Matt Mireles

If Money Doesn't Make You Happy, Consider Time | Stanford Graduate School of Business

Mon, 28 May 2012 21:17:38 -0700

If Money Doesn't Make You Happy, Consider Time | Stanford Graduate School of Business:

(via Instapaper)

A shadow of myself. (Taken with Instagram at Fishing Pier at...

Tue, 22 May 2012 18:29:54 -0700

A shadow of myself. (Taken with Instagram at Fishing Pier at Crissy Field)

Facebook on Vision.

Wed, 09 May 2012 07:11:03 -0700

Facebook on Vision.

The only (and obvious) takeaway is to build an app that delivers long-term value. Something that...

Tue, 08 May 2012 23:18:56 -0700

The only (and obvious) takeaway is to build an app that delivers long-term value. Something that people use every day… People are less forgiving of apps that don’t deliver long-term value. Don’t worry about getting featured. That’s a second-order effect. Getting featured can get asses in the seats. But it’s no good if those asses leave.

Your parents don't want what is best for you.

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 22:25:00 -0700

Your parents don’t want what is best for you. They want what is good for you, which isn’t always the same thing. There is a natural instinct to protect our children from risk and discomfort, and therefore to urge safe choices. Theodore Roosevelt—soldier, explorer, president—once remarked, “It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.” Great quote, but I am willing to bet that Teddy’s mother wanted him to be a doctor or a lawyer.

Angry shark. Red sea. (Taken with instagram)

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 12:34:49 -0700

Angry shark. Red sea. (Taken with instagram)

"Competition can make for better learning and education. Sometimes credentials do reflect significant..."

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 00:54:56 -0700

“Competition can make for better learning and education. Sometimes credentials do reflect significant degrees of accomplishment. But the worry is that people make a habit of chasing them. Too often, we seem to forget that it’s genuine accomplishment we’re after, and we just train people to compete forever.”

Be Hated

Sat, 14 Apr 2012 22:23:14 -0700

Be hated.

It’s not as easy as it sounds. Do you know anyone who hates you? Yet every great figure who has contributed to the human race has been hated, not just by one person, but often by a great many. That hatred is so strong it has caused those great figures to be shunned, abused, murdered and in one famous instance, nailed to a cross.

One does not have to be evil to be hated. In fact, it’s often the case that one is hated precisely because one is trying to do right by one’s own convictions. It is far too easy to be liked, one merely has to be accommodating and hold no strong convictions. Then one will gravitate towards the centre and settle into the average. That cannot be your role. There are a great many bad people in the world, and if you are not offending them, you must be bad yourself. Popularity is a sure sign that you are doing something wrong.

How to Fail: Mark Pincus

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 16:07:45 -0700

I’m sometimes called a serial entrepreneur, but that’s only because, before Zynga (ZNGA), I failed to create a sustainable company. After starting two companies in the ’90s, I had a social networking startup, Tribe.net, in 2003. One of the things I try to instill at Zynga is to fail fast, look at the data, and move on, and at Tribe I failed to do that. We came up with ideas purely based on intuition, and it could take us three to six months to build it and launch. Those bullets were expensive, and many of them were not on target. Tribe reached the point where the investors literally gave up, resigned from the board, and walked away. It was just me, my team, and a creditor. We ended up selling the company to Cisco (CSCO) and paying back all that debt.

One thing I learned is that while your vision should never change, you should keep trying different strategies until one works. If you can fine-tune your instinct and have confidence in it, then you can keep taking different bites of the apple and keep approaching the problem in different ways until you get it right. I did that with Tribe, pursuing the social opportunity from multiple angles. I invested in Twitter and Facebook and bought a social networking patent in 2004.

I think failing is the best way to keep you grounded, curious, and humble. Success is dangerous because often you don’t understand why you succeeded. You almost always know why you’ve failed. You have a lot of time to think about it.

"I think failing is the best way to keep you grounded, curious, and humble. Success is dangerous..."

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 06:10:15 -0700

“I think failing is the best way to keep you grounded, curious, and humble. Success is dangerous because often you don’t understand why you succeeded. You almost always know why you’ve failed. You have a lot of time to think about it”

- Mark Pincus: How to Fail

textsfromhillaryclinton: Source: Joey deVilla/Global...

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 16:38:09 -0700

textsfromhillaryclinton:

Source: Joey deVilla/Global Nerdy

Original image by Diana Walker for Time.

The Two American Economies

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 21:33:09 -0700

There are two interrelated American economies. On the one hand, there is the globalized tradable sector — companies that have to compete with everybody everywhere. These companies, with the sword of foreign competition hanging over them, have become relentlessly dynamic and very (sometimes brutally) efficient.

On the other hand, there is a large sector of the economy that does not face this global competition — health care, education and government. Leaders in this economy try to improve productivity and use new technologies, but they are not compelled by do-or-die pressure, and their pace of change is slower.

A rift is opening up. The first, globalized sector is producing a lot of the productivity gains, but it is not producing a lot of the jobs. The second more protected sector is producing more jobs, but not as many productivity gains. The hypercompetitive globalized economy generates enormous profits, while the second, less tradable economy is where more Americans actually live.

"Web 2.0 Ends With Data Monopolies"

Thu, 05 Apr 2012 07:00:00 -0700

“Web 2.0 Ends With Data Monopolies”

Getting Older

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 01:29:53 -0700

“It’s harder to remember ‘what’s really important’. I don’t just feel lucky just to be alive and happy. I want more. I think about what I don’t have. I treat everything in my work life with a seriousness and anxiety that’s not appropriate to the real stakes involved.”

Father & Son. (Taken with instagram)

Sun, 25 Mar 2012 12:55:42 -0700

Father & Son. (Taken with instagram)

Photo

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 15:06:57 -0700

Mad Men, Honestly So

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 01:35:00 -0700

“Mad Men” distinguished itself by depicting not just the fashion of the 1960s but also the attitudes that are now so unfashionable. The show’s creator, Matthew Weiner, found a sly, satirical way to revive the crudest forms of sexism and prejudice that were typical then but are nowadays carefully airbrushed out of television.

Old attitudes about race in particular are so distasteful that it’s become almost taboo to show them, even in the past tense. So most shows refract unsavory times through a contemporary lens, often bending reality to showcase a main character’s ahistoric decency and open-mindedness.

It’s the show’s willingness to put its characters in the context of the times, and not whitewash the white men, that gives it an edge and keeps a drama that in its fifth season has gotten — let’s face it — a little old and soapy, interesting to watch.

Goldman Sachs Elevator Gossip.

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 13:03:15 -0700

Goldman Sachs Elevator Gossip.

An elite education inculcates a false sense of self-worth. Getting to an elite college, being at an...

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 23:30:39 -0800

An elite education inculcates a false sense of self-worth. Getting to an elite college, being at an elite college, and going on from an elite college—all involve numerical rankings: SAT, GPA, GRE. You learn to think of yourself in terms of those numbers. They come to signify not only your fate, but your identity; not only your identity, but your value. It’s been said that what those tests really measure is your ability to take tests, but even if they measure something real, it is only a small slice of the real. The problem begins when students are encouraged to forget this truth, when academic excellence becomes excellence in some absolute sense, when “better at X” becomes simply “better.”

Father and son after a long day. (Taken with Instagram at CPMC...

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 19:49:07 -0800

Father and son after a long day. (Taken with Instagram at CPMC Labor and Delivery)