The perfect addition to any office- this awesome Jellyfish fish tank. Artful, awesome and genius.

Now I’m ready to fly:

I spent this past Saturday speaking at a great event in Boston called RamenCamp.  The name comes from the most core staple of food for bootstrapping entrepreneurs and it was put together by a great group of aggressive up and coming digerati in Boston.

I spoke about sales and market strategy (slides here)- specifically talking about how to look at market segmentation, test hypothesies about market fit and work a pipeline to close business to validate or invalidate your theory.  I also talked a bit about practical tools to help get the job done and some general strategies for customer development.  But no talk to aspiring entrepreneurs is complete without at some point taking a deeper dive into the fabric of what compels individuals to leave the safe havens of their jobs and risk it all in the eye of the hurricane.

I think we managed to touch on it at the very end of the talk.  Someone asked a question about compensation and equity at a startup and I replied that the dirty little secrete of startups is that people don’t work for money or equity.  They work for a greater purpose, for personal and professional growth, to be part of something bigger than themselves…to make a difference.  That is why people start companies and why other people want to join them.  We are social creatures and we implicitly understand that the sum of the parts can be greater than the whole.  That’s what drives startup people.  Make a difference.   Be part of something bigger.

Money is important, but purpose trumps cash all day every day.

Robert Fulghum was on to something.  Maybe not everything can be learned in kindergarten, but a ton can.  I got a reminder about the unintended consequences of incentives tonight from my 3.5 year old.  He’s been lazy about potty training but is eminently bribable- so we set out to bribe him.  We offered him M&Ms to use the potty; one M&M for #1 and two M&Ms for #2.  You know- a simple and scalable sales plan.

Tonight he mastered the incentive structure by successfully breaking his bathroom habit into 5 separate but equal trips to the bathroom across the full spectrum of his capabilities resulting in a massive haul of 9 M&Ms.  We had a deal- you can’t change in mid-stream or your credibility is shot with your team and your staff.  So, we dutifully doled out his commission (again and again).

Even carefully crafted plans can have unforeseen implications and good sales people will push hard to maximize the payoff for themselves.  That’s why quarterly or monthly plans are best; they give both sides a chance to reset and make sure they are achieving the desired goals for both parties.  Even the best laid plans…

[Update: I was reminded by a friend that I have inadvertently added more empirical data to the Freakonomics cannon that addresses this exact experiment]

Today was a big day for running. At the 115th running of the Boston Marathon Geoffry Mutai of Kenya not only shattered the course record for the Boston marathon by almost 3 minutes he also set a new WR (technically due to the wind and net downhill it is with an *).

What is going on here. One of today’s offers from Groupon is for Ludus Tours which is offering PGA Masters Tour Packages @ Augusta National.