Tag: business

Myspace Acquisition Fraud

  • Intermix specifically chose not to initiate an auction or shopping process as mandated by the law (Revlon Duties)
  • Rosenblatt, Andrew Sheehan, News Corp., and both banking firm’s, collusion against Viacom’s efforts to give Intermix a bid including misinforming Viacom of the timing for making a bid, directing Thomas Weisel to stop facilitating Viacom’s bid, and hiding from Morgan Stanley, Viacom’s banker, as Intermix and News Corp. rushed to sign the deal.
  • Intermix CEO Richard Rosenblatt’s $12 per share sale price for Myspace was not based on an outside valuation from the investment banking community. In May 2005 Deutsche Bank outlined for Intermix executives that taking Myspace public could provide value in the $1- $1.7b range.
  • Rosenblatt knew Myspace was on track to become a $20b property and purposely withheld this information from shareholders to accelerate the transaction as well as 60% of his stock options at closing for a personal gain of $20m.

juicy if true

Never Eat Alone

Do you want to get ahead in life? Climb the ladder to personal success? The secret, master networker Keith Ferrazzi claims, is in reaching out to other people. As Ferrazzi discovered early in life, what distinguishes highly successful people from everyone else is the way they use the power of relationships—so that everyone wins.

Ferrazzi’s form of connecting to the world around him is based on generosity, helping friends connect with other friends. Ferrazzi distinguishes genuine relationship-building from the crude, desperate glad-handling usually associated with “networking.” He then distills his system of reaching out to people into practical, proven principles.

another networking book. i really liked the love cat one, maybe this one is good too

action vs activity

Action is what achieves our goals, moves our business and personal lives forward, produces what we want out of life and actually gets the job done. It is immensely rewarding but is also very likely to be difficult and challenging.
Activity is all the things we fill our lives with in order to avoid taking action. Strangely enough activity often looks better than action to our colleagues or even to ourselves. If you are an executive or run your own business then productive, focused thinking must be one of your action priorities. Unfortunately thinking often appears to be “lazy”, compared to making phone calls, dealing with email, attending meetings and generally rushing around

Career Planning

A few years ago, a manager of mine gave me the assignment to work on a 5-year career plan. I had never created a career plan before (not even to plot out goals for the coming year), so I was completely unprepared for how and why I should do this. Luckily, she shared her own plan as a guide, but I still agonized through the exercise. Over time I have become aware of how important this was for me to do. Looking and assessing where I was at the time, really thinking about what I wanted to be doing in the future, gave me the tools to make the right decisions to make things happen.

while i totally disdain the “save for your SUV / mortgage / life insurance” plans, there is some great advice in this article by erin malone how to map out your career.
2013-04-29: this is the kind of question most people never ask themselves, instead blaming the man for their life sucking.

What’s the last thing you did to advance your career or improve yourself?
On your 85th birthday, what do you want others to say about your accomplishments?
What would you be doing if paying the bills wasn’t an issue?
What are you passionate about that you’re not pursuing?
What have been your greatest accomplishments so far?
What’s the greatest value that you bring to your work?
What does it mean to you to be satisfied at work?
What’s your personal definition of success?
What about your work energizes you?
Where are you playing it too safe?

2016-10-04:

Designing Your Life is one of the most popular courses at Stanford. Taught by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, the class teaches how you can use design thinking and techniques to shape your life and career.