If you’re not familiar with the “996” acronym in China, it stands for working from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. six days each week. Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba, seemed to have hit a nerve last week when he remarked on WeChat: “I personally think that being able to work 996 is a huge blessing.” …more
In this era of mega venture rounds — think SoftBank feeding $535M to DoorDash to make sure you can receive that dish of soft-serve yogurt without ever leaving your lazy boy chair — one can become cavalier about a startup securing a measly $100M in venture funding. Fortune even wrote a story in August called …more
I wrote an opinion piece in VentureBeat a few years back titled, “Attention U.S. Startups, Don’t Ignore China.” The punchline — Virtually every startup should have a China strategy. Fast forwarding to today, startups in the U.S. are starting to back off in China. This assessment isn’t based on data; it’s more anecdotal and a …more
And people say my PowerPoint decks are too long. This year’s treatise on the internet from Mary Meeker weighs in at 294 slides. After reviewing the presentation, I’ve captured the slides that got my attention. Take Immigrants Out of the U.S. Tech Industry, and the Equation Changes . Thought Bubble: At a time when …more
One of the top VC firms in Silicon Valley, Sequoia Capital, has a message for its portfolio of startups and the rest of the startup community in Silicon Valley: Stop your bellyaching. Get your butt off the couch and back to working 24/7. If you don’t, startups from China are going to take your lunch …more
As part of celebrating the Agency’s 30-year anniversary later this year, I will periodically play the nostalgia card in the blog. Such is the case today. In the course of digging through old client files, I came across the news release from our first press conference in New York City for client Meridian Data. Before …more
Yesterday marked the three-year anniversary since VentureBeat and Jolie O’Dell’s focus group of one correlated expensive toast to the decline of San Francisco. The O’Dell discourse came with jagged edges, damning the tech industry for a cycle that goes something like this: Someone creates a business for consumers with too much money and pretensions of …more
Why don’t companies care about job descriptions? It makes no sense. Every company claims “people are our most valuable asset.” Every company is fighting competitors for talent. Every company recognizes that first impressions count. Yet, most companies churn out job descriptions that sound like they came from the same HR 101 handbook. The end result …more
In the world of startups, there’s truth to the cliché, “Ignorance is bliss.” If the founders truly understood what was ahead of them — the agony of pushing the boulder up the hill only to have it backslide over one’s toes — many wouldn’t choose such a path. The founders’ combination of smarts, energy, optimism …more
