The pandemic has brought unprecedented hardship to small businesses and their owners. COVID-19 has compounded inequities, driving underestimated entrepreneurs further into isolation. Current and formerly incarcerated returning citizens and the founders creating solutions for these audiences are coping with their own challenges magnified by the pandemic yet are being resilient in the face of adversity.
This is why we’re hosting a virtual pop-up with the National Black Chamber of Commerce, Investing In Returning Citizens, to discuss ways to address and remove barriers identified by entrepreneurs like implicit bias, network connectivity, and access to talent enablement programs. …
Two days after MicroStrategy CEO introduced Bitcoin to over 6,900 enterprises and three days before the public announcement of Tesla buying $1.5 billion in bitcoin, my students were generating ideas for how corporations can use Bitcoin to their benefit.
In the Tech Consulting undergraduate course I teach, University of Maryland students practiced brainstorming — using divergent thinking to generate lots of potential ideas. To help practice this skill, I chose a challenging topic to brainstorm around, Bitcoin.
The students were given a team workspace with a company selected by me, including Snapchat, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. Each team chose…
Cathie Wood from Ark Invest said on a recent podcast. She continued, “If you have a long enough time horizon, new technologies can be transformational.” One investor Wood mentioned who has built a reputation for seeing opportunity when others are skeptical is Bill Miller. Miller was an early believer in Amazon, investing heavily when most analysts were highly skeptical. Around this time, Amazon Founder Jeff Bezos took the TED Talk stage, comparing the dot-com boom to the early days of the electric industry.
Bezos believed society had only scratched the surface of the web’s capabilities and that the best…
A Work In Progress
I wanted to put together a list of blogs, videos, books, and podcasts that have helped me better understand Bitcoin. This educational guide is organized from basics, foundations & history; infrastructure & technology; markets & business models; additional resources; and a glossary of terms. This is not conclusive as I will be updating this regularly. Please share recommendations in the comments section.
Basics, Foundations & History
- Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System by Satoshi Nakamoto (2008)
- Why Bitcoin Matters by Marc Andreessen (2014)
- Planting Bitcoin: Sound Money by Dan (2018)
- The Bullish Case for Bitcoin by Vijay Boyapati (2018)
- Bitcoin…
How To Resolve Conflict, Increase Engagement, And Optimize Performance
Recently, the author of The Extraordinary Power of Leader Humility, Marilyn Gist, presented a guided discussion on how leaders create thriving organizations and achieve great results. I found it simply fascinating, especially since her research is grounded in her own experiences in corporate America.
Marilyn has extensively studied why leader humility is the essential foundation of all healthy organizations and validated her work with interviews of prominent CEOs of companies ranging from the Mayo Clinic and Ford to Starbucks and Costco. Below are a few of my top takeaways and key concepts from the enlightening discussion:
- Humility is a tendency…
Proud to see the vision — to be a place of positivity while promoting the sport to a more diverse audience — remains the same at the startup I co-founded over a decade ago with my brother Thomas Alford and Adam O’Neill. Lacrosse Playground’s mission is to represent today’s lacrosse culture and way of life. It’s in strong hands with its new owner. I look forward to following their progress as they lead the company into the next decade.
I joined “Squawk on the Street” to discuss the cryptocurrency’s move and why it’s become a popular investment. Below are some of the areas I covered in the interview including what I believe will drive further adoption of Bitcoin.
Why Bitcoin Has Been Going Higher
Bitcoin has grown over 400% in the last 12 months with a market cap of approximately $600B. Additionally, Bitcoin ‘whales,’ addresses with more than 100 Bitcoin, accumulated an additional 47,500 Bitcoin in December alone, according to crypto exchange Kraken.
The reality is that the USD loses at least 2% in value each year with the…
“Part of the answer lies in the power of network structures and the ability of organizations to create what we have termed adaptive space,” says the co-authors of MIT Sloan Management Review's article “How to Catalyze Innovation in Your Organization.” Adaptive space is the network and organizational context that allows team members, ideas, information, and resources to flow across the organization to foster innovation.
Adaptive space “works by enabling ideas generated in entrepreneurial pockets of an organization to flow into the operational system and develop into new products or services that lead to growth.”
This Is How Black People Die
Are all doctors and registered nurses racist? Not overtly. “But this is one (common) way Black patients receive different care: cumulative deprioritization,” writes Physician Scientist, Tamorah Lewis. Cumulative deprioritization is when implicit bias unconsciously affects decisions — It’s deadly.
Bias can play a role in whose COVID-19 symptoms are taken seriously, like Dr. Susan Moore. Dr. Moore was a Black doctor who died of COVID-19 after complaining of racist treatment. “He made me feel like a drug addict,” Dr. Moore said, accusing a white doctor of downplaying her complaints of pain and suggesting she should be discharged. Bias cost Dr…
It Might Get You Better Results
As entrepreneurs, there are a lot of things that we don’t know. It’s challenging to get on a pathway that you believe will bring you to the result you want. I’ll tell you a little secret, that pathway doesn’t exist. Every day you’ve got to get up and face different challenges and pressures in your life. Entrepreneurship is just a continued effort. But one thing that you can do along that path as you iterate and pivot is asking for help.
You can be curious, embrace some discomfort in not knowing the answers, and learn through trial and error. But…
Harry Alford
Harry Alford is Co-Founder of humble ventures, a venture development firm accelerating tech startups in partnership with large organizations and investors.
