Ed Cottrell

  • Shifting Gears: Are entrepreneurs crazy idiots?

    My Entrepreneurship seminar instructor asks, “Are entrepreneurs crazy idiots?” His answer is, “Not necessarily, but some of them are.” It’s basically a risk vs. rewards calculus – if you have little to lose and much to gain, you probably should take the plunge, but if that’s not you, you probably should not. I think that…

  • Lark – er, starling – of a Story

    Simply amazing. Hat tip: Pros and Cons

  • Have you started your social network yet?

    Or rather, 230,000 of them? That’s the promise (and achievement) of Ning, the latest effort by serial entrepreneur Marc Andreessen. The principle is simple: let people create their own social networks, for whomever and whatever reason. The results are amazing: the site is growing at 0.4% per day and aiming to host 4 million networks…

  • The Big Switch

    As I mentioned before, Sarah and I are in Randy Picker’s Tech Policy Seminar, which has so far produced three weeks of really good discussions. The last two weeks were spent discussing Nicholas Carr’s The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google. It was a very interesting and provocative read. While I think…

  • Minor Site Tweaks, More to Come

    As promised, a few little changes have been going on behind and before the scenes, today. First, the blog software has been upgraded. More noticeably, I added a LinkedIn button and the AddThis bookmark dropdown menu. Want to add one of my posts to your Digg, Facebook, MySpace, or other link list? Click away –…