Neil’s Blog

Published in the San Diego Union-Tribune, November 23, 2020 Let’s imagine that you are rich and powerful and famous. In other words, you are a master of the universe, and you pick a co-founder who is also rich and famous and powerful, a mistress of the universe. People hang on your every word, and you […]

Published in the San Diego Union-Tribune, November 16, 2020 San Diego has more than 25 tech and biotech “incubators and accelerators.” How important are they in helping entrepreneurs, particularly women and founders of color from underserved communities, entrepreneurs who historically have faced more hurdles and barriers? The findings of Wharton professor Valentina Assenova, who researched […]

Published in the San Diego Union-Tribune, November 9, 2020 “Ladies and gentlemen, congratulations, this has been a terrific meeting, and we now have a plan. And as you well know, there is damn little chance that we will stick to it.” I began to wonder about why it is so hard to stay on course, […]

Published in the San Diego Union-Tribune, November 2, 2020 This week I had a powerful he/she/they epiphany. I am not referring to LGBTQ gender pronouns per se, but rather to the puzzle of external validation. Allow me to amplify. A client comes in for a chit chat. He is from Canada, and in Toronto he […]

Published in the San Diego Union-Tribune, October 26, 2020 This column is running eight days before Election Day. Like many of you, I have a dog in the fight, and emotions across the country are running at peak RPMs. So, I thought this would be an ideal time to pause — to reflect. To do […]

Published in the San Diego Union-Tribune, October 19, 2020 How do you come up with a really good idea? (By the way, if I had a sure-fire answer, I would not be sharing it today). But in the proper spirit of the entrepreneurial ecosystem, let’s look at some sophisticated research, done at the Stanford Graduate […]