Lessin's Lessons

Either the company raises money too quickly or the idea is too capital intensive. And, just to make sure you are totally pissed off, the investors’ shares are different than yours – they get paid back first.

It’s not that I’m necessarily opposed to a nice setting; I just want to spend time with guests who are interested in spending time with me independent of their perceived trappings of my environment.

Sam, unlike me, did not make the mistake of confusing technology with a virtual existence. Upon grasping that technology enabled isolation, I gravitated immediately to a hermitic life. Part of this was based on my medical realities, like a major stroke, but most of it was not. It turned out, for me, to be an unsatisfactory existence. I now crave hu

The success of Google had taught Sam two things. First, the user experience has to be clean and simple. Second, technology, not marketing, now defines the success of an online launch.

For a brief while, Sam had a car in the city. But this entailed a large fixed cost (parking in a garage) or even larger variable (parking tickets and retrieving your car at the impound). The cost of transportation as a variable cost (i.e. car rental) was way too inconvenient, “lumpy” (requiring full day commitments) and expensive. But along came Zi

Date outside your culture. On the premise that it is a remote possibility that any relationship will be lasting, the fundamental question should be what lasting impact can I obtain from a relationship?

Despite the fact that I’m donating all the proceeds from this book to charity, I doubt I’ll sell many copies. My writing, amortized over 50 years, will not, in the end, turn out to be a very generous endeavor. That’s ok – these observations, as I said, were compiled for my children.

Terminal illness is a great way to sort out your friends. But don’t set the bar too high. People have their own lives.

I begin relationships with a physical meeting with the expectation that thereafter they are apt to be electronic. There is no substitute for a first physical meeting. There is a trust that arises from sharing DNA that is, as of yet, irreplaceable with technology. In fact, I judge the quality of a coverage officer’s relationships by how he (this is