Billionaire's Secret Buyout Formula. Vista Equity Partners: The goal of the Austin, Texas-based firm, which is 18 years old, is to transform business-software companies into profit machines. Behind its approach is Mr. Robert Smith’s belief that certain aspects of the companies Vista buys are interchangeable. “Software companies taste like chicken,” he said at a conference in New York a few years ago. “They’re selling different products, but 80% of what they do is pretty much the same.” (see related (2024-01-23) Brown Dark Software) (more)
Inside tech billionaires’ push to reshape San Francisco politics: ‘a hostile takeover’. ..the political-influence machine that tech billionaires and venture capitalists have recently built in San Francisco stands out for its size and ambition (more)
Business titans privately urged NYC mayor to use police on Columbia protesters, chats show. A group of billionaires and business titans working to shape U.S. public opinion of the war in Gaza privately pressed New York City’s mayor last month to send police to disperse pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University. (Israel-Palestine) (more)
Thom Hartmann: Are Our Oligarchs Going to Drag Us Into Civil War? The headline in this week’s Fortune reads: “Billionaire investor Ray Dalio warns U.S. is ‘on the brink’ and estimates a more than 1 in 3 chance of civil war.” (more)
His Billionaire Buddies’ Bribery Bails Out Donald Trump, Again and Again. The problem isn’t that the former president is broke but that he’s for sale. (more)
Martina Lauchengco: Loved: How to Rethink Marketing for Tech Products (more)
Martin Cagan partner
"10,000 hours of practice" rule from Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers book about Talent. http://gladwell.com/outliers/the-10000-hour-rule/ (more)
Gordon Brander: LLMs and information post-scarcity. First the internet reduced the marginal cost of distributing content to zero. Now AI is reducing the marginal cost of producing content to zero. (more)
"every ThinkingTool is 80% used as a Not-Thinking Tool" - cf theater
Some writing practices that are more applicable to an organizational (company, etc) context than an individual/personal.... a subtype of collaborationware (more)
The principal–agent problem refers to the conflict in interests and priorities that arises when one person or entity (the "agent") takes actions on behalf of another person or entity (the "principal").[1] The problem worsens when there is a greater discrepancy of interests and information between the principal and agent, as well as when the principal lacks the means to punish the agent.[2] The deviation from the principal's interest by the agent is called "agency costs". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_problem (cf game theory). A big driver of the LBO was the belief that management, being non-shareholders, has this failure.
In professional wrestling, kayfabe (/ˈkeɪfeɪb/) is the portrayal of staged events within the industry as "real" or "true", specifically the portrayal of competition, rivalries, and relationships between participants as being genuine and not staged. The term kayfabe has evolved to also become a code word of sorts for maintaining this "reality" within the direct or indirect presence of the general public.[1] Kayfabe, in the United States, is often seen as the suspension of disbelief that is used to create the non-wrestling aspects of promotions, such as feuds, angles, and gimmicks in a manner similar to other forms of fictional entertainment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kayfabe
Live Performance en-actment (Drama, Comedy, Tragedy, etc.). Also: Empty Gesture, as in Security Theater (signalling, ritual, Cargo Cult, illusion of control). https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Abillseitz%20*theater&src=typed_query&f=live. Also: Bullshit. (more)
term from Semiotics/PostModernism (more)
This is the publicly-readable WikiLog Digital Garden (20k pages, starting from 2002) of Bill Seitz (a Product Manager and CTO). (You can get your own pair of garden/note-taking spaces from FluxGarden.)
My Calling: Reality Hacking to accelerate Evolution by increasing Freedom, Agency, and Leverage of Free Agents and smaller groups (SmallWorld) via D And D of Thinking Tools (software and Games To Play).
See Intro Page for space-related goals, status, etc.; or Wiki Node for more terse summary info.
Beware the War On The Net!
Current:
- head of product for an early-stage boot-strapped company
- founder FluxGarden for Digital Garden hosting
- wrote Hack Your Life With A Private Wiki Notebook Getting Things Done And Other Systems ASIN:B00HHJA5JS
My Coding for fun.
Past:
- Director Product Managment, NCSA Sports
- CTO/Product Manager at a series of startups: MedScape, then Axiom Legal, then Living Independently, then DailyLit, then AEP...
- founded Family Financial Future, personal-financial-planning nagware for parents
- consulting
- founded Teamflux.com, a hosting service for wiki-based collaboration spaces.
- founded Wikilogs.com, a hosting service for WikiLog-s (wiki-based weblogs).
Agile Product Development, Product Management from MVP to Product-Market Fit, Adding Product To Your Startup Team, Agility, Context, and Team Agency, (2022-10-12) Accidental Learnings of a Journeyman Product Manager
Big Levers, Theory of Change, Change the World, (2020-06-27) Ways To Nudge Future; Network Enlightenment, Optimistic Near Future Vision; Huge Invention; Alternatives To A College Degree; Credit Crisis 2008; Economic Transition; Network Economy; Making A Living; Varieties Of Info Technology Jobs; Generative Schooling; Product Oriented Unschooling; Reality Hacker; A 20th Century Economic Theory
FluxGarden; Network Enlightenment Ecosystem; ThinkingTools Interaction as Medium; Hypermedia Pattern Language; Everyone Needs Their Own ThinkingSpace; Digital Garden; Virtual ThinkingSpace; Thinking Tools Companies; Webs Of Thinkers And Thoughts; My CollaborationWare History; Wiki Proliferation; Portal Collaboration Roadmap; Wiki For GroupWare, Overlapping Scopes Of Collaboration, Email Discussion Beside Wiki, Wiki For CollaborationWare, Collaboration Roadmap; Sister Sites; Wiki Hack
Personal Cloud; 2018-11-29-NextOpenInfrastructure, 2018-11-15-BooksVsTweets; Stream/Flow Vs Garden/Stock
Social Warrens; Culture War; 2017-02-15-MindmapCultureWarSocialMediaEconomy; Cultural Pluralism
Fractally Generative Pattern Language, Small Tribe, SimplestThing, Becoming A Reality Hacker, Less-Bullshit Living, The Craft; Games To Play; Evolution, Hack Your Life With A Private Wiki Notebook, Getting Things Done, And Other Systems
Digital Therapeutics, (2021-05-26) Pondering a Mental Health space, CoachBot; Inside-Out Markov Chain