Fund Your Dreams

A friend of mine recently left her job to follow her dream of starting a fresh juice company. It’s been great to see her go from idea to Kickstarter campaign to running a legit small business. It’s also been amazing to see her resourcefulness. To fund her business she needed to get a part time job. Instead of spending time looking for a part-time job and then committing to a specific schedule she started driving for Lyft. Lyft was perfect for her because she wanted a flexible schedule and the ability to focus 100% on the juice business when she needed to. Without Lyft it would have been more difficult to get her business off the ground.

I thought it’d be fun to catalog all the low commitment ways to leverage your skills and assets to fund your dream.

Auto:
Advercar - If you drive you can post ads on your car to earn extra income.
GetAround - If you own a car, it’s probably unused most of the day. GetAround let’s you rent it when it’s not in use.
Lyft - Lyft is a peer-to-peer ride service that pays drivers $35/hr.
RelayRides - Car rental community that’s comparable to GetAround.
Sidecar - A ride service that’s similar to Lyft.
Zimride - Owned by the same people that run Lyft, Zimride enables ridesharing and carpooling. For example, if you’re going to Tahoe with a friend and have a couple extra seats in your car you can sell those seats to people going to same place on Zimride.

Home:
Airbnb(aff) - The Big Kahuna, Airbnb is the company that got the sharing economy rolling. For the uninitiated, Airbnb lets you rent out your space, whether it’s an house, apartment or spare bedroom.
VRBO - Similar to Airbnb though more focused on vacation rentals.

Products and services - If you create physical products or sell services, check out the following sites to make it easier to sell.
Etsy - An easy way to set up a store online for your goods.
Zaarly - A well designed way to set up a storefront for your product or service. Services include everything from cooking lessons to dog walking.

Expertise:
clarity.fm - This site connects experts with people looking for advice. If you’re an expert at something, sign up to this site and people will pay you for your advice.
Skillshare - Teach people new skills and share your knowledge.
TaskRabbit(aff) - Get paid to run errands and do other tasks.
Vayable - Become a tour guide in your city.

Other:
Getable - If you have construction equipment, rent it out on Getable.
SnapGoods - Rent out all sorts of other stuff including gadgets, musical instruments, tools and photo equipment.

Let me know if I’m missing anything from this list in the comments. What other ways can you fund your dreams?

Psst: Let’s chat on Twitter here

From: Louis C.K.

It makes me happy that Louis C.K. writes so well on his phone of all things and sad that there’s not more of this.

——-

Hello.  Its louis here.  I’m clacking this to you on my phone in my dressing room here at studio 8H, right in 30 rockefeller center, in Manhattan, new york city, new york, america, world, current snapshot of all existence everywhere.

Tonight I’m hosting Saturday Night Live, something I zero ever in my life saw happening to me. And yet here it is completely most probably happening (I mean, ANYTHING could NOT happen.  So we’ll see).

I’ve been working here all week with the cast, crew, producers and writers of SNL, and with Lorne Michaels. Such a great and talented group of people.And here we are in the middle of New York City, which was just slammed by a hurricane, leaving behind so much trouble, so much difficulty and trauma, which everyone here is still dealing with every day.

Last night we shot some pre-tape segments in greenwich Village, which was pitch black dark for blocks and blocks, as it has been for a week now.Its pretty impossible to describe walking through these city streets in total darkness.  It can’t even be called a trip through time, because as long as new york has lived, its been lit. By electricity, gas lamps, candlelight, kerosene.  But this was pitch black, street after street, corner round corner. And for me, the village being the very place that made me into a comedian and a man, to walk through the heart of it and feel like, in a way, it was dead.   I can’t tell you how that felt.  And you also had a palpable sense that inside each dark window was a family or a student or an artist or an old woman living alone, just being int he dark and waiting for the day to come back. Like we were all having one big sleep over, but not so much fun as that.

This is how a lot of the city is still.  I know people in queens, brooklyn, Staten Island, new jersey, all over, are not normal yet.  And not normal is hard.And here at 30 rock, these folks are working so hard this week.  There are kids in the studio every day, because members of the crew and staff had to bring them to work.   Many people are sharing lodging.  Everyone is tired.  But there’s this feeling here that we’ve got to put on a great show.  I’m sure it feels like that here every week.  But wow.  I feel really lucky to be sharing this time with these particular good folks here at SNL.

In about 5 hours we’ll be going on the air.   I’ll do a monologue.  And we’ll show you some sketches that we wrote and try to make you laugh.   I’m gonna look really dumb in some of this stuff.  But I don’t care. Its awfully worth it. And I’m really excited.Anyway.  I just wanted to let you know.  If you watch the show tonight, when Don Pardo says my name and you see me walking out, all the shit in this email is what ill be thinking.  I’m a pretty lucky guy.   I hope you enjoy the show.

Thanks.Louis C.K.

Live.  From new york.  Its saturday night.

——-

Apple’s cash strategy I saw this excellent answer on Quora about what Apple should do with its $51B cash hoard: http://www.quora.com/What-would-make-sense-for-Apple-to-use-its-51-billion-in-cash-for-a-strategic-acquisition/answers/612608?srid=DH I thought this answer was very thoughtful and nuanced. In summary, Apple uses its cash to get exclusive access to component technologies like flash memory and touch capacitive displays. They don’t do big news making acquisitions typical of Google and Oracle. Apple’s strategy may appear less risky because they’re buying hard assets. However, Apple’s strategy isn’t necessarily less risky. They’re making huge technology bets that the components they support will be desirable to customers. For example, if Apple pays $1B for new aluminum machining technology and their customers don’t like it, Apple is left holding the bag. Very interesting strategy! Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
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Apple’s cash strategy

I saw this excellent answer on Quora about what Apple should do with its $51B cash hoard:

http://www.quora.com/What-would-make-sense-for-Apple-to-use-its-51-billion-in-cash-for-a-strategic-acquisition/answers/612608?srid=DH

I thought this answer was very thoughtful and nuanced. In summary, Apple uses its cash to get exclusive access to component technologies like flash memory and touch capacitive displays. They don’t do big news making acquisitions typical of Google and Oracle.

Apple’s strategy may appear less risky because they’re buying hard assets. However, Apple’s strategy isn’t necessarily less risky. They’re making huge technology bets that the components they support will be desirable to customers. For example, if Apple pays $1B for new aluminum machining technology and their customers don’t like it, Apple is left holding the bag.

Very interesting strategy! Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

The Descendant of Newton’s Tree

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I was at MIT today to do an errand and someone told me about this incredible area called the President’s Courtyard. The offices of MIT’s leadership (President Hockfield, etc.) look over this courtyard.

The best thing about the courtyard is this small, unassuming apple tree. This tree is a descendant of the tree under which Isaac Newton conceived the theory of gravity. Pretty incredible stuff and sitting under my nose all along!

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Make No Little Plans

I saw this quote on Daring Fireball and had to share it.  Awesome.

“Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency. Remember that our sons and grandsons are going to do things that would stagger us. Let your watchword be order and your beacon beauty. Think big.”

Daniel Burnham, Chicago architect. (1846-1912) 

Candid, thoughtful Q & A session with Steve Jobs from WWDC 1997

I found this video on Hacker News and had to share it. Someone posted it there because they perceived that Steve Jobs alluded to iCloud back in 1997. I think it’s more important than that.

It shows you:

1) How to handle a hostile audience. Apple had recently bought Steve Jobs’ company Next and announced their next generation OS, Rhapsody. This angered developers because for several years Apple had prepped them for a different OS called Copland. There’s a particularly nasty question from a Java developer.

2) How to frame perceived conflicts. There was perceived conflict between Apple and Microsoft. Regardless of whether there was or not, it wasn’t practical to piss off the largest tech company in the world, especially when Apple needed Microsoft to get on Rhapsody.

3) How to get people to buy-in on change. Steve’s goal in this video is to get developers to write apps for Apple’s next generation OS. He makes a clear case to a key audience.

4) Be pragmatic. Someone in the audience thanked Steve Jobs for turning Apple around (in 1997!). Steve said he didn’t think the company had turned around yet. He was pragmatic that most of the work was ahead.

This video was taken before Steve was given the CEO role, so it’s a great, unfiltered look into what he thought about Apple before he was in charge.

Bing Gordon perfectly sums up what to look for in your career Bing Gordon (former chief creative officer at EA and partner at Kleiner Perkins) did an interview with the NYT. There are a ton of great quotes in it, but this one resonated with me. As a recent MBA considering my next step, I think it’s a great way to think about potential opportunities: “It’s better to work with people who you would pay to be able to work with. So if you’re working with someone in an area that fascinates you, with people you can add value to and have good conversations with, who are capable and really motivated and you would pay to hang out with them, I’m pretty confident good things would happen.” Bottom line: work with great people on something you love.
View Separately

Bing Gordon perfectly sums up what to look for in your career

Bing Gordon (former chief creative officer at EA and partner at Kleiner Perkins) did an interview with the NYT. There are a ton of great quotes in it, but this one resonated with me. As a recent MBA considering my next step, I think it’s a great way to think about potential opportunities:

“It’s better to work with people who you would pay to be able to work with. So if you’re working with someone in an area that fascinates you, with people you can add value to and have good conversations with, who are capable and really motivated and you would pay to hang out with them, I’m pretty confident good things would happen.”

Bottom line: work with great people on something you love.