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Francisco Dao

Columnist

Francisco Dao is the founder of 50Kings, a private community for technology and media innovators. He is a former leadership columnist for Inc.com, a lifelong entrepreneur, author, and former stand-up comic. He writes every Tuesday and Thursday for PandoDaily.
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  • church of ent

    The fake church of entrepreneurship

    By March 8, 2013

    Last Thursday I found myself sitting on a panel called “Real Founders Talk,” whatever that’s supposed to mean, trying to look professional while the guy next to me tested the limits of my patience with his self congratulatory bloviating. Sometime between his alcoholics anonymous style confession to having “startup affliction” and the painful lesson he learned from letting go of...

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  • apple vuitton

    Louis Vuitton and the Apple Store

    By March 5, 2013

    I remember a moment at SXSW in 2009 when a friend of mine asked to borrow my computer. When I handed him my Acer laptop he said, “What the hell is this?” For a second, I felt like the guy wearing Wrangler jeans at the hip nightclub, and it occurred to me that Apple had become a status symbol. What...

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  • nontrepreneurs

    Does anybody care about non-entrepreneurs?

    By February 28, 2013

    The recent spate of suicides have brought to light the pressures of entrepreneurship, but it seems to have reached a level that almost sounds like self pity. Yes, entrepreneurs deal with a lot of stress – I wrote about it myself – but let’s be very clear about one thing. Entrepreneurs are still the lucky ones. We never even talk about...

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  • flag battery

    What’s good for Silicon Valley might not be good for America

    By February 26, 2013

    During his 1953 confirmation hearing for Secretary of Defense, Charles Wilson, then president of General Motors, was asked if he could ever make a decision that would adversely affect GM. His reply that he could not conceive of such a situation “because for years I thought what was good for our country was good for General Motors, and vice versa,”...

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  • addictive startup

    Startup junkies: What are they really addicted to?

    By February 21, 2013

    I’ve been thinking about the term “startup junkie” and I can’t quite figure it out. “Junkie,” indicates some kind of addiction but, unlike heroin or meth, “startups” aren’t a clearly defined drug that you buy on the corner. In fact, if you really think about it, startups aren’t really a definable thing at all but more like a messy, unpredictable...

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  • TED final

    The cult of ideas

    By February 19, 2013

    Next week many people in the technology industry will make their annual pilgrimage to TED in order to bask in the edification of “Ideas worth spreading.” Many in the audience will claim to be in awe, while thousands more will follow along at home or eagerly await the release of the video clips so they too can be part of...

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  • the one

    Love, the leanest startup

    By February 14, 2013

    Since today is Valentine’s Day and so many tech people are single, I thought I’d talk about love. If you’re married or looking for a technology article, you can stop reading now. For everyone else, “love” is perhaps the most loaded word in the English language. We define it in magical terms. It carries with it the unreasonable expectations of...

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  • too many birds

    The case for fewer entrepreneurs

    By February 12, 2013

    With an almost blind devotion, the technology sector loves to champion entrepreneurship as a universally good thing, but is it possible we’ve taken it too far? After all, if everyone is an entrepreneur we would end up in a classic “all chiefs, no Indians” situation. In many ways we’re already there, or at least close enough for it to be...

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  • hacking_rubikscube

    A culture of lies and laziness

    By February 7, 2013

    For some time now I’ve found something unseemly about the hacker movement that I couldn’t quite articulate. I’m not referring to developers and entrepreneurs, but the general life hacker, growth hacker, education hacker, hack-it-all culture. As someone who has spent the better part of his life trying to minimize work, I completely understood the idea of hacking things to...

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  • doubt

    Living with doubt

    By February 5, 2013

    Last week I wrote a post about the pressure of keeping up appearances. The feedback and comments I received, from both friends and strangers, told me I had touched on something close to home. Many of the entrepreneurs I spoke to also described their struggles with self doubt. People told me they felt like frauds for not being able...

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