The Connection between Education, Employment and Entrepreneurship
I’ve been thinking a lot on these topics lately. In part in preparation for tomorrow’s talk on the topic at the EO Alchemy conference. In part because what we’re doing at RG Labs intersects all three of these areas very directly. And in part because some of the statistics and trends right now are downright [...]
Continue reading...Companies I’m psyched about helping
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Right now something that feels like about 98% of my waking hours goes into helping to building RG Labs. However, from time to time I come across companies that I feel are doing special things and have taken advisory roles with them. This post, which I’ll update from time to time is a listing of [...]
Continue reading...Hacking Education Detroit
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
For the last couple years we have, inspired by the fine folks at Union Square Ventures, been running dinners under the banner of “Hacking Education”, the intention being to connect together people who are passionate about changing the game in education. The events have included tech entrepreneurs, leading foundations and non-profits, investors passionate about education [...]
Continue reading...How to Have a 36 Hour Day (Revised Edition)
Saturday, July 16, 2011
(Note: I originally wrote this post a little over five years ago and posted it to a blog on a site that has since been shut down. A few people have asked me for it so I decided I would resurrect it. I’ve posted it in its original form but have added a bit of [...]
Continue reading...11 (More) Must-Read Articles on Building World-Class Teams
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Here’s a follow-up article to “21 Must-Read Articles on Building World-Class Teams“, a post I wrote about six weeks ago. Enjoy! (As always, I should mention in passing that if you’re interested in being a part of world-class team, RG Labs is hiring.) #1 – Hiring a VP of Engineering or CTO For Non-Techie (First Time) [...]
Continue reading...What Really Keeps Poor People Poor
Thursday, May 26, 2011
The New York Times has a great piece this week about how top colleges (many of which are heavily subsidized by the government) are, in their words, largely for the elite. It’s well worth reading. In it, Anthony Marx, the president of Amherst College, is quoted as saying the following: “We claim to be part of [...]
Continue reading...21 Must-Read Articles on Building World-Class Teams
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Capital and talent tend be found in inverse proportions. When capital is scarce, talent is, at least in a relative sense, somewhat abundant. Now, when capital for start-ups is relatively abundant, hiring a world-class team can be quite challenging. There have been a number of great articles written about things to be thinking about as [...]
Continue reading...Post-Education Startups: The Next Wave
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
I’ve had a bunch of conversations lately with some really cool startups and couldn’t figure out how to mentally classify them. By all practical appearances they weren’t education companies, at least not in the traditional sense of ever showing up in the BMO Education Book or being asked to present at Signal Hill. They aren’t [...]
Continue reading...Learning Graph + Reputation Graph = Massive Disruption in Higher Ed?
Friday, February 11, 2011
Here’s an outline of a thesis I’m working on that was also my suggested topic for my application to speak at TEDxSFED: Higher education is on the brink of massive disruption right now. The “cost” of learning has never been less expensive as the Web is flooded with amazing content, tutorials, discussion boards and more. At [...]
Continue reading...Reputation Graph vs. PeopleRank
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Last week TechCrunch ran a great post on Quora’s development of an algorithm to determine and rank user quality. In it, they used the term PeopleRank and credited my good friend Shervin Pishevar with the coining of the term (Go Shervin!). A number of people have asked me whether I think PeopleRank is the same [...]
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Thursday, October 20, 2011
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