There's a concept in cognitive psychology called theory of mind, and theory of mind is the ability for someone to predict what someone else might be thinking in a given scenario. Young children have pretty horrific theory of mind. They're unable in most cases, you know, when kids are pretty young, to guess what a third party might be thinking [00:00:30] in a given scenario. They're unable to figure out or estimate what someone else might be thinking. So an experiment that's done with very young ...
Feb 28, 2019•7 min
Something I've been really curious about for a long time are the methods of Wim Hof. Wim Hof is a Dutch extreme athlete and a really likable guy. I've seen him interviewed several times and he doesn't have the typical stunt devil persona. He really seems to be coming from a great place and he is really into [00:00:30] breath and breathing and how that lets you go deeper into yourself. He's set a bunch of really, really remarkable world records. For example, he holds the record for swimming the l...
Feb 27, 2019•4 min
Something I've been meaning to do for a while is offer you the opportunity to post thoughts and tips and experiences here on the Nomics Update. We've got a nice audience kind of aggregated around what we're doing. Each episode will get a few thousand downloads, and generally I think the people that listen are interested in a range of topics. [00:00:30] Everything from growing startups to crypto to personal development, so if you have a tip that you want to share on the Nomics Update, here's what...
Feb 26, 2019•2 min
At Nomics, one of the things we don't talk about very often but something that's been really popular among our enterprise customers are our consultative or concierge data services. It's something that's a lot of fun because it allows us to partner at a deeper level with institutional investors, family offices, hedge funds, private investment offices, prop [00:00:30] shops, et cetera. It allows us to get to know a lot more about how these organizations use data, how they think about data, and how...
Feb 19, 2019•15 min
I think founders for the most part seem to, at least speaking for myself here, I think founders go through roughly a nine month cycle of founder failure that starts up, gets going, and then, repeats itself over, and over, and over again. The cycle's pretty simple. I think most founders when they start a company, if they're experienced, and they know what they're doing, [00:00:30] they start off doing a pretty good job. They've thought a lot about a given problem, and what they're looking to do w...
Feb 18, 2019•9 min
Hey, folks. I am pleased to tell you that the Flippening Podcast is back. It's been over a month since we published the last episode, and frankly, I didn't know if we were going to continue doing them. The Flippening Podcast, if you've ever heard if you've ever heard an episode, for example, the Security Token Documentary, it's something that takes a lot of time to put together, to put [00:00:30] content together in simple content that's produced at that level. There's a lot of scripting, there'...
Feb 15, 2019•7 min
So Pravin, and I hope I'm pronouncing your name correctly Pravin, but Pravin from Block.Kitchen wrote in with a question, and I'm gonna address it. First off, Block.Kitchen, I didn't even know there was a dot Kitchen domain name. There's just so many now, it's crazy. It's hard to follow. I'm always looking at these domain names and be like, "Wait, is this a dot com? It's a ..." That's the extension, dot Kitchen. Anyway, he wrote in [00:00:30] with a couple of questions. The first question he ask...
Feb 12, 2019•6 min
I got an invite to be interviewed for actually a pretty cool thing. The problem is it's not a interview where we get on the phone and they interview me and then they take notes and publish that. It's an interview where they send me a list of questions, and I need to answer them, and I'm bad at getting to these things. Normally, [00:00:30] I don't do these kinds of interviews just because it's hard to make the time for them, to sit down and write out all my answers, but when there's upside for it...
Feb 11, 2019•14 min
So back in the day I said I'd answer questions if you send them in. I believe also at the end of each episode I mentioned that I'll answer questions that folks submit as well. So I got a question from Casey. And they asked who inspires me in this space? What companies or individuals inspire me? So I thought about this a little bit and the first person that came to mind was Andreas [00:00:30] Antonopoulos. I hope I'm pronouncing his last name correctly. I think there's a good chance that I'm not....
Feb 10, 2019•15 min
So I got a second question from Pravin. Pravin, I hope I'm pronouncing your name correctly, from block.kitchen. Again, man I didn't even know there was a .kitchen domain extension. I'm perplexed by these, just this infinite number of domain names available now. And the prices all over the board. Sometimes you'll see like .blue domains [00:00:30] are like $100 a year and then there'll be some other kind that's like 15 cents. Anyway, I don't understand that business very well. But Pravin wrote in ...
Feb 09, 2019•16 min
I think hiring is a multi-year ... a multi-year game. About half the people I ... we've hired at [Nomics 00:00:11] I've known ... oh, about a year. Some of them, two of them I knew for over a year before they were hired, and it's just so important, I think, as a CEO, to stay in contact [00:00:30] with people who are excellent at what they do. A lot of people try and stay in contact with thought leaders, or other CEOs, and ... you know, people with huge brand names. Those people are already bomba...
Feb 07, 2019•7 min
We just turned on Brave verified publisher status on nomics.com and I'm kind of excited about it. I don't think it's going to, at least in the short term, result in any kind of real and meaningful short term value. But I really like the direction that the Brave browser is going in. It's almost at the point that I can start using it on a daily basis, even though it's not quite there yet. [00:00:30] I thought it was going to be there. I thought I was going to completely switch over to Brave. They ...
Feb 05, 2019•4 min
At the end of last week, I decided that I am no longer doing meet and greet phone calls or I don't know even calls that feel like they're going to be meet and greet phone calls. When someone says they want to do a meet and greet, the answer is just no. But recently, I've been hit up with a bunch of different people reaching out who won't actually say they want to do a meet and greet [00:00:30] phone call. They'll disguise it as something else. I had someone reach out and say they wanted to spons...
Feb 04, 2019•10 min
For the most part, I've been sharing general business advice on this podcast, and I really, really, really want that to change. For one, I don't know that I'm a general advice kind of person or an advice kind of persona at all. So what I've been sharing is not what I think is the right way to build a company. I think it's just how we're building a company, and a lot of this is influenced by my past experiences and [00:00:30] successes and also mistakes. I think general business advice starts vee...
Feb 03, 2019•4 min
I think it's dangerous for companies to become obsessed with consistency. I think there's a time and a place for consistency, and I'm not talking about consistency of execution, I'm talking about consistency of content. Of course, consistency of execution is important, being a consistent person, doing what you say you're going to do. All that stuff [00:00:30] is of upmost important. But when I talk about consistency in this podcast, I'm talking about consistency from a product and perhaps even a...
Feb 01, 2019•9 min
My thinking, over the years, on hiring freelancers and other people with nonpermanent status has really changed a lot over time. I used to be of the opinion that I wanted to hire lifers, people who are in it for the long haul, people who could develop deep company knowledge and really kind [00:00:30] of be there forever. I still want to hire folks with some of those attributes. There's nothing wrong with that. I think was has changed is this staunch anti-freelancer or anti-contractor approach, a...
Jan 31, 2019•6 min
So, I'm looking for an executive assistant, and I just want to put this out there. It's not a mad dash to hire someone. I'm not going to be hiring a recruiter. Yeah, I'm not going to be hiring a recruiter or running a strict process. I think it's the kind of thing where, when I find the right person, [00:00:30] it'll just happen. There are definitely hires that we make where we're running a process and we're shooting for a date. This hire is not like this. Yeah, so what's the predicament that I'...
Jan 31, 2019•7 min
One of my favorite blog posts is on the AVC.com blog. It came out in 2010. It's called What A CEO Does. This is on Fred Wilson's blog. In this blog post, it's pretty short, but it's incredibly powerful. In this blog post, Fred Wilson describes being on a board with another VC and [00:00:30] a search at that board was doing for a CEO of a portfolio company, right? They're looking to hire a new CEO. Fred, I think he was a junior VC at that time, certainly didn't have the experience that he has now...
Jan 29, 2019•13 min
So, I was reading this article in the New York Times about Donald Trump and Nancy Pelosi, and how Donald Trump has never had to really go up against someone like Nancy Pelosi in business negotiations before. And why he's being a bit, you know, he's been frustrated by that. And someone in the article, someone quoted in the article, "The art of war." So, there's this ancient [00:00:30] Chinese book by a man name Sun Tzu. So, I'm not a fan of war, but I am a fan of strategy and so this is a book ab...
Jan 27, 2019•8 min
Hey how's it going? I hope you're having a great day, a fantastic day wherever you are. So, I have been asked this a few times. I though I'd answer it here. What do I think of the current state of bear market and when are we going to recover? So, I went through this a little bit in 2013, 2014. During that time Bitcoin spiked to ... at the end of 2013 it spiked to around $1200 and then it crashed again to, [00:00:30] I don't know, $100, $200, $300 and fluctuated around there for a long time. Then...
Jan 26, 2019•3 min
So, a while ago on our homepage, and in our header, and basically everywhere on our website, we put a little tagline below our logo. That tagline says, an API company. So if you go to nomics.com it says Nomics an API company. And I think this is really important for us to kind of state what our focus is. I see a lot of companies that are distracted, especially during bear markets, especially in the crypto space during bear markets. [00:00:30] And they're just doing a lot of things simultaneously...
Jan 25, 2019•8 min
Hey, it's me. Hope you're having a fantastic day, wherever you are. Or night, depending upon what part of the world you're in. So I wanted to share some thoughts about the product journey, buildings product, et cetera. I've had a lot of different kinds of experiences getting product feedback, it's really been all over the map. But the one consistent thing, the one consistent [00:00:30] experience I've had around product feedback, is that it is almost always the case that when there is a true mar...
Jan 23, 2019•10 min
Well, I'm having a pretty good day. My wife came over, and we watched [00:00:30] an episode of The Office which is something we've done. Not The Office, but we've had a show that we've tried to watch that gets our mind out of the day-to-day ever since our daughters were born. I have twin toddlers, two girls. They're amazing, and so's my wife actually. Anyway, she came over. We're on season two of The Office. Man, it's awkward. [00:01:00] Uh, uh, it's awkward and painful. There's no laugh tracks,...
Jan 22, 2019•6 min
Blog post link Hey, everyone, welcome to today's Nomics update. It is Martin Luther King Jr. Day and this is one of, in my opinion, one of the most important holidays of the year. I am really glad that at Nomics we take the day off and we observe it. I hope you're having a good day, a restful day for those of you in the United States who have the day off and spending [00:00:30] time with those you care about and reflecting on, hopefully, the importance of the day or at least spending some time w...
Jan 21, 2019•10 min
Here's the full blog post with more details. Links Mentioned In This Episode Video link HR docs mentioned in this episode Interview Questions Monthly Review Questions 15-Five Weekly Check-in Questions Company Dashboard Exit Interview All right, so this is going to be a mini course. The title of this is, almost everything I know about startup HR. I'd like to think though that I know a lot more than just what's in here, right? There's lots of nuance, but at the end of the day, the documents that I...
Jan 20, 2019•40 min
I've had this new experience since being in this world, this financial world, dealing with hedge funds and exchanges and other folks who are customers, and it's really around product and the commercial contract and the role that the commercial contract plays in [00:00:30] the product. In the past, so much of the product or a huge part of the product, most of the product, the vast majority of a product that was sold, almost all of it, almost all of it was about the software and what you see on th...
Jan 17, 2019•7 min
Hey there. This is episode 29. Holy crap, this is a real thing. This podcast seems to be going pretty well. Every week or so, listens are roughly doubling so I know people are listening to this. But I haven't gotten a lot of feedback yet, really. Someone did send me a message the other day, let's see, let's [00:00:30] see what did they say here? "I'm trying to use fewer messaging apps, but your personal podcast is effing phenomenal. I listen to all of them and it's really helpful, helps me refle...
Jan 15, 2019•5 min
So today's entry is a bit of a rant, and it's really around an email that I get pretty often. Especially when we do things that start getting a little bit of public attention. I often get an email from a VC, that essentially says, "Hey, I'm from such and such VC firm. I'd really like to hop on the phone [00:00:30] and learn a little bit more about your business." These emails really get me ... First off, yeah, it's great that they say something complimentary about the business, but they literall...
Jan 14, 2019•7 min
All right, this podcast episode is going to be called Almost Everything I Know About Working With Recruits. So I think in the past definitely, definitely one of the biggest mistakes I've made is not paying the best recruiter I can as much as we can afford for the state of the company [00:00:30] to make key hire, to help us with with key hires. It's been my, it's kind of the mythology of the startup space that you can hire everyone on your own and that you should not hire recruiters. So there's a...
Jan 13, 2019•18 min
So this is Part Two of my reflection on the Shape Shift layoffs. I think anytime we start observing rounds of layoffs from an industry, I think it's important for CEOs in the space, founders in the space, really anyone in the space whose key and vital to the success of a company to reflect on what's happening. What mistakes were made, what lessons [00:00:30] are in this for observers. It's great to learn from other people's mistakes, that's the best way to learn. So I guess going back to Erik Vo...
Jan 12, 2019•17 min
