We sat down with Sonia Sahney Nagar, the founder of Pickie, for Do What You Love — a new series that showcases the entrepreneurs behind emerging companies. Here’s what she shared: I studied mechanical engineering at the University of Michigan and got my start in tech a little bit there. I used to spend my summers programming for a […]

From legal and tax issues to long-term payouts, here’s what to consider

It’s really hard to teach someone how to hire, how to manage, and how to lead. Like many things, it’s usually best to learn on the job, practice, and improve after making a lot of mistakes along the way. The problem is, as a startup, you can’t afford to make a lot of mistakes when […]

What Is Patent Pending To paraphrase the always quotable Ralph Wiggum: “Miss Hoover, what’s a patent?” You probably already have a general understanding of what a patent is and what it covers, but the USPTO offers different varieties, any one of which may be more appropriate for your concept than the others. The three most […]

A phrase my high school cross country and track coach used over and over again is, “Don’t worry about the results. Focus on the process and the result will take care of itself.” He would say this when I’d stress about shaving ten seconds to qualify for State Finals. Instead, he made me focus on […]

In the tech industry, it’s common practice to invoke “laws” (Moore’s Law) and “rules” (80/20, aka the Pareto Principle) as a way to shorthand real-world phenomena that, frankly, would take a long time to explain otherwise. Dunbar’s Number is a prime example of one of these “laws” and is a critically important construct for contact […]

In the past years I’ve met many founders before they raised money to help them around product, marketing and generally understand what’s important and when. One phenomena I keep seeing is one of the founders will ask “where can we find a good product manager?” My answer is almost always “You don’t need a product […]