Category Archives: Humor

selling the ultimate pill – the “Placebo”

The most effective drug in the world is “Placebo.” Placebo is more effective than most of the drugs on the market. Placebo cures the flu, fever, the common cold, and is even more effective at fighting cancer than most drugs.

Yes, Placebo is the wonder drug.

It is usually made of the compound C12H22O11 which is abundant in the Americas. When taken orally, C12H22O11 is very sweet and delicious. It is often used as a sweetener in cookies, baked goods, and candy. So next time your mom tells you that candy is bad for you, tell her it is full of Placebo.

For this free open-sourced business idea, I’m offering you the wonder drug of all wonder drugs: Placebo. All you need to do is market it and get it on the shelves of Walgreens (alert: there is already a whole load of candy on the shelves of Walgreens).

Talking Placebo will cure your pain, combat your depression, and even marketably improve your sex life. It is just that good.

Placebo is also getting better and better over time. And, even crazier, the more you charge for it, the better it works. As Dan Ariely says, “drugs are are effective because people believe in them.” The more you believe, the better it works. It turns out the mind is truly powerful.

So take two Placebos and call me in the morning.

the ultimate combination: doughnut and mochi – the Doughchi

Note: I’m spending much of this month open-sourcing business ideas. Feel free to copy, fork, use them, etc. All I ask is that if you become a bazillionaire, you must take me to dinner.

We’ve all heard of the cronut — the croissant crossed with a doughnut that is yummy delicious. (I have not yet tried one myself, but I 100% take for granted that they are amazing). I have had the pretzel croissants at The City Bakery in New York which are out-of-this-world good.

That got me thinking … the doughnut is amazing food. It represents much of what is great in life. The doughnut crossed with lots of things is almost certainly going to be really good. And lots of people have already tried. (though not sure I would recommend the pickle-doughnut).

One thing that is super over-rated is the jelly doughnut. Jelly is just not a good filling. Jelly isn’t really tasty.

But other doughnut fillings ARE really good. Nutella-filled doughnuts are mouth-watering.

So started to think … what would be an even better filling for a doughnut???

Well, the only thing that is better than a doughnut is mochi. Mochi is amazing. And I’m not talking about crass ice-cream filled mochi. I’m talking about pure rice-and-sugar mochi.

only mochi is better than a doughnut

So pretty much the best dessert in the world would be a mochi-filled-doughnut. Whoa … my mouth is watering just thinking of it. I’m about to fly five Chicago police-officers (the best doughnut experts I can think of) to Tokyo for a taste test.

Just think … you bite into a doughnut and have a delicious chewy middle.

Yum.

And yes, you will have a 18% chance of having a heart attack.

But … yum.

Ok … the next thing is marketing. We need to market this invention really well so that everyone remembers it and forms crazy lines around the block hours before the Brooklyn bakery opens (yes, this is mostly likely to happen in Brooklyn … or Portland).

Originally I was thinking of copying the “Cronut” (which is actually trademarked) and calling this the “Monut” or even the cooler “Moghnut.” But besides for worrying about trademark violations, that name might be selling this creation short.

First, this creation would not have a hole in it (because it is a filled doughnut). Thus, no “nut.” Plus, who cares about the “nut” part of the doughnut anyway. The “dough” part is what everyone really likes.

So I give you (drum roll please): THE DOUGHCHI !!!

Enjoy the doughchi. And if you are lucky enough to create one, please consider me to give you needed product feedback. I will also offer up my kids and wife as beta testers.

Summation: enjoy this free business idea.

Davosman for Dummies (for 2019 season)

Thought conferences (like Davos) are super expensive and take a lot of time. To save you the price of going, below is the content for 100% of all thought conferences.

All you need to do is read this and you can skip all the conferences for the last decade.

If you do go, feel free to use this handy guide to play BINGO.

UNIVERSAL THOUGHT-CONFERENCE AGENDA:

Universal Basic Income (UBI)

another agenda item on UBI

Trump

Self driving cars

Income inequality

UBI again. did we mention how much we love UBI?

M-Pesa

USMCA

Tarriffs

Artificial Intelligence

Marsh Mellow test

UBI for those who failed the Marsh Mellow test

Bitcoin

UBI for those who failed to buy crypto before 2017

UBI for those who bought crypto in December 2017

Who will be the Democratic Party nominee in 2020?

UBI for those who fail to be the Democratic nominee

“Modafinil is much more effective than Adderall”

Solar energy

Putin

Metformin

yet another one on AI

UBI because AI will take all the jobs

“The Turkish Air lounge in Ataturk Airport is THE BEST!”

MBS

Meditation

Self driving ELECTRIC cars

Self driving ELECTRIC drones

“Where do you summer: The Hamptons, Saint-Tropez, Aspen, or Martha’s Vineyard?”

China

China and self-driving cars

Singapore and self-driving cars

“I pay my three nannies under-the-table to avoid taxes”

Turkish Lira

Brexit

Opioid crisis

GDPR

Micro-dosing

“I’ll have the gluten-free wine”

Synthetic meat

Crypto

Growth mindset

“We are living in a simulation”

Two and twenty

Grit

Charter schools

“See you in Dubai”

Trump

note: this was originally published in Medium in 2018

Tipping for is popular in B2C … could it be a new trend in enterprise software?

Have you noticed that there has been a proliferation of opportunities to tip people? Tipping has become ubiquitous. It is everywhere. Well, everywhere in B2C. But I have not yet seen it in the B2B world.

Backstory: I absolutely hate tipping.  I have tipping anxiety.

Tipping is an awful thing. I’m the sucker that always gives a 20% tip (it is much easier math than 18%), even when the service does not warrant a tip. When I go abroad, the servers are shocked at my “American tips.”

Random questions:

  • Why are tips a percentage of revenue?  (The rich just get richer)
  • Why tip at all in a restaurant? Even worse, tipping at checkout counter.  Square has massively increased my tipping anxiety.  It is just a way of squeezing an extra 20% out of suckers like me.
  • Why isn’t tipping just included in the price? You don’t (yet) tip when you buy an airline ticket or buy a book from Amazon.

Tips used to be for showing appreciation but today they are usually just to avoid embarrassment.  

Tipping in the enterprise

In my almost 20 years of selling software, I have never been “tipped” by a client.  

But that got me thinking, maybe SafeGraph should start asking for a voluntary 15% “tip” during our quarterly-business-reviews (with customers).  Maybe 25% of clients would pay (if they had a way of doing it).  
I have no idea how these customers would pay … but wanted to put it out there to some of your smart readers can figure it out.  

Summation experiment: next time your lawyer does an outstanding job, try to tip her.

Photo by maitree rimthong on Pexels.com

FW: Hi from spacemom

Readers of my twitter page (http://twitter.com/auren) will know that I recently wrote a much
re-tweeted tweet about my mom
:

My
mom today told me she wants to join "myface" and
"spacebook"

that was from a comment she made on Mother's Day.

My mom heard about the comment and retaliated today by sending me the following email:

 


Sent: Wednesday, May 13, 2009 10:37 AM
To:

Auren Hoffman

Subject: Hi from spacemom

 

Hi Auren,

Was great
seeing you on Mother's Day- what a pleasant surprise!!!

As to
"twitting" (I mean writing about me on Twitter….) Well, now that
everybody knows that there's also my-face & spacebook… maybe I should
also post a picture of you NAKED at age two, so that everybody can see the
Michelin – tire body you had…now that will make them really laugh!!!

 

Love you

 

Space-out
Mom

 

So yes, to out myself, i was a really fat baby.   And from the email above, you can see where i might get my sense of humor.

NPR pledge gifts getting worse

Was listening
to the local SF NPR station this morning as my alarm clock was waking me up.    In these
recessionary times, does it seem like the pledge gifts are getting worse?

 

In the old days
they would throw in a toaster or a pedometer or even a cheap GPS.  

 

Now you’re
lucky to get a podcast as a gift?

 

What’s
next?   You give them stuff???   I suggest the Tom Sawyer approach:

 

“for your
$30 contribution, we’ll let you babysit our kids”

 

“for your $12/month
support, you can fix our 1982 Chevy that keeps breaking down”

 

“for sustaining
us for $100, we’ll let you shine Greg Sherwood’s shoes”

 

 

business model patents

My patent application was approved today.   i’m really excited.   now i can sue someone.  oh yeah.

i got the patent on the business model of suing other people who violate patents.

that’s right.   i have patented the very profitable business process of patenting an obvious business model and then suing companies that have something close to that model.   kind of like what MercExchange is doing to eBay — suing for the "Buy Me Now" button because they somehow got a business-model patent.  did you know someone has actually patented peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches?   and my favorite patent is paw-watches — wrist-watches for dogs.

so with my new business-model patent on "suing companies for violating business-model patents"… that means i can sue any business-model patent holder that sues another company.    i’m gonna make a fortune…

British Woman Marries Dolphin

I love this man-bites-dog … uhhhh woman-marries-dolphin story …

snip:

While she still kept open the option of “marrying a human” at some stage, she said for now she was strictly a “one-dolphin woman”.She’s hardly the jealous type, though.

“He will still play with all the other girls there,” she said, of their prenuptial agreement. “I hope he has a lot of baby dolphins with the other dolphins. The more dolphins the better.”

six years away …

thanks for all of you who emailed me yesterday about the party on Nov 11, 2011 at 11:11 am on the Golden Gate Bridge. only six years away.

trip down memory lane …
i sent out the original eVite (sent in 2001 — check out:http://evite.citysearch.com/ggparty@eudoramail.com/2011Party) at 3am after laughing so hard. i actually thought eVite had taken down the site but alas, no such luck. there were 2-3 other parody eVites that got formed from this one … including the 12/12/12 eVite.

Here is an article in the SJ Mercury

And here are the Top 6 Reasons I am planning the 2011 Party now:

6. Annoying 98 year old guy who shows up at all my parties will probably be dead.

5. I met this girl at a bar and she said ‘give me a call in 6 years.’ I said, ‘Great. I know just the party to take you.’

4. Planning on making this a regular get together — every hundred years.

3. I really wanted to put an event together for 2010, but I was just feeling too rushed.

2. Party in 1011 cancelled due to Bubonic Plague.

1. Need to get party out of the way and clean up before 3033 party.