01/29/19

Exclusive Interviews

OK, yesterday the Big Red Car posted an exclusive interview with the Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Patricia D’Alesandro Pelosi. You can read it here.

Nancy Pelosi – an Exclusive Interview

A reader of the female, legal persuasion wrote me a scathing email — I am still blushing at her language, but a blush on a Big Red Car is hard to detect — in which she doubted whether, in fact, the Big Red Car had spoken directly to Madame Speaker.

“You are a bald faced liar,” were her exact words. It is hard to quote a sentence from her email without exposing y’all to profanity. She called me a “rust bucket” which is, unfortunately, true.

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01/29/19

Making Progress in the Real World of Startups

Big Red Car here on a crisp, sunny Texas winter day. It is 40F, which is bone chilling cold in the ATX.

So, the BRC is talking to a couple of CEOs and they are describing their growth curve–from founding to launch to the Promised Land. All of them have made it to the pay window, a nice arrival point.

It was an interesting discussion and one you might want to have with yourself.

In an ideal situation — something that never, ever happens — fictitious growth might look something like this. You are looking at performance over a period of time. We all want it to be high and to the right. Performance appears to increase at a uniform rate, at a steady rate. Not very realistic?

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01/28/19

Nancy Pelosi – an Exclusive Interview

Big news today, y’all. Your Big Red Car has snagged an exclusive interview with the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi.

Nancy Patricia D’Alesandro Pelosi is the 78-year old Speaker of the House for a second time. She represents approximately 80% of the City of San Francisco (if people are taking a dump on your block, call Nancy) and has served in the Congress since the Holy Ghost was a Private First Class.

OK, she has served for 32 years and will serve through 34 when she finishes this term. [Term limits. The Big Red Car is in favor of term limits.]

Image result for images nancy pelosi

“You thought he, President McDonald Trump, had a chance? I was running the House when he was banging porn stars and Playboy bunnies. Please!”

We met at a coffee shop in West Austin where she was nibbling a croissant and drinking a “shot in the dark” — three shots of espresso in a black cup of coffee.

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01/24/19

Ringworm — the Politics of Ringworm and Billionaires

Big Red Car here on a lovely Texas Thursday with sunny, clear skies and a bit of a chill in the air. Today, we discuss the politics of ringworm and billionaires as brought to us by the following snippet from my new favorite Congresswoman, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

True — the Big Red Car adores Alexandria the Great. She brings a brash freshness to the US Congress from New York’s 14th District.

In a long interview with Ta-Nehisi Coates at a Martin Luther King Day event, Alexandria said the following:

” … a system that allows billionaires to exist when there are parts of Alabama where people are still getting ringworm because they don’t have access to public health is wrong.” 

Damn, girl, speak it. Ringworm and billionaires! The Bronx shouting out to Alabama! Isn’t democracy great?

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01/22/19

Martin Luther King – a day later

Yesterday was MLK Day, a holiday initiated by Ronald Reagan to honor Martin Luther King, an iconic American civil rights leader. Today, we revisit the man but with a different lens — Martin Luther King, the startup entrepreneur and leader.

King, famously, brought the concepts of civil disobedience and non-violent protest to what had been an extraordinarily violent subject. In this manner, he converted a vision into action without damaging the world in the process.

In Vietnam, some wag said, “We had to destroy the village to save it.” King said, “We have to save the country without doing any damage along the way.”

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01/8/19

Accounting Thinking for Startups

I hate accounting, but I love orderly accounts. I love it when the checkbook, the bank reconciliations, the cash receipts/disbursements journals, and the balance sheet all agree. Takes a bit of sleight of hand to make that happen, but I love it.

As a startup CEO, you need to get a good handle on how accounting works. This blog post is not going to teach you accounting, but it is going to give you the Stations of the Cross as it relates to what you do from the perspective of accounting.

Ready?

First, accounting can be a little time consuming and boring. As a CEO, never, ever, ever get involved with it. In your early days, hire an arm’s length bookkeeper and have them put your operation together on QuikBooks. [Pro tip: You could run the Pentagon on QuikBooks Enterprise, so don’t let anybody tell you it isn’t robust enough for your enterprise.]

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01/4/19

Jobs

Big Red Car here on a Jobs Report Friday. Hey, have a great weekend.

So, I was a little concerned about the December jobs report — because of the dipping stock market, the election results, the Fed’s moves, the general tenor in the air.

No reason to be alarmed, apparently.

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01/3/19

PRC v ROC

Big Red Car here, thinking of having Chinese food for dinner tonight, which of course brings me to the issue of the PRC (People’s Republic of China, the Communists) v the Republic of China (the democratic capitalists, Taiwan).

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Taiwan is separated from Mainland China by the Taiwan Strait, 110 miles — not much warning time in the event of an attack.

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