Good or bad parenting?

Our son has spent 1.8% of his life hours to date playing Terraria (probably 15% of his life overall on gaming and programming). How do I know 1.8%? Because he calculated it and told me. The 15% overall is a pretty educated guess by me.

And he also just got hired to be a programming tutor and is loving doing that — he’s 11 and is tutoring a 9-year old (who is learning very quickly). That happened as a result of him releasing his first public game and a fellow Austinite taking notice. I asked our son what he wanted to charge for his first tutoring job and he said $5/hr — they insisted on paying him $10/hr. Pretty good money at age 11!

An old classic to consider before you pass judgment:

A note of gratitude for Tony Hsieh

I woke up early this morning and the first news I read was of Tony Hsieh’s passing last night. It hit me hard - he was only 46-years old. Tony was the long-time CEO of Zappos, only recently retiring in August.

Although I cannot say Tony was a close friend, he was an acquaintance that I had some good history with, most of it indirect. Zappos was one of the original pioneers of customer reviews, which Brant Barton and I decided to bring to the majority of the retail industry when we founded Bazaarvoice (literally named “the voice of the marketplace”) in 2005. Zappos was one of our early influences, with Amazon of course being our biggest (Amazon initially launched customer reviews in 1997, three years after their founding). I believe eBags had reviews even prior to Zappos (they were definitely an influence too), and Circuit City (kind of like a Best Buy that went out of business in 2009) had just launched them, paving the way for Brant and I to see that traditional, store-based retailers had a big need for us to fill.

In 2009, I was named Entrepreneur of the Year in Austin by E&Y. Tony had received the same Award for the Northern California region in 2007. My wife, Debra, and I were invited to the National Awards in Palm Springs. It was there that I connected with Tony, and we immediately connected on innovative company culture. We shared a lot of tips with each other, and it was clear that he was just as eager to learn as share.

Three big reasons you should have faith in a Biden and Harris Administration

You may be wondering why I haven’t been writing as much on Lucky7 this year. Well, I’ve been very busy with data.world but also in campaigning for what would hopefully be a Biden+Harris win over Trump+Pence. I made a New Year’s Resolution to do so, understanding that it is hard to step out there as such a public CEO. But I knew I wasn’t going to be able to look our children in the eye if I didn’t do so and Trump won again - I had to do everything I personally could to protect our democracy. I kept my personal activities campaigning separate from my work activities as the CEO of data.world to the best of my ability, but I got really active to say the least. This took a lot of time and I’m very happy to be even a small part of this historic win for our country. As of this writing, Biden+Harris are projected to receive 306 Electoral College votes and also win by over 5.5m votes in the popular vote count.

I should point out that I’m a centrist and a proud Independent voter, having voted for as many Republicans as I have Democrats. I vote my conscience and base my vote on policies and what I think our country most needs. As an entrepreneur, I really value the ability to think independently. Thinking this way requires you to use your intellect to see the world differently and not fall into following the herd. There are good reasons for herd thinking given our evolutionary history, but it is not always conducive to the best decision making. Independent thinking helps me come up with business ideas as well as evaluate new investments and entrepreneurs (note: we are now in 93 startups and 29 VC funds, although data.world certainly takes the majority of my time as CEO and has been my primary career passion for five years and running now).

Netflix vs. Blockbuster and bad profits (reflections from my Bazaarvoice days)

In honor of Netflix’s big beat today in the very unfortunate age of COVID-19, I decided to revisit my four-part Bazaarblog series while I was CEO of Bazaarvoice (from our inception in 2005 to our IPO in 2012). The name of the last part? “Netflix vs. Blockbuster: Round Four (Lights Out?)”

First, just to provide a foundation here, Bazaarvoice was named after Chapter 4 of “The Cluetrain Manifesto” (available for free online), “Markets Are Conversations”. I still think it is the best chapter of any book on marketing that I’ve ever read. Bazaarvoice, literally translated, means “the voice of the marketplace”. I told the story about how Brant Barton, my Bazaarvoice co-founder, and I picked the name in Chapter 7 of my book “The Entrepreneur’s Essentials” (also available for free online). Do yourself a favor and read “Markets Are Conversations” if you never have - it was amazingly prescient.

The wisdom of Vedanta (now available online)

One of the practices that has really helped me as a leader has been the study of Vedanta. It is not a religion (I'm Jewish) but rather a philosophy on how to live a life of happiness. It is all about gaining control over your mind - that your mind is where the secret to happiness really lives. If you would like to dive in, here is a five-minute video on why you may feel so tired “because of your job” to entice you. The great news is that, in these times of COVID-19, their classes are now available online for free. In 2013, Debra and I went all the way to just outside of Pune, India to study this in person at The Vedanta Academy with the then 85-year old founder, Swamiji Parthasarathy (who wrote my favorite book on business and relationships simply titled "Governing Business and Relationships" - the chapter on Leadership is just incredible).

TED Connect rises in the era of COVID-19, and Ray Dalio offers much wisdom

In the spirit of living an Always Be Learning life (read Chapter 4 in “The Entrepreneurs Essentials”, which is available for free online at Medium), TED Connect has been a terrific series during this very challenging global crisis due to the rapid spread of COVID-19. On Wednesday, TED interviewed Ray Dalio and it didn’t disappoint. I went to school on this like I would if my best professor in finance was presenting while I was at The Wharton School. What follows are my notes from his talk.

How to build up to a 10-minute plank

In the past year, I’ve been asked about health more than any other topic outside of tech and data. So, I decided to consolidate my responses to those questions in a series of four Lucky7 posts.

Specifically, I’ve been covering:
1. Nutrition (and my vegan power breakfast smoothie recipe)
2. The Cooper Clinic
3. OsteoStrong
4. Exercise and X3

I haven’t written Part Four yet on exercise and X3, and I want to take a quick diversion to talk about the benefits of planking. I’ll also reference this post in Part Four, so it is a good primer.

When I turned 48-years old on Feb. 14, I announced on Facebook that I felt like I was close to being in the best shape of my life and I had achieved a new health milestone - my first 10-minute plank. That got quite a bit of attention from my friends, including many texts to my mobile phone, so I wanted to talk about how I did it since I’ve received so many questions about it.

Four big learnings on health (Part Three)

In the past year, I’ve been asked about health more than any other topic outside of tech and data. I’ve decided to consolidate my responses to those questions in a series of four Lucky7 posts.

Specifically, I’ll cover:
1. Nutrition (and my vegan power breakfast smoothie recipe)
2. The Cooper Clinic
3. OsteoStrong
4. Exercise and X3

For Part Three, I decided to do something different as I cover the health benefits of OsteoStrong. The Austin franchisee, Deepak Suthar, is a good friend and used to work with me at Bazaarvoice. He agreed to be interviewed for this post, and I’ve had him speak about OsteoStrong and X3 at our data.world office.

For me personally, OsteoStrong has been a real game-changer. In April of 2018, I had the biggest workout injury I’ve ever experienced — I was at the TED conference with Debra and we were working out the day before the event started. I was doing a heavy bench press and it was my last set right before we went to eat breakfast. My body was tired but I needed to press on and make this last set count. On the third rep, I felt a massive rubber-band snap inside my chest and body and 911-level pain. Fortunately I had a spotter pull the bar off of me as I went to the floor, writhing around in pain. I knew something inside of me was really broken.

Four big learnings on health (Part Two)

In the past year, I’ve been asked about health more than any other topic outside of tech and data. I’ve decided to consolidate my responses to those questions in a series of four Lucky7 posts.

Specifically, I’ll cover:1. Nutrition (and my vegan power breakfast smoothie recipe)2. The Cooper Clinic3. OsteoStrong4. Exercise and X3

For Part Two, I would like to discuss the benefits of an annual comprehensive physical examination. Personally, I chose to do this at the Cooper Clinic in Dallas ever since I turned 40. Dr. Kenneth H. Cooper is the founder and I always do my best to book with him. The Cooper Clinic has over 40 years of data about patients like me, which provides them with a level of pattern recognition that is unusual.

Four big learnings on health (Part One)

In the past year, I’ve been asked about health more than any other topic outside of tech and data. I’ve decided to consolidate my responses to those questions in a series of four Lucky7 posts.

Specifically, I’ll cover:
1. Nutrition (and my vegan power breakfast smoothie recipe)
2. The Cooper Clinic
3. OsteoStrong
4. Exercise and X3

First, let’s start with nutrition. It is becoming increasingly clear that a vegan diet is your key to longevity and vitality. I’ve covered my transition to a mostly vegan (and sometimes vegetarian) diet over a three-part blog series, beginning in 2014. I pose that you will be more spiritually pure on a diet like this because of its benefits to our planet, your body, your mindfulness, animal welfare, and your fellow human beings. I cover what I’ve learned from reading many books and watching many movies. The most recent part, Part Three, covers the evolution of this movement to plant-based meats as well as clean meat (also known as cellular agriculture).