DanTranimal

Daily Readings – October 7th, 2010

Posted on the October 7th, 2010 under Daily by dantranimal

Richard Branson: Five Questions on Business Philosophy (Source: entrepreneur.com)

What is the best advice you ever got?

1. Never look back in regret, always move onto the next thing.
2. Don’t openly criticize other people, it’s a poor reflection of your own character.
3. Make a fool of yourself. Otherwise you won’t survive. Make sure you’re on the front page, and not the back page.

And the worst advice?

Advice comes in many forms. Ask several people what they think to get many angles to weigh. By never considering one person’s opinion, no one piece of advice is ever bad.

What advice would you give to young entreprenrus on how to best start?

1. To remember that it is impossible to run a business without taking risks.
2. Believe in what you are doing. If you go into something expecting it to fail, 9 times out of 10, it will.
3. Above all, remember to have fun with with it. “The brave may not live forever – but the cautious do not live at all.”

In your career you have had lots of successes, but you have failed in some businesses. What have you learned from those?

1. As an entrepreneur you have to learn very quickly that there’s no such thing as a failure
2. We make and implement decisions quickly — usually before our competitor have held their fifth meeting on the same issue.
3. Protect the downside. Work out in advance all things that could go wrong and make sure you have all those eventualities covered.

Do you have any regrets?

There are always things in life that you might regret, and there are probably a lot of business decisions I regret — but I try not to dwell on them. I move on to more positive things.

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Top reason for Facebook unfriending: Too many useless posts (source: networkworld.com)

The No. 1 reason why friends dump friends on Facebook is when they get fed up seeing too many useless posts, according to new research out of the University of Colorado Denver Business School.

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The 10 Most Valuable Blogs in America (source: theatlantic.com)

10. Mashable, $20 M
9. FunnyOrDie, $24 M
8. SB Nation Network, $30 M
7. Perez Hilton, $32 M
6. Cheezburger Network, $35 M
5. Macrumors, $37 M
4. PopSugar Media, $40 M
3. Drudge Report, $50 M
2. The Huffington Post, $150 M
1. Gawker Properties, $240 M

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Stupid Questions VCs Ask (Source: techcrunch.com)

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Companies Need 4 Leadership Types, Says VMWare’s Chief (source: nytimes.com)

1. A Classic Manager – Somebody who takes care of the organization and makes sure tasks are broken up into manageable actions and how they’re going to be measured.

2. A Champion of the Customer – Somebody who empathizes and understands how customers will see it.

3. Strategist or Visionary – Somebody who sets goals for where the organization needs to go.

4. Enforcer – Somebody who says: “We’ve stared at this issue long enough. We’re going to make a decision. We’re going to deal with whatever conflict we have.”

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At Risk From the Womb (Source: nytimes.com)

“Researchers are finding indications that obesity, diabetes and mental illness among adults are all related in part to what happened in the womb decades earlier.

One of the first careful studies in this field found that birth weight (a proxy for nutrition in the womb) helped predict whether an adult would suffer from heart disease half a century later. Scrawny babies were much more likely to suffer heart problems in middle age.

Perhaps the most striking finding is that a stressful uterine environment may be a mechanism that allows poverty to replicate itself generation after generation…or kids facing stresses before birth appear to have lower educational attainment, lower incomes and worse health throughout their lives.”