Last week I posed a challenge that came from my high school computer teacher: Can you find an efficient method (or "algorithm") to generate Pythagorean triplets? As a reminder, a Pythagorean triplet is a set of three integers that satisfy the Pythagorean equation:...
Brain Teaser: Finding Pythagorean Triplets
In an earlier post I wrote about a brain teaser from middle school. Here's one that is a bit more advanced. My high school computer teacher issued us a challenge: "I want you to write an algorithm to identify Pythagorean triplets." At the time, I didn't know what an...
Brain Teaser: Proof That 2 = 1
This is a classic brain teaser I learned in middle school (or "junior high school" where I grew up). Let's prove that: Here's the proof: Let's start by establishing some variables: Okay, so if that's...
The Death of Books, the Dawn of Publishing
"Have you read the latest Neal Stephenson book? It's called Reamde," a friend recently asked. "I bought the book, but hate traveling with a thick book, so I bought a second copy on iBooks and read it on the plane." A throwback like me, I thought. Loves books, but...
99Designs: Design Done Better
Whenever I start a new business, one of the first things I need to do is get a corporate logo; most people don't think a business is real until it has a logo. It's a pain in the neck, and pretty expensive--both in time and money. First, I have to find a graphic...
Prostitution, Drugs, Pornography, Gambling, and Religion
Silicon Valley is obsessed with business models. It's one of the first questions we ask about any new venture: "What's the business model?" When I was teaching Entrepreneurship in High Technology at Stanford in the early 1990s, and later working as a strategy...
The Beauty of Flipboard
I’ve been using Flipboard on my iPad since it was first released. It’s a fantastic application, and has won a ton of awards as a result. Apple named it the 2010 App of the Year, and Time Magazine called it one of the Top 50 innovations of 2010. So what is so great about it?
The truth is, I think Time Magazine got it wrong.
How to Get a Rock-Star Understanding of Your Market
How do you describe your market? When I ask people to describe their market, they often say something like, "Most of our customers are in their mid-20s, just out of college." Or they might use titles: "Our customers are CIOs at healthcare companies." And while these...
How Much Good is that Non-Profit Doing?
How does a non-profit measure its effectiveness? For-profit organizations can look at standard financial metrics: revenues, profits, return on equity, and so forth. But for most non-profit organizations, financial metrics are a means to an end, not the end itself....
You Know You Are An Entrepreneur When?
A few years ago I met a venture capitalist who tried to impress me with his entrepreneurial credentials. "I've always been an entrepreneur!" he proclaimed. "After I graduated I immediately joined a little startup, named Yahoo!" He looked quite pleased with himself. He...