I listen to NPR’s Science Friday podcast every week. Last Friday, there was a great interview wit author Michael Pollan. In it he talks about his new book, “In Defense of Food, An Eater’s Manifesto.” Pollan says that he can really sum up the whole book in 7 words.
Eat Food. Not Too Much. Mostly Plants.
As a mostly-vegan who is appalled with the amount of junk that people eat, I couldn’t agree more! I also like his description of processed-packaged-supermarket-stuff as “edible food-like substances.” I think his message is 100% correct, and very important. Most of the stuff Americans eat is not food. By eating better stuff Americans could be a lot healthier and happier!
While I may sound fanatical about it, Pollan does a great job of getting these points across in a calm, informative way. He even talks about the history of food science and how we got in this predicament. Check The Science Friday Website for a link to the audio of the interview.
Listen to the Interview
His Holiness, the Dalai Lama has come to Atlanta. He will be serving as a visiting professor at Emory University over the coming days. To celebrate his arrival in Atlanta, the weekend was filled with seminars and talks (one of which my Mom came up for!). However, I didn’t get to see him until yesterday when he gave a public address from Centennial Olympic Park.
Before his Holiness came on, a contingent of monks from the Drepung Monastery took the stage to perform some of their traditional chanting. Check out this video:
After this, the Dalai Lama took the stage. This man is wonderfully compassionate, and it shows through in his gentle mannerisms, and warm smiles. He is a captivating and engaging speaker despite English not being his first language. He spoke for about twenty minutes on topics mostly related to compassion and kind-hearted-ness and how these tools can result in peace and happiness for their practitioners. It was an inspiring talk, and I left feeling exhilarated and unusually happy.
I also took some videos of his Holiness’s talk, but the audio needs some work. Keep checking back as I hope to put some of these videos online soon.
I attended a talk last night as part of the Georgia Tech Business Plan Competition Workshop Series (pdf). This was such a fantastic talk that I will have trouble putting it succinctly into this post.
Stephen Flemming
“Transforming Innovative Tech into Business”
As with any other person who has been a VC or angel investor, Steve was incredibly sharp, and seemed like he would be impervious to BS either on the giving or receiving end. Steve began his talk discussing the pros and cons of starting a business in the Southeast. He went on a diatribe about how ludicrous the spending in California is. Then he pointed out that although there isn’t much VC investment in Georgia and the surrounding states, there is a better tax situation, and much better access to real estate, talent, and customers.
Steve continued by discussing the cyclical relationship between institutional investors, VC’s, and entrepreneurs giving some insight into how that relationship drove VC’s behaviors. Some interesting take-aways were that VC’s want the entrepreneur to get rich, and that they’ll only have to be brutal and cruel if they have to in order to make the returns they promised their investors.
After giving some insight in these areas, he began enumerating the things that you must convince investors of when trying to raise capital for a business.
- You have a large, fast-growing market segment
- You have a technological advantage that will block competition
- You have reasonable financial terms
- You have measurable milestones for success
He went on fleshing these out for most of the remainder of the talk, but kept peppering in useful tips. I’d like to point out some here:
- Get a good referral (from another investor, an attorney, etc.) If you’re plan comes pre-qualified it. You’re in.
- Make a 20 page business plan with a 2 page executive summary. No More!
- Power-Point deck using the 10-20-30 rule (10 slides, 20 minutes, 30 point type)
- In all of these documents, sell the company, not the product.
- Do your homework on the investors you’re presenting to and tailor the presentation. It will help you and impress them.
- Choose your investor wisely. Don’t just follow money; find someone that can help you with experience, expertise, contacts, etc.
Check out Steve Fleming’s website as well. Here you can find his blog as well as some useful information about starting companies.
Furthermore, here is a list of other resources and websites that Steve
suggested:
First off, quicksilver is an amazing tool. In fact, this program alone is worth switching to mac for. This post had the video below from the creator (as well as some great get-to-know quicksilver links). The creator has some seriously good ideas about how software and interfacing should work…. and guess what? He works for Google now!
Really, check out this post too.
Recently, I’ve been reading motivational articles by Steve Pavlina. This guy is pretty remarkable (he finished two undergrad degrees in just three semesters!). Now he spouts wisdom about getting what you want out of life. I epically like some of his concepts outlined in these articles:
Overwhelming Force
Cultivating Burning Desire
The Power of Clarity
He makes some very good points about how setting goals and then making very strong and directed actions to accomplish those goals. From reading his stuff I’m getting a big surge of can-do attitude and am eager to try to tackle some goals I’ve been putting off for a while!
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