Exponential Organizations

The Taxi Driver's Plight and Internet-Enabled Disruption

On the way to work this morning, I listened to The Daily, The New York Times podcast hosted by Michael Barbara. This is a typical day for me, and I generally find the podcast really balanced (I'm an Independent voter, for the record). As I mentioned at the beginning of this year, I take in a wide range of content to be on a continuous learning journey (you can read that post here).

Today's episode of The Daily really struck me. It was about another New York taxi driver committing suicide, apparently because of the dramatic decline in their medallion appreciation. This is due to the invention of Uber, Lyft, and other ride-sharing apps and specifically due to New York City's response to them. You should listen to it and then ask yourself these questions:

Back in the arena: the beginning of data.world

It has been a long time since I wrote anything on my Lucky7 blog and there is good reason for that.  Back in June, I started to brainstorm my next big idea with long-time friends Jon Loyens and Matt Laessig (both of whom were amazing at Bazaarvoice and had moved on to HomeAway).  Bryon Jacob (a 10-year veteran at HomeAway) soon got involved as an idea he had been thinking about was better than anything we came up with and one thing led to another until we founded data.world.

It may feel curious to my regular readers that I would jump back into the arena as the CEO of a company built from scratch.  After all, our investments in startups and venture capital funds have been performing well, including a recent exit with Deep Eddy Vodka being acquired (and us subsequently investing in Clayton Christopher’s VC fund, CAVU).  There are many factors that led to this calling for me: