Subject
15 entries
Business
Bookmarks
CommonCog Forum: business sensemaking community
CommonCog is a sensemaking community for business analysis — case studies of operators like Charlie Munger and Tom Murphy, decision frameworks, and expertise development. Run by Cedric Chin, who writes seriously about how business knowledge actually works.
Everything Y Combinator Teaches in 10 Minutes
A 10-minute YouTube distillation of everything Y Combinator teaches its founders — make something people want, talk to users, launch fast, and focus on growth. Essential startup operating principles in minimal time.
Forbes Next Billion-Dollar Startups 2022
Forbes' 2022 Next Billion-Dollar Startups list — 25 companies selected as likely future unicorns. A snapshot of what VCs and journalists considered high-potential bets in mid-2022, just before the macro environment shifted dramatically.
Zillow Did Not Have Metallic Balls
Steve Buccini's post-mortem on Zillow Offers dissects why Zillow's iBuying program failed — they were making a market in illiquid assets with a flawed pricing model and no mechanism to cut losses. A case study in the difference between algorithmic pricing and actual market-making discipline.
Why You're Losing Proposals
Jeff Archibald's analysis of why freelancers and agencies lose proposals — arguing the problem is usually not price or skill but positioning and the failure to address the client's actual fears. A counterintuitive diagnosis of a common frustration.
Which of the Five Types of Data Science Does Your Startup Need?
A taxonomy of the five types of data science a startup might need — product analytics, business intelligence, growth, ML/AI, and research. Useful framing for understanding that 'data scientist' is not one job.
So You Want to Be a Freelancer...
Samuel Mullen's practical guide to starting as a freelance developer — covering how to find clients, price your work, manage cash flow, and protect yourself legally. Written from hard experience, not theory.
The Value of Big Data Isn't the Data
HBR argument that the value of big data comes from the questions you ask and the actions you take, not from data accumulation itself. An early and important counterpoint to the data-as-moat hype of 2013.
The Bootstrapper's Bargain
Inc. Magazine on the tradeoffs of bootstrapping — the freedom and discipline that come from building without external capital versus the speed and resource advantages of VC funding. A 2013 take on a perennial startup debate.
Welcome to the Golden Age of Enterprise IT
GigaOm arguing 2013 was the beginning of a golden age for enterprise IT — cloud, SaaS, mobile, and big data converging to make enterprise software interesting again after decades of legacy stagnation. A snapshot of the sentiment that enterprise tech was cool again.
Data is Not Always a Substitute for Strategy
LinkedIn Pulse article arguing that data and analytics can't replace strategic judgment — a contrarian take during peak big data hype. Data without a strategic frame is just expensive noise.
VMware to Cut 900 Jobs
VMware cut 900 jobs in January 2013 as part of an 'exit from certain business lines' — shares fell 15%. A signal of the strategic pressure the company was under from OpenStack and public cloud, even before AWS had clearly won.
Forget Virality, Selling Enterprise Software Is Still Old School
Roman Stanek's TechCrunch piece arguing that enterprise software sales haven't changed despite the SaaS revolution — it's still about relationships, trust, and executive champions, not viral loops. The consumer-product playbook doesn't transfer.
From Programming to Business: Lesson 0
A blog post on transitioning from engineering to business thinking — the 'Lesson 0' framing signals it's about unlearning as much as learning. The core shift: from solving specified problems correctly to defining which problems are worth solving at all.
The Business of Conferences
A critical look at the economics and incentives behind tech conferences — who they actually serve, why speaker lineups get repetitive, and how the conference business model shapes what content gets produced. Written in 2012 when tech conference culture was at its peak.