We had someone copy some of our stuff yesterday. I commented in an interview with Connie Loizos on StrictlyVC that drama is fun from time to time. I have had about 18 hours to reflect on this and I think I was wrong. Drama isn’t fun. It’s tiring and a distraction. And I’d made a…

We are a heads down, drama free group so today, when a Y Combinator company copied us, it resulted in some excitement for the team. Here is a post on the YC copycat that we published on our team blog earlier today. —————————– We’re really proud of our data and technology at CB Insights. We’re…

James Robertson walks to his Detroit factory job every day. A total of 21 miles and has had perfect attendance for a job that pays $10.55/hour. Of course, the power of crowd funding has changed all this as it should. Good when nice things happen to good, hardworking, deserving people. His crowd funding campaign on…

Hiring is hard. Our plans call for us need about an additional 20-25 folks this year. That means around 2 hires per month and this assumes zero voluntary or involuntary attrition (which is unrealistic to be honest). And so when you feel like you should be hiring 2 people per month, when those hires don’t…

In this year’s Super Bowl commercials, I noticed less of the guy humor that felt more prevalent in year’s past. I don’t dislike that humor so this is not a value judgment and just an observation. Even Go Daddy didn’t do it (I think it was a mistake as their ad sucked and was crazy…

I talked a bit about the importance of references so figured I’d share the questions I usually ask. If you have other questions you ask when doing references that you think really get at the heart of how good a candidate is, let me know. Some of the questions are vague and even repetitive.  Question…

So we published some info about CB insights 2014 revenue, churn, clients, and focus areas for 2015. We shared it with our paying customers in late December 2014.I’m curious how it will be received. You can read it here.

Some jobs lend themselves to hard metrics. Sales/biz dev is one such place. But a lot of roles don’t. A lot of my former roles were strategy or analysis driven and so there was no hard metric. It was always soft and intangible and relied on people’s impressions.  When I worked in VC and corp…

As a parent, I’ve been watching the whole Disney measles outbreak caused by the lunatic anti-vaxxer movement. A quote by Melinda Gates in this article from the Verge sums it up well: Women in the developing world know the power of [vaccines]. They will walk 10 kilometers in the heat with their child and line…

 The weathermen sure did nail the blizzard predictions for snowfall. </sarcasm> One of the things that I’ve wondered about since my time at Kozmo.com was if anyone out there keeps the pundits honest. All the analysts who during the dot com days predicted unsustainable models would be huge or that X, Y, Z company would…

The weathermen sure did nail the blizzard predictions for snowfall. </sarcasm> One of the things that I’ve wondered about since my time at Kozmo.com was if anyone out there keeps the pundits honest. All the analysts who during the dot com days predicted unsustainable models would be huge or that X, Y, Z company would…

So I went to my primary care physician today as the CityMD protocol wasn’t working. With some notes on my history, my doc was able to highlight several things the CityMD folks did not. So while urgent care centers might be a better more expedient substitute for hospital ERs, the knowledge of a PCP is…

So I went to my primary care physician today as the CityMD protocol wasn’t working. With some notes on my history, my doc was able to highlight several things the CityMD folks did not. So while urgent care centers might be a better more expedient substitute for hospital ERs, the knowledge of a PCP is…

I’ve been seeing Canada Goose jackets everywhere in NYC. And so tonight, I did what comes naturally to me — I looked in the CB Insights database to see if it was in there, and there it was. Canada Goose had been acquired by Bain Capital in 2013.  (Yes – I’m a bit strange). And…

I’ve been seeing Canada Goose jackets everywhere in NYC. And so tonight, I did what comes naturally to me — I looked in the CB Insights database to see if it was in there, and there it was. Canada Goose had been acquired by Bain Capital in 2013.  (Yes – I’m a bit strange). And…