We should harness SBF to catalyze global finance for the purposes of social good, instead of merely putting him in jail. Green Eggs and Ham I guess numerous assorted lawyers, traders and financial guys are watching the trial of Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF). You know the wunderkind multibillionaire who minted it all on his ownsome and is now on trial f...
What’s the Point? You can predict the value that nonprofits and government are creating by assessing the value-adding behaviors of their leaders. Full disclosure: This references my research into the financial styles of CEOs (see “The Three Financial Styles of Very Successful CEOs”) Government Childcare Program Not Working (Gasp) Did you see this...
Who Knew? This is the very week that Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos went into space (or near as) and Elon Musk has booked a suborbital flight on Virgin Galactic for a time yet to be announced. Yet the press coverage has been at best muted and occasionally disparaging. As in, they didn’t actually go into real space, just a 3-minute taste of minima...
Uh oh, GE just warned of another year of falling profits. It recently sold off its BioPharma unit making investors feel a bit better, until they realized things were still getting worse. GE needed to do something after cutting its dividend and reporting a huge loss. Jack Welch would be turning in his grave except for the fact that he’s alive. Do ...
The amazing Musk has done it again with the Falcon Heavy! Is it possible he did even more than he told us? According to news reports the original SpaceX launch plan was to get into Mars’ orbit, but the space module overshot and is now on its way to the asteroid belt, where it would presumably be lost. Such a pity. Hmm now let me see. Overshoot?...
So we didn’t expect Amazon to do the Whole Foods thing right? Bezos is an unpredictable guy. Reminds me of Elon Musk, Richard Branson, even (especially) Donald Trump. Unpredictable to a fault. Never know what they’re gonna do next. The traditional leadership canon teaches that leaders should be predictable; authentic they call it. But what I see is...
Recently I posted on the huge impact noise pollution is having on human moods globally, including making us all incredibly crabby. (“Does noise cause global dysfunction in human mood?”). Coincidentally (?) the Washington Post followed my article with its own about noise pollution, even in the national parks (“Human noise pollution is everywhere, ev...
We Americans are obsessed by celebrities. Many of them have lots of moolah. So I’m sure you took notice of the recent announcements that Leonardo DiCaprio has joined a Boston VC firm. Maybe you also happened to notice another recent announcement that Kobe Bryant had launched a $100 MM VC fund, with one Jeff Stibel. This is just the tip of the icebe...
So I’m sure you’ve heard about the MOOCs – massively open online courses? There’s a bunch of them now like Udacity and Coursera. Many universities are adding new online course offerings powered by them. So the MOOCs are already doing a little to disrupt the university scene. But so far they haven’t had a fundamental impact, notwithstanding recent m...
Is this the elephant in the room? Trump's frequent allusions to his vast wealth and to how smart he is sounds awfully like the rich son who inherited it all but wants to convince everyone else – and himself – that really he did it all himself. So I thought I would do an analysis of this question. I think I’m well qualified to do that. For the past ...
Apologies to Al Gore for another inconvenient truth. There’s been a lot of talk about alpha these days, but not just about investments. Trump, Putin - alpha is definitely in vogue. As in alpha male. Like Tarzan. Does that tell us something about the investing world? Yep it does. Check out my book The Three Financial Styles of Very Successful Leader...
Unicorns are so….fashionable. You know what they are right? Startups valued at at least $1 billion, amazing right?. Right now in the US there are over 80 unicorns, mainly in Silicon Valley. One of them, Square, just went public at a valuation of $6 billion which was felt to be a low figure now. Hmmm. Now there are so many unicorns that there is a n...
See, everyone’s talking about the emerging (or emerged) bubble in startup valuations. My thesis: there are now far fewer startups so valuations have to go up. Duh. So you thought the number of startups was rising? All those Silicon Valley startups, every university having courses in entrepreneurship? Think again. You are totally wrong. Check out th...
Do you have to be smart (as in high IQ) to be rich? You’d think that the answer would have to be yes. And you also have to believe that any research showing this, or the opposite, would have to be famous. You would be wrong on both counts, at least if you look at a piece of research published in 2007 by one Dr. Jay Zagorsky of Ohio State University...
