Profits Don’t Exist?

This morning, over a morning coffee meeting, a thought struck me. What if profits don’t really exist in startups?

Revelation: Littering vs. ….

I was fuming.  Pissed off at an old can, part of a larger composition of litter scattered along the sidewalk.  As I righteously wallowed humanity-hating, a thought struck me: for every 1 person who throws a can onto the sidewalk, there are at least 100 who walk by and complain about it.  What if…

Burningman: It’s Burning, Man

It’s all in the comma.  A pause.  A self-awareness.  A narcissistic pleasure of inhaling the echo of one’s voice.  Except it’s not – when everything is everywhere and anything is possible; when art, drugs, music, dancing, love, bitterness, crazy costumes, fire – when all of it crescendos into a roaring cacophonous kaleidoscope, then it becomes uniform white noise.  A tabula rasa.  Specs of dust in a dust storm painting your vision.  And then it’s you, in a cloud, alone with your thoughts.  This was my burn.

I’ve had several people ask me “What is Burningman?”  I can’t speak for others, but to me it’s about two things: 1) extreme respect for individuality and 2) self-awareness.

People…

I think today I realized: people are not malicious – they are just stupid. Myself included.

Realization: Why people always argue…

People argue because no statement ever accurately describes reality.   I am going with the following assumptions:

• the goal of a conversation is to arrive at an accurate description of reality
• it is easier to observe deviation from reality than to articulate it

Clarification: For example, you and I observe a color and discuss its shade.  Assume that the shade is a 5 out of 10 where 0 is black and 10 is white.  Neither you, nor I have the ability to recognize a 5. At the same time, whatever the other party says, we are able to see that the other party is incorrect and we can respond in an effort to bring us closer to reality.  So how how does the debate progress?