… even though I have the word capitalist in my job title — Work is a partnership between workforces and the people who lead them. Strong partnerships need each partner to be strong, and for their power to balance. I believe that for our economy and society to succeed, we need working people to have more leverage, to restore balance. …

The situation… a founder reaches out cold to ask for pitch deck feedback (maybe you’ve heard the old “if you want money, ask for advice; if you want advice, ask for money” canard). We respond: “We avoid giving much advice without having spent time to understand what you’re building. Investors…

Together with MIT business school professor Tom Kochan, former chair of the MIT faculty and many-decades expert in organized labor, we wrote this piece in Harvard Business Review… If you respond to worker organizing in a combative or dismissive way, you might be putting your company at risk: tarnishing your brand for consumers, poisoning productive workplace relationships, and deterring future talent from joining. If a union does eventually form at your company, you’ll have thrown away an opportunity to build a collaborative relationship. You’ll start from a place of dysfunction. Such problems can burden your company for decades.

Avoid the usual interview-and-stare-into-their-eyes process — Founders often face the challenge of needing to build something, and missing all the skills to build it themselves. …

Summarizing this book, The Persuaders by Anand Giridharadas... ... stories from aligned changemakers with an uncommon take on how to bring others to their cause... Reminds me of books like The Unwinding in using a handful of parables, some from the famous and some from the less known, to knit…

You’re not alone… and some insights on what investors look for when they ask for one… — Written with George Okpamen (Bloomberg Beta Fellow) and Mark Schulz (Bloomberg Beta CFO) You’re a few months into your startup, and you’re meeting investors for the first time. They seem to be properly warmed by your intro, you’ve laid out the case for why your service is desperately needed by…

“If only we could train Americans for the jobs of tomorrow, or better jobs already available to them today, we could solve Americans’ economic problems. Education and job training are the answer.” This sounds so tempting! It must be true, right? I thought, once, that job training was the answer…

Find the application here. — Over the last few years, I’ve worked in areas that were just starting to get attention — the future of work, artificial intelligence, universal basic income, and so on. Every time, public interest followed storytellers who helped us better understand the contours of the topics, and how they might change…

Reasons to avoid working with us — The below gives prospective candidates for roles at Bloomberg Beta a window into all the reasons not to work with us. As part of our zealotry about transparency, we intend to set expectations accurately, and attract only people who are up for the warts-and-all experience to join our team. The…