I recall some of my first stock purchases, tiny amounts from a discount broker as I was a punk ass kid with big dreams. With some money from hustling I bought a few shares, after reading the WSJ newspapers that I would get from Walden Books. Then my tech career took off, so I had a few more bucks. Just a tad bit later the tech boom happens. Here I was thinking I was Gordon Gekko getting crazy returns from my “stellar analysis” but it was just luck. And evenSEE DETAILS

You didn’t have to be an MIT quant or someone that trades off the pattern of migratory routes of elephants to see this one coming. With Buffet dumping $900M in Walmart stock, headlines like “Retail is dead” or “Buffet just put retail on notice” are inevitable. This actually was a pretty simple play on a couple levels. You already know Amazon is an unstoppable force at the movement. When you hear about Amazon, you hear about technology, amazingly optimized supply chain operations, and drone delivery. When you hear Walmart, allSEE DETAILS

The rise and fall of brands has always been of interest to me. They fall often because of their own wrongdoing or an uncontrollable groundswell from a newcomer that starts as a fad from some celebrity. Either way, trying to understand the why is important. I remember the days when Columbia was all the rage, then it slowly became a discount brand as the market was oversold with their products. Then we witnessed the rise of North Face and they became the 800 pound gorilla going from a higher endSEE DETAILS

For the last decade or so I have seen my fair share of pitches. In the last 2 years, the start-up game has really ramped up from everyone wanting to live their Shark Tank dream to wanting to become the new Facebook. I get as many as 10+ pitches a week, and some are good, a few are OK but most are really bad. After talking to some other angels I came up with a quick list of what to do and what not to do based on the feedbackSEE DETAILS

After spending some time at my Chicago office and hot swapping between Uber’s and Taxi’s I had some thoughts that may go against the grain. It’s trendy to jump on the technology bandwagon. I came from the tech world, it was good to me, I love tech and always will. BUT it seems, if it’s tech, its better, even if its not better. When Walmart came to town and ran all the small business owners out of town, there was a period of time when the uproar was pretty loud.SEE DETAILS