Sun Tzu was awesome at getting the reader’s attention. If you want someone to listen to you, try opening with: “There are 3 ways in which you can screw everything up.” Absolutely brilliant.

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This is one of the most consistent mistakes that Bitcoin critics make. They think that the main benefit of a network that no central authority owns is that appeals to “anarcho-libertarians.” This may be true, but it misses the GIANT point that a network that nobody owns, but everybody can contribute to and benefit from is a BIG DEAL. The Internet started out as far less functional than centrally controlled networks owned by everyone from AT&T to AOL. Today, the Internet has more than a thousand times more functionality than all those networks combined and has obliterated their relevance. Bitcoin is on its way to doing a similar thing:


Continuation to respond to Felix’s response to my annotation. First, it’s awesome to be debating with Felix Salmon who is a genius and among my very favorite bloggers and economists. Second, it’s even better to be doing it on RapGenius.

I’ll just make two extra points:
1. Complexity of platform and number of use cases does not have any correlation with developer adoption. See Taligent. Developers go where they think the money and users will be. The original NCSA web server, Twitter, and many other simple platforms prove that you can get massive adoption on a relatively narrow set of use cases with enough anticipated user adoption whereas Taligent proves that even maximum complexity and use cases will get you nowhere without the essential ingredients.
2. I think that Felix is way too early in dismissing Bitcoin’s adoption as a payment mechanism and I would be happy to make a Simon–Ehrlich style wager with him with parameters of his choosing.

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This is my favorite sentence in the entire piece. It’s hilariously appropriate that in the very opening sentence, he prepares the reader for everything that’s to follow. First, he attempts to establish that he is the authority on the Internet, because he’s been online for “2 decades.” Doing what, is a good question. Probably perusing text-based porn.

Next, he’s perplexed. He’s perplexed because the so called visionaries cannot see the plainly obvious fact that the Internet has an extremely limited future. The choice of the word “perplexed” is key because it prepares us for what comes next: a complete dismissal of everything that’s about to happen over the next 2 decades. So awesomely wrong. Better than listening to any great future visionary, we all would have done well to listen to Clifford Stoll and do the exact opposite.

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Specifically from $0.35/share to $14.25/share. The market cap growth was steeper (due to some dilution) from $29M to $1.65B.

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Generally when I discuss cash flow with entrepreneurs, the choice on when and whether to generate cash seems arbitrary to them (as it did to me when I was first CEO). How do you value growth vs. profit? Clearly, there is no exact science or formula. However, once you get into trouble in some aspect of your business, you will find yourself on the receiving end of lots of advice. Often this advice comes with a price tag or, rather, the price of the money that you raise is advice that you must take. Since nobody knows your business better than you, this can really suck. The only way out? Be cashflow positive. I am pretty sure this was what Kanye was talking about.

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This is me, Wes and Suh. I call him “Uncle Wes” though rather than his more famous moniker used by Jay-Z here.

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There’s something about the way that Easy says this line that makes it pop into my head in all kinds of business contexts. I always see people driving incredibly hard in some direction despite having no idea where they are going. The funniest thing about this with respect to “shareholder’s best interests” is how emotional everyone gets about their point of view even though the point of view often has very little basis in anything.

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It was not Andrew Mason.

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The key point is this post is that you need to listen to yourself and, despite getting lots of input when you are struggling, you should not abandon who you are. Kanye expresses both the logic and the emotion of the lesson perfectly in this couplet.

Nonetheless, after posting it I found myself on the receiving end of some snarky hatred for quoting Kanye. This saddens me, because Joshua seems to imply that my use of the quote was a gimmick when in reality it was Kanye’s words that inspired the post and I was merely giving him credit. It maddens me, because he seems to imply that hip hop artists have nothing to say about entrepreneurship. Would he have tweeted that nastiness if I’d quoted John Lennon?

In reality, I have learned far more about entrepreneurship from Kanye, Nas, and Jay-Z than I ever learned from Jim Collins, because Kanye, Nas and Jay-Z are actual entrepreneurs not just observers.

In response to that tweet, I say middle finger to the ceiling.

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