Chad Dickerson's Field Notes

Continuations: Benefit Corporation: Facilitating a New Market

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 07:38:35 -0400

Continuations: Benefit Corporation: Facilitating a New Market:

Albert’s thoughts on benefit corporations from the unique investor perspective:

As longtime readers of Continuations know, I have been a strong proponent of the Benefit Corporation. I am therefore thrilled that Delaware, which is the home to almost all venture backed corporations, has introduced Benefit Corporation legislation. This will allow companies to charter or…

"At its heart, our movement for local living economies is about love. And its love that can overcome..."

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 09:04:18 -0400

“At its heart, our movement for local living economies is about love. And its love that can overcome the fear that many may feel in the hard days ahead brought on by climate change and peak oil. Our power comes from protecting what we love - love of place, love of life - people, animals, nature, all of life on our beautiful planet Earth. And I would say, for the entrepreneurs amongst us - a love of business. Business has been corrupted as an instrument of greed rather than one of service to the common good. Yet we know that business is beautiful when we put our creativity, care and energy into producing a product or service needed by our community.”

- A Talk by Judy Wicks - The Proprietress of White Dog Cafe and BALLE

At the BALLE Conference, Burlington, Vermont, June 2006

In Memory of Jane Jacobs

Chaplin with Gandhi, September 22, 1931 Gandhi meets with...

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 07:07:23 -0400

Chaplin with Gandhi, September 22, 1931

Gandhi meets with Charlie Chaplin at the home of Gandhi’s friend Dr. Chuni Lal Katial in Canning Town, London, September 22, 1931.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chaplin_and_Gandhi.jpg

"During that same visit to California, Einstein was asked to appear alongside the comic actor Charlie..."

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 06:54:57 -0400

“During that same visit to California, Einstein was asked to appear alongside the comic actor Charlie Chaplin during the Hollywood debut of the film City Lights. When they were mobbed by thousands, Chaplin remarked, “The people applaud me because everybody understands me, and they applaud you because no one understands you.””

- Britannica.com (I’m researching something and keep coming across interesting Chaplin anecdotes!)

"I should like to know why you’re opposed to machinery. After all, it’s the natural..."

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 05:53:39 -0400

“I should like to know why you’re opposed to machinery. After all, it’s the natural outcome of man’s genius and is part of his evolutionary progress. It is here to free him of the bondage of slavery, to help him to leisure and higher culture. I grant that machinery with only the consideration of profit has thrown men out of work and created a great deal of misery, but to use it as a service to humanity, that consideration transcending everything else, should be a help and benefit to mankind… . .You must progress like the western world. Sooner or later you will adopt machinery.”

- From a conversation in a chance meeting between Charlie Chaplin and Mahatma Gandhi from the book Chaplin in the Sound Era: An Analysis of the Seven Talkies.

This idea was the foundation of Chaplin’s Modern Times. Fascinating.

"Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no..."

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 14:23:17 -0400

Yep. eyeheartnewyork: So…there’s a brick-and-mortar Etsy store...

Sun, 02 Dec 2012 09:01:03 -0500

One of the mini-shops inside the store

Some of the artisans are actually present, being artsy

I thought maybe etsy opened a satellite office outside of DUMBO

A hoarder's dream

Apparently there are workshops and such to make your own stuff

You get a cute sack to carry your purchases in

I needed another tablet in my life.

Yep.

eyeheartnewyork:

So…there’s a brick-and-mortar Etsy store in SoHo…it’s open only until Dec. 8…and it’s awesome. Even if you’ve never bought anything from etsy before (I hadn’t), the pop-up store is an incredibly interesting and charming shopping experience. Kind of like a high-end flea market. I don’t know if Etsy actually has long-term plans to do something beyond a holiday gift shop…but I hope they at least re-open next year.

I’ve browsed Etsy before and liked a lot of the things I saw, but seeing things in person is definitely more convincing when it comes to actually buying. It also stirred up a huge amount of envy in me in wanting to make my own crafts. So the store itself probably loses money (given SoHo rent) but it’s a great loss-leader for the online marketplace. A lot of the stuff I wanted had sold out physically, but each item had business cards to make it easy to order online.

The store is located on Greene St., just south of Houston, and its hours are 12 to 10PM. Its last day is Dec 8.

"Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no..."

Mon, 01 Oct 2012 23:08:56 -0400

“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.”

- One of my favorite quotes, from Ralph Waldo Emerson. Everyone working in a startup should read this every morning.

http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/18830-finish-each-day-and-be-done-with-it-you-have

"If by Rudyard Kipling If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming..."

Wed, 26 Sep 2012 14:53:30 -0400

“

If
by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And - which is more - you’ll be a Man, my son!

”

- From a colleague who shared this today and called it “the perfect CEO poem.” My favorite line: “If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two impostors just the same” :)

Pretty cool photo of XOXO talk. I am not normally subjected to...

Sat, 22 Sep 2012 23:18:54 -0400

Pretty cool photo of XOXO talk. I am not normally subjected to special effects. :)

Source: Zack Sheppard, http://www.flickr.com/photos/quikbeam/7993726354/

"But if you happen to be president just now, what you are faced with, mainly, is not a..."

Fri, 14 Sep 2012 15:24:17 -0400

“

But if you happen to be president just now, what you are faced with, mainly, is not a public-relations problem but an endless string of decisions. Putting it the way George W. Bush did sounded silly but he was right: the president is a decider. Many if not most of his decisions are thrust upon the president, out of the blue, by events beyond his control: oil spills, financial panics, pandemics, earthquakes, fires, coups, invasions, underwear bombers, movie-theater shooters, and on and on and on. They don’t order themselves neatly for his consideration but come in waves, jumbled on top of each other.

“Nothing comes to my desk that is perfectly solvable,” Obama said at one point. “Otherwise, someone else would have solved it. So you wind up dealing with probabilities. Any given decision you make you’ll wind up with a 30 to 40 percent chance that it isn’t going to work. You have to own that and feel comfortable with the way you made the decision. You can’t be paralyzed by the fact that it might not work out.” On top of all of this, after you have made your decision, you need to feign total certainty about it. People being led do not want to think probabilistically.

”

- Michael Lewis’ profile of Barack Obama in Vanity Fair.

"Most all of the songs I write now concern Jacksonville. For a very long time I wouldn’t write..."

Mon, 03 Sep 2012 12:09:00 -0400

“Most all of the songs I write now concern Jacksonville. For a very long time I wouldn’t write about it or even think about it because I had a very hard time growing up there. And the town itself has been going through a very hard time since before I was born. But I dropped out of high school there I bought my first records there and I will probably die and be buried there eventually and for some reason I can identify with that place now all those fucking people live there because they can’t imagine living anyplace else. It’s all they know and they’re scared and don’t like change. So that place is inhabited by all these old fashioned people with ideas about the world that just aren’t viable anyplace else. They all drink a lot or not. It is the oldest wrongest place in the world and it’s where I’m from and it’s where my songs are coming from.”

- Ryan Adams on Jacksonville, NC, about 75 miles south of where I grew up (Greenville, NC).

From an excerpt in Ryan Adams: Losering, a Story of Whiskeytown, by my friend David Menconi down in Raleigh. It just came out. Looking forward to reading it! (available on Amazon, too)

jenbee: New York is a Friendly Town - Weegee Yes, it is.

Sun, 02 Sep 2012 11:19:41 -0400

jenbee:

New York is a Friendly Town - Weegee

Yes, it is.

"Under the seeming disorder of the old city, wherever the old city is working successfully, is a..."

Sun, 02 Sep 2012 10:30:40 -0400

“Under the seeming disorder of the old city, wherever the old city is working successfully, is a marvelous order for maintaining the safety of the streets and the freedom of the city. It is a complex order. Its essence is intricacy of sidewalk use, bringing with it a constant succession of eyes. This order is all composed of movement and change, and although it is life, not art, we may fancifully call it the art form of the city and liken it to the dance — not to a simple-minded precision dance with everyone kicking up at the same time, twirling in unison and bowing off en masse, but to an intricate ballet in which the individual dancers and ensembles all have distinctive parts which miraculously reinforce each other and compose an orderly whole. The ballet of the good city sidewalk never repeats itself from place to place, and in any once place is always replete with new improvisations.”

- Jane Jacobs in the The Death and Life of Great American Cities (page 50 in the edition I have)

"The meaning of a story should go on expanding for the reader the more he thinks about it, but..."

Sat, 25 Aug 2012 15:00:10 -0400

“The meaning of a story should go on expanding for the reader the more he thinks about it, but meaning cannot be captured in an interpretation. If teachers are in the habit of approaching a story as if it were a research problem for which any answer is believable so long as it is not obvious, then I think students will never learn to enjoy fiction. Too much interpretation is certainly worse than too little, and where feeling for a story is absent, theory will not supply it.”

- Flannery O’Connor, writing to the teacher of a class who asked questions about her story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” (from Letters of Note)

"I would like to write another book for children but I spend all my spare time just answering the..."

Sat, 25 Aug 2012 14:57:07 -0400

“I would like to write another book for children but I spend all my spare time just answering the letters I get from children about the books I have already written. So it looks like a hopeless situation unless you can start a movement in America called ‘Don’t write to E. B. White until he produces another book.’””

- E.B. White, responding to a young fan in 1961 (from Letters of Note). What would E. B. White think about email?

"A ‘no’ uttered from the deepest conviction is better than a ‘yes’ merely..."

Sun, 19 Aug 2012 09:29:34 -0400

“A ‘no’ uttered from the deepest conviction is better than a ‘yes’ merely uttered to please, or worse, to avoid trouble. - Gandhi”

- From “If you don’t prioritize your life, someone else will“

"The corporation can only function as the representative social institution of our society if it can..."

Tue, 31 Jul 2012 09:02:18 -0400

“The corporation can only function as the representative social institution of our society if it can fulfill its social functions in a manner which strengthens it as an efficient producer, and vice versa. But as the representative social institution of our society the corporation in addition to being an economic tool is a political and social body; its social function as a community is as important as it economic function as an efficient producer.”

- Peter Drucker, Concept of the Corporation (page 140) — written in 1946!

According to the Google Books page for the book, it was “the first study ever of the constitution, structure, and internal dynamics of a major business enterprise. Basing his work on a two-year analysis of the company done during the closing years of World War II, Drucker looks at the General Motors managerial organization from within. He tries to understand what makes the company work so effectively, what its core principles are, and how they contribute to its successes.”

"Consistently poor or mediocre performance cannot be condoned, let alone rewarded. The manager who..."

Sun, 29 Jul 2012 09:22:14 -0400

“

Consistently poor or mediocre performance cannot be condoned, let alone rewarded. The manager who sets his goals low, or who consistently fails in performance, must not be allowed to remain in his job. He must be removed—and moved to a lower job or dismissed rather than “kicked upstairs.”

This does not mean that people should be penalized for making mistakes. Nobody learns except by making mistakes. The better a man is the more mistakes will he make—for the more new things he will try. I would never promote a man into a top-level job who has not made mistakes, and big ones at that. Otherwise he is sure to be mediocre. Worse still, not having made mistakes he will not have learned how to spot them early and how to correct them.

”

- Drucker, Peter F. (2010-04-02). The Practice of Management (p. 128). HarperCollins e-books. Kindle Edition.

"The theory of the business must be known and understood throughout the organization. This is easy in..."

Sat, 28 Jul 2012 13:36:00 -0400

“

The theory of the business must be known and understood throughout the organization. This is easy in an organization’s early days. But as it becomes successful, an organization tends increasingly to take its theory for granted, becoming less and less conscious of it. Then the organization becomes sloppy. It begins to cut corners. It begins to pursue what is expedient rather than what is right. It stops thinking. It stops questioning. It remembers the answers but has forgotten the questions. The theory of the business becomes “culture.” But culture is no substitute for discipline, and the theory of the business is a discipline.

The theory of the business has to be tested constantly. It is not graven on tablets of stone. It is a hypothesis. And it is a hypothesis about things that are in constant flux — society, markets, customers, technology. And so, built into the theory of the business must be the ability to change itself. Some theories are so powerful that they last for a long time. Eventually every theory becomes obsolete and then invalid. It happened to the GMs and the AT&Ts. It happened to IBM. It is also happening to the rapidly unraveling Japanese keiretsu.

”

- Drucker, Peter F. (2009-10-13). The Daily Drucker (p. 204). Harper Collins, Inc.. Kindle Edition. (from Managing in a Time of Great Change)