brief
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes! Get amazing, different stories on business, marketing, and life. Subscribe to our newsletter The Difference.
179 Black Entrepreneurs Matter / Women Entrepreneurs Matter w/ UCSC Prof. Robert Fairlie
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 52:30 — 36.0MB) | Embed
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | RSS | More
Why is there a disproportionate impact against Black-owned and Women-owned Businesses?
Today in Follow your Different, Robert Fairlie, a professor at the University of California and a researcher for the National Bureau of Economic Research, shares his research on the impact of Coronavirus on small businesses and black and women-owned businesses.
Impact of COVID-19
Rob shares the alarming figures that small businesses faced. From 15 million active businesses to 12 million, to the 15% unemployment rate in just one month (Bureau of Labor Statistics), Rob gives us facts and figures how devasting Covid-19 has impacted businesses.
“I think they are starting to get become more attention focused on the business side of it and the importance of business owners. Not only do they create a route out of poverty or an alternative for income but they also create jobs.” – Rob Fairlie
Impact on Black-owned Businesses
Prof. Farlie says that there is a hugely disproportionate impact between White-owned businesses and African American-owned businesses. According to the data found from February to April, there’s a 41% decrease of active African-American business owners compared to a 17% decrease of active White business owners.
“I’m just worried that this is going to increase racial inequality and gender inequality. It’s not just going to be for a few months as we deal with COVID, but it’s going to be longer. Retirements kind of maybe setting us back and that’s a bigger, much bigger worry.” – Rob Fairlie
Impact on Women-owned Businesses
One of the reasons why there is a bigger drop in women-owned businesses is because they are in industries that cater to personal services that were shut down because of health risks. Another reason is that women-owned businesses are often smaller in scale and they do not have the resources to face all the regulations to operate during the pandemic.
“There has been some new research and I’m working with a couple of co-authors to try to do a little more work on this. This shows that mothers are taking a disproportionate hit compared to fathers in terms of reducing their hours of work, dealing with children, dealing with homecare. This isn’t just evidence from the US, this is evidence from a lot of countries around the world.” – Rob Fairlie
To learn more about Prof. Rob Fairlie and the impact of COVID-19 on Black and Women-owned businesses, download and listen to this episode.
Bio:
Robert Fairlie is Professor of Economics at the University of California, Santa Cruz and Research Associate, NBER.
His research interests include entrepreneurship, education, information technology, inequality, labor economics, and immigration.
Further, he received his Ph.D. and M.A. from Northwestern University and B.A. with honors from Stanford University.
In addition to this, he has held visiting positions at Stanford University, Yale University, UC Berkeley and Australian National University. He has received funding for his research from numerous government agencies and foundations.
He has testified to the U.S. Senate, U.S. House of Representatives, U.S. Department of Treasury, and the California State Assembly regarding the findings from his research, and received a joint resolution from the California Legislature.
Links:
UCSC Economics Faculty: Professor Robert Fairlie
Research Papers on Impacts of COVID-19 on Small Business Owners
Senate Bill referencing research
THE IMPACT OF COVID-19 ON SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS: EVIDENCE OF EARLY-STAGE LOSSES FROM THE APRIL 2020 CURRENT POPULATION SURVEY
IZA Institute of Labor Economics: Robert Fairlie
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!
178 Transforming Education In The Era of Covid w/ Ted Dintersmith, Bestselling Author
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:26:09 — 59.2MB) | Embed
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | RSS | More
Today, we have a legendary conversation about schools and education. This is a topic that is not getting enough attention right now. With us today is Ted Dintersmith, the author of a great book called What School Could Be: Insights and Inspiration From Teachers Across America.
We talk about how we can make school work, especially today that we have a new reality. Ted has some powerful insights and some great ideas about that. We even get into how to make the weirdest school year in modern history as an opportunity to reimagine school and reimagine learning.
What School Could Be
Ted was with us back in 2019, at Episode 117, shortly after his book came out and he’s back as Chris digs into one of two important issues that we face today during Covid19, education. The other topic he will dive deep into is entrepreneurship. (Watch out for the next episode with the University of California. Santa Cruz, Professor Rob Fairley)
He’s been talking to a lot of the top educators in the country. Further, he gives us insights as we are standing on the edge of the new school year. If you care about our future, if you care about kids, if you care about education, I think you’re going to love this conversation with Ted.
Non-traditional Methods of Learning
Ted shares with Christopher how he checked back with parents, teachers, school administrators, and students when Covid19 started. One outstanding finding he got was that those who were practicing non-traditional methods of learning were optimistic during this time.
“The kids they work with were really good — pre-COVID — on identifying what they wanted to learn, turning that into an initiative. They wanted to manage their own time and draw out appropriate resources, other adults’ online stuff, and then sticking with it until they proved something they cared about. In my book, with no sense of a looming pandemic. I said this is a really important skill for adults.” – Ted Dintersmith
Anxiety and Stress
This time has caused much anxiety and stress for teachers and school administrators. There is no right formula and it involves a lot of variables in deciding how to operate schools come September.
Chris and Ted also discussed how “inconvenient” this set-up is for those who can privileged, but how devastating this set-up could be for a single-parent, juggling multiple jobs.
“Even if you had a great plan to reopen, it requires money. Now, you just start marching through everything that has to be done safely for you to say, here’s our plan to reopen. Here’s an effective transportation plan. Here’s an effective disinfected plan. Here’s how we’re going to staff classrooms, here’s what would happen to our students. Here’s how we’re going to add nurses on call. You look at everything that’s required and then you say, ‘oh, by the way, do it with even fewer budget dollars because state local budgets have been hammered.” – Ted Dintersmith
To know more about Ted and how school could be during Covid19, download and listen to this episode.
Bio:
Links:
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes! Get amazing, different stories on business, marketing, and life. Subscribe to our newsletter The Difference.
177 God: A Different Dialogue | Pastor Dave Ferguson
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:45:58 — 72.8MB) | Embed
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | RSS | More
Now you might be asking, why are we dealing with God on a business podcast? Well, first of all, if you’re a regular listener, you should know this is no normal business podcast. When this crisis started, we decided to steer right into this crisis, to frankly, help and scale ourselves to meet the challenge of this time.
In this episode, Pastor Dave Ferguson joins us to talk about God. He is an award-winning author and the founder/lead pastor of Chicago’s Community Christian Church. His book Hero Maker: Five Essential Practices For Leaders To Multiply Leaders is a must-read. Pay special attention to pastor Dave’s thoughts on what he thinks God wants for all of us.
Evil Cloaking As Christians
Chris shares with Pastor Dave what has been occupying his mind and heart in the past months. Aside from another recent family accident, Chris shares how the case of the murder of his best friend has finally come to a close. The Santa Cruz police brought his murder to justice after they captured the four murderers.
“The other thing you should know is, my dear friend Tushar, was a — and these are his words — a brown guy. They [murderers] we’re young, 19, 22, and 23. These men who murdered Tushar are white Baptists from Southern California.” – Christopher Lochhead
Too Much Evil In The World
Chris shares he does not expect anything from the baptist church, but at least a public denouncement of evil, especially after they learned that these murderers belonged to the said church. In fact, the father of one of the criminals is a pastor.
“But just like with the discussion around the police, Pastor Dave, are there bad police? Yes, there are. Are there bad Muslims? Yes, there are. Are there bad Christians? Yes, there are bad human beings. Evil is a very real thing.” – Christopher Lochhead
Having Important Conversations
Pastor David recounts to Chris a few stories he had about the racial disparity and the clamor for equality. He spoke about African-American pastors and colleagues and about his parents (also pastors) who also joined the movement to have important conversations in their congregation.
Pastor David also shares what he asks others from other people who are searching for meaning.
“For people that are really sincerely seeking, I’m going like ‘just continue to search that, continue to pursue that. If it’s real, because we’re talking about God, in this case, he’ll make himself real to you.’ In fact, I’ll even sometimes challenge people, ‘hey, take 30 days and just pray ‘God, if you’re real, make yourself real to me.’ There have been enough times in your history where God has proven himself real. He’s taking you down a really good path. He has consistently shown up.” – Pastor Dave Ferguson
To know more about God from a completely different kind of dialogue with Pastor Dave Ferguson, download and listen to this episode.
Bio:
Dave Ferguson is an award-winning author, founding and lead pastor of Chicago’s Community Christian Church, a missional multi-site community considered one of the most influential churches in America.
Dave is also the visionary for the international church-planting movement NewThing and president of the Exponential Conference.
You can get more information about Dave at www.daveferguson.org or check out his latest book, Hero Maker.
Links:
Book: Hero Maker: Five Essential Practices for Leaders to Multiply Leaders (Exponential Series)
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!
176 What is going on? | #1 Tech Analyst R “Ray” Wang Chairman Constellation Research
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:14:00 — 50.8MB) | Embed
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | RSS | More
In this episode, we have an amazing conversation with the world’s number one tech analyst, Ray Wang. He’s the founder of Constellation Research and the author of a spectacular, bestselling book called Disrupting Digital Business. We talk about what’s going on with C19, is C 19 a bioweapon, and what’s going on with bioweapons. We also talk about the digital giants and stock investing. Additionally, we talked about the future of enterprise tech and much more.
Is C19 A Bioweapon?
As a fan of conspiracy theory, Chris asked if indeed, Covid19 is a bioweapon. Ray shares it has not yet been addressed as of the moment but deconstructing the DNA of Covid19 says otherwise. He raised a serious call for treaties among countries as bioweapons are not a thing of the future.
“Do we have offensive or defensive capabilities? And the thought crosses through every government’s mind as to, what’s required? What’s within the limits? What treaties have we signed? So I don’t think it was intentional. I think the safety protocols were definitely broken. I think it’s not necessarily something they were planning to unleash. But it was something that they were studying.” – Ray Wang
Currency Crisis and Cryptocurrency
Ray also shares some of his views about the current “devaluing of dollars.” They also touched on the efforts of China and Russia to push forward the use of cryptocurrencies. Ray foresees issues with the use of cryptocurrencies, from currency exchange manipulation to funding of terrorists and untraceable purchase of ammunition.
“We’re seeing some massive shifts, and it’s really the attack on the dollar that has been happening for some time. It’s as if everybody is not in favor of the dollar being the world’s reserve currency.” – Ray Wang
Ransomware Gangs
Chris and Ray talk about some recent events where some personalities’ Twitter accounts got hacked and were asked to send back Bitcoin to get back their accounts. Aside from this, Ray shares a much deeper kind of attacks they receive, targeted to tech professionals like him.
“We have insider threats, people inside companies that have either been placed, recruited, or turned. I’ll say that again. They’ve been placed, recruited, scooted, or turned to work against the US, the country or a corporation. And this, we have cyber ransom spies going to work for government agencies and or corporations, with the foreign government agencies, whether knowingly or unknowingly, they have been told that, ‘hey, if you just stick into the drive over here, for a bunch of zero-day vulnerabilities, which we’ve packaged together very well, you can take out entire networks. And you can do your part, you know, in part of the revolution, or whatever revolution you’re in.’” – Ray Wang
To know more about Ray Wang and what’s going on in the world and tech world today, download and listen to this episode.
Bio:
R “Ray” Wang (pronounced WAHNG) is the Principal Analyst, Founder, and Chairman of Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research, Inc.
He’s also the author of the popular business strategy and technology blog “A Software Insider’s Point of View”.
With viewership in the 10’s of millions of page views a year, his blog provides insight into how disruptive technologies and new business models such as digital transformation impact brands, enterprises, and organizations.
Wang has held executive roles in product, marketing, strategy, and consulting at companies such as Forrester Research, Oracle, PeopleSoft, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, and Johns Hopkins Hospital.
His new best selling book Disrupting Digital Business, published by Harvard Business Review Press and now globally available provides insights on why 52% of the Fortune 500 have been merged, acquired, gone bankrupt, or fallen off the list since 2000.
In fact, this impact of digital disruption is real. However, it’s not the technologies that drive this change. It’s a shift in how new business models are created.
Wang has held executive roles in product, marketing, strategy, and consulting at companies such as Forrester Research, Oracle, PeopleSoft, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, Personify, and Johns Hopkins Hospital. He is a prominent and dynamic keynote speaker and research analyst working with clients on digital, innovation, business model design, engagement strategies, customer experience, matrix commerce, and big data.
His Silicon Valley research firm, Constellation Research, Inc., advises Global 2000 companies on the future, business strategy, and disruptive technology adoption.
Ray is a regular contributor to Harvard Business Review and well quoted in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Bloomberg, CNBC TV, Reuters, IDG News Service, and other global media outlets. Wang has thrice won the prestigious Institute of Industry Analyst Relations (IIAR) Analyst of the Year Award.
Links:
Constellation.com – R Ray Wang
Personal Log: Understanding Case Fatality Rates For #COVID19 #CoronaVirus
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!
175 The Startup Community Way w/ Brad Feld
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:10:44 — 48.6MB) | Embed
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | RSS | More
Today, we continue our run on top venture capitalists with none other than the legend, Brad Feld. He’s the co-founder of Foundry Group and Tech Stars. He’s on the Forbes Midas List and a Top Five Investor. He has a new book called The Startup Community Way.
We have wide-ranging conversations from C19, making sense of this time of hyper change complex adaptive systems, the future of startups Silicon Valley and work, and why Brad is not leaving his house. Pay special attention to Brad’s thoughts on how to deal with an unpredicted situation and where it can feel like we have a lot less control.
The Three Crises
Brad shares what’s on his mind at the moment, how he has stepped forward to help the governor of Colorado without leaving the confines of his home, and how he has pondered upon the three crises of the world today.
“I referred to the health crisis, which is COVID, which generated an economic crisis, which we wouldn’t have had otherwise, our economy was very strong, which has generated a mental health crisis and which is subsequently generated. racial equity crisis. All of these things are interacting with each other.” – Brad Feld
Complex Adaptive Systems
Brad shares how he realized that all of these crises were complex systems. In fact, in his book, The Startup Community Way, he bases the entire framework of how startup communities develop and evolve on complexity theory and the notion of complex adaptive systems.
“I’ve really been soaked in that intellectually, not just in the COVID crisis, not just in the book, not just in all the dynamics around the businesses that I’m involved in, and I’m an investor in, but just sort of thinking about how as humans, we do such a bad job of understanding how to interact with complex systems. We want everything to become deterministic, linear or well defined and the vast majority of stuff we interact with isn’t.” – Brad Feld
Simple and Complex Systems
Simple is making a coffee drink, complicated is designing a Boeing airplane, or conducting a business audit, and complex is raising a child.
“I think a lot of people have been operating against the backdrop of believing that a lot of things are deterministic and predictive, and trying to function in a way where that is not natural. As humans, we want to control stuff. You want to understand what it is you want to do, fix things so that you’re not fighting against them and you want to get to an outcome and you want to set a goal and make a goal.” – Brad Feld
To know more about Brad Feld, download and listen to this episode.
Bio:
Brad Feld is co-founder of the Foundry Group and has been an early-stage investor and entrepreneur since 1987.
Brad previously co-founded Mobius Venture Capital and Techstars, and prior to that, founded Intensity Ventures.
Feld was an early investor in Harmonix, Zynga, MakerBot, and Fitbit.
A writer and speaker on venture capital investing and entrepreneurship, Brad has written a number of books as part of the Startup Revolution series, and writes the blogs Feld Thoughts and Venture Deals.
He currently is chair of the National Center for Women & Information Technology and on the boards of Path Forward, the Kauffman Fellows, and Defy Ventures.
Brad holds a Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees in Management Science from MIT.
An art collector and long-distance runner, he has completed 25 marathons as part of his mission to finish a marathon in each of the 50 U.S. states. He lives in Boulder, Colorado.
Links:
The Foundry Group Team – Brad Feld
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!
