My life has revolved around people, negotiations, deals, and family. These maxims I created reflect scars in my stomach gained along the way and lessons (hopefully) learned.
On Start-Ups
- Start-ups are time and emotion vampires.
- Cash is a proxy for time; time is a proxy for opportunity.
- Being a Founder is a fact; not a job description.
- Miracles still happen; but not often enough to include them in your business plan.
On Negotiations
- God gave us one mouth and two ears; the ratio wasn’t an accident.
- Propinquity counts.
- Deals, like the universe, tend toward entropy.
- Time is the invisible but palpable enemy.
- Emails don’t create dialogue; they create sequential monologue.
- Ideally, negotiation is a cultivated, mutual education and exploration process.
- Every Seller’s mantra is “certainty” and “confidentiality.”
- Always leave them laughing.
- I’d rather be a salmon spawning downstream than upstream.
- It’s better to have some percentage of something than 100% of nothing.
- Pandering and groveling are underrated virtues.
- All buyers and sellers are not created equal.
- Maximize your optionalities.
- Structure unexamined becomes stricture.
- It’s easier to resolve issues by monetizing them instead of conceptualizing them.
On Business, Law, and Communication
- An expectation unarticulated is a disappointment guaranteed.
- Great management knows that power is obligation; not privilege.
- If you put your head in the lion’s mouth often enough, eventually the lion wins.
- Work flows to the competent.
- Clients want lawyers; not layers.
- Tomorrow’s legal world will be more driven by Moore’s Law and less by Napoleon’s.
- Humor doesn’t forward well.
- People learn better going from concrete to abstract rather than abstract to concrete.
On Investment
- When people are paying tulip bulb prices, and you own tulip bulbs, you should sell them.
- You can only spend the same dollar one time. And you can only spend the same hour one time.
On Capital
- What matters isn’t price; what matters is availability.
- A boy’s best friend is his banker.
On Life
- Never break a promise to your kid.
- In the end time and gravity win.
- There are so many ways to be human.
© Copyright 2008-2015.