My interest in artificial intelligence started young. It was pretty easy when your early exposure to science fiction was Data (an android character on Star Trek) and reading the complete fiction of Asimov (who actually coined the word robot).
One of my first major research projects developed during my MBA. A fascination with economics slowly crystallized into a specific study of Monetary Economics. I think the most revealing anecdote was my effort to acquire a 1956 issue of International Economic Papers where Schumpeter (famous for coining the term “creative destruction”) discussed his theory on money.
If you spend any time with start-ups, you see that their #1 problem is sales and marketing. Sales is probably the most important part of a business, but marketing makes the first impression. If you don’t send the right message from the beginning, you set yourself up for failure.
While I love the self-employed lifestyle, I always have to benchmark my earnings against a full time position. A jobs site recently asked me what title I’d be looking for in my “next” job. While the question had never occurred to me, “Director of Innovation” was the obvious answer. Two key skill sets make me perfect for this type of work.
Most people can fill out a business plan template. It can be tempting, therefore, to view a business plan writer as someone who saves you a little bit of time in the writing process. If you hire someone who is first and foremost a writer, that is all that you’ll get. However, you’re about to put then next three to five years of your life, some of your savings, and your reputation on the line for this business. I think you should be far more demanding when writing a business plan.
My Online Songbook project is perhaps the best example of how pervasively analytical I am. I regular a dueling piano bar in town called The Big Bang (see the Columbus or Corporate page). Dueling piano bars are “all request” so they depend on the audience to select songs and “vote” for them with tips. Even though I visit to relax and enjoy the show, I couldn’t help but notice the implicit process by which songs were selected.
Eviduction (“the synthesis of evidence and deduction”) grew out of a personal passion for neuroscience. I spent many years reading primary neuroscience articles intent on writing and publishing in the space. During this process, it became clear to me that a considerable amount of time and effort is duplicated in the secondary research process. While it was originally conceived as an approach to reduce redundancy in secondary research, Eviduction has the potential to provide added value in both the online textbook and primary research space.
Refer2Save was born in a discussion about the problems faced by traditional Deal-A-Day (DAD) sites and quickly grew into a B2B Marketing concept. Refer2Save proprietary declining price promotion generates new customers through referrals from existing customers.
In 2011, a partner and I acquired an online juicer website (purelyjuicers.com). Along with some revenue, the site provided a crash course in: