Recommended Reading: May 23, 2015

Christoph Räthke suggests eliminating the statistical outlier Silicon Valley from the consideration of different startup scenes and instead looking at other KPIs:

– “% of companies founded by foreigners”, – “% of IT graduates in companies less than three years old”, – “% increase in the number of first-time business angels”, – “Number of founders in their third startup”.

http://www.business-punk.com/2015/05/wir-mussen-aufhoren-uns-mit-dem-silicon-valley-zu-vergleichen/

Naked capitalism has long reigned in Kim's North Korea

Interesting insight into North Korea: According to this World article, pretty much everything is smuggled into North Korea - even crystal meth.

http://www.welt.de/politik/ausland/article141353228/In-Kims-Nordkorea-herrscht-laengst-nackter-Kapitalismus.html

McKinsey and Co. under pressure: Who else wants to become a consultant?

Der Spiegel wonders who else wants to become a management consultant and quotes Oliver Samwer:

If you don't like taking responsibility and making decisions, the big consultations are the right place for you. Samwer says that he is looking for others with courage and a dream.

http://www.spiegel.de/karriere/berufsstart/wie-samwer-fuer-unternehmensberatungen-zum-problem-wird-a-1034524.html

10 Business Lessons I Learned at Bars

In Entrepreneur, Andrew Cohen lists 10 things he learned from his wild partying days, including:

Every battle plan becomes worthless once the first shot is fired. Over time, a veteran party learns that the statement “I’m only spending $40 tonight and only staying out until midnight” is rarely a promise they can uphold. Learning that every project ends up taking twice as long and costing twice as much as originally planned can help you choose your projects better and prepare more honest forecasts that you can adhere to.

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/246231

2015 USC Marshall Undergraduate Commencement Address

Snapchat co-founder Evan Spiegel's speech at the University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business graduation ceremony is well worth reading. Among other things, he talks about why he didn't sell Snapchat:

The best thing is that no matter whether or not you sell, you will learn something very valuable about yourself. If you sell, you will know immediately that it wasn’t the right dream anyways. And if you don’t sell you’re probably onto something. Maybe you have the beginning of something meaningful.

https://www.scribd.com/doc/265448791/2015-USC-Marshall-Undergraduate-Commencement-Address