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Adventures in Capitalism

Thoughts on business, entrepreneurship, and life from a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and writer.

Quote of the Day: "He who has never learned to obey..."December 2

"He who has never learned to obey cannot be a good commander."
--The Big Aristotle, quoting the original Aristotle

I guess Shaq really is a philosopher!

Be Like Barack: 6 Lessons Marketers Can Learn From BarackObama.comNovember 30

A few weeks ago, my friend Ramit and I went through BarackObama.com to analyze what made the site so successful. Here were our conclusions.

1) The site is incredibly audience focused.
For example, the text of the site is largely second-person; rather prattling on about Barack Obama, BO.com puts things in terms of you, your life, and what you can do.

Another example can be found on the pages for various ethnic groups. On each page, the Obama "O" logo has been reworked to put it into ethnic context. Here's what appears on the Asian-American page:



Compare this to the same header on the Arab American section of the site:



And on each of these pages, the calls to action are specific to these communities.

2) It's not afraid to ask for the order.
The most prominent action on the site is to donate to the campaign. Think about how many Web sites fail to make it obvious how to close the sale. No such problems here.

Once you click on the donation link, you go to a donation page with no outbound links. Think about that...you must either donate or explicitly choose to leave the site by typing a new URL into the address bar. That's ratcheting up the pressure in

The Economist's Thanksgiving PrayerNovember 29

Photo provided by JOE M500

"Dear Global Economy, we thank thee for thy economies of scale, thy professional specialization, and thy international networks of trade under Ricardo's Law of Comparative Advantage, without which we would all starve to death while trying to assemble the ingredients for such a dinner as this. Amen."

Courtesy of the always brilliant Elie Yudkowsky at the Future of Humanity Institute.

Quote of the Day: Rescuing the EconomyNovember 28

The ruling Democrats have a choice: Rescue this economy to return it to market control. Or use this crisis to seize the commanding heights of the economy for the greater social good. Note: The latter has already been tried. The results are filed under "History, ash heap of."

--Charles Krauthammer

Being CEO Means More Than Riding Around On The Corporate JetNovember 16

I was absolutely flabbergasted to read this on Matthew Yglesias' blog this morning:

"I think that running a major company is largely a matter of riding around on the corporate jet."

Later, he writes:

"That a lot of the people succeeding in business are sort of frauds (needless to say, other people get rich by inventing stuff that turns out to be incredibly lucrative and that’s a whole different sort of thing) doesn’t detract from the fact that the most successful among them are good at being frauds and that most people couldn’t do nearly as well."

I'm not sure what's more insulting--the notion that being a corporate executive requires no worthwhile skill, or that the most important skill in business is being good at being a fraud.

It is astounding to me that the same writers who will excoriate people for oversimplifying policy issues (like the debate over school vouchers) will turn around and do exactly the same thing to business and economic issues. Do they realize their hypocrisy? They might as well be right-wing talk radio hosts.

I have worked with good CEOs and bad CEOs. I don't know whether or not management competence is relevant for a Fortune 500 company, but it makes a big difference in the startup world. My guess is that it makes a difference for big companies as