At a recent DFJ venture capital conference, I heard the story of Arash Bayatmakou.

He fell from a 3rd story balcony a few years ago and landed on his neck, paralyzing him from the chest down.

Incredibly, he's determined to walk again. We exchanged emails after the conference and he signed off with this:

A high five, coming from a guy who's facing incredible challenges every day just to get back to doing the things we take for granted. I loved it, and decided that from now on, I'm going to sign my emails with a high five as well, as a tribute to him and his positive attitude.

Time is our most precious asset, and none of us know how much of it we have left.

It's ironic, then, how easily we let it slip away. An hour for a meeting, an hour in traffic.

Next time you get asked to spend an hour doing something, just hold it up to this filter before you decide:

I'm going to share one of my most powerful negotiating techniques. The funny thing is that up until a year ago, I didn't even realize this was a technique -- I thought everyone did this. But apparently not -- here's the backstory:

But before we get started, remember what Spiderman was told: "With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility." The technique I'm going to share with you can be abused, and when it is, you'll come off as a total jerk. That might be fine if that's what you're going for. But make sure you focus on using it responsibly. More on that at the end.

I absolutely love this video of Zuck talking about Facebook back in 2005. If I had been in that room, I wouldn't have been able to guess that Facebook would become a $180+ billion company.

The best part: Zuck describes Facebook in minute 1 as an "online directory for colleges." Not only does that not like a billion dollar business, but it also sounds like a terrible startup idea.

The lesson: The key nugget is "I launched it in Harvard in early Feb 2004, and within a couple of weeks, 2/3 of the school had signed up". That is an incredibly strong signal that there's a really good initial product/market fit. This is a recurring theme that also permeated Y Combinator's recent Startup School, which talks about the importance of finding product/market fit above all else.

The kicker: I love how, in minute 3:55 Zuck is asked "And where are you taking Facebook?" He responds with "I mean, there doesn't necessarily have to be more."

The richest 1% of Americans have access to great financial tools and advice: Firms like Goldman Sachs provide them with (legal) tricks like Tax Loss Harvesting (TLH). Never heard of TLH? Neither had I until my buddy Andrew Dumas, after reading my post titled "Show Me The Money: Six Strategies to Put Your Cash to Work," mentioned a new startup called Weathfront that was on the cutting edge of ETF fund-based portfolio management. This opened a whole new world of investing up to me, which I'd like to share with you.

But first some background: In my past blog post I talked about ETFs, or Exchange Traded Funds, which are a class of funds that create a basket of stocks based on a particular segment of the market. For example, in the past if you wanted to invest in technology companies you basically had two options: You could pick the companies you thought would be the winners, like Google and Yahoo and buy stock in those directly, or you could invest in a mutual fund that has an expert who picks the companies, and you'd pay a management fee for his or her expertise. But ETFs offer a third choice, and it's worth really understanding how they work. Here's a description from Wikipedia:

"ETFs generally provide the easy diversification, low expense ratios, and tax efficiency of index funds, while still maintaining all the features of ordinary stock, such as limit orders, short selling, and options. Because ETFs can be economically acquired, held, and disposed of, some investors invest in ETF shares as a long-term investment for asset allocation purposes, while other investors trade ETF shares frequently to implement market timing investment strategies. Among the advantages of ETFs are the following:

I'm the SVP of Strategic Partnerships at ShareThis. It's my job to find the right strategic partners for us to work with. This morning, in the shower, I thought "I'd like to have a simple combo slide deck + narrated screencast to show to prospective partners."

So, I just finished hacking together a simple site that explains our business. It's something I did in just under an hour using a combination of HTML, Google App Engine, Google Slides, HelloBar, Vimeo, iShowU, Google Labs' ShortLinks and AdRoll. It was fun to make it and I expect it'll prove useful.

That activity, of taking an idea I had in the shower this morning and hacking it together in an hour today, got me thinking about the difference between makers and managers, and about how few managers really appreciate (or are able to participate in) the creation process -- especially when it involves some amount of hacking.

I find that managers who are also makers have an ability to key in on opportunities that non-maker managers miss. They have a better ability to connect with their teams. They can go a level deeper into projects than non-maker managers. They can ask more intelligent questions. They can conceptualize and create efficient processes much more quickly and easily. Or to put it another way, they can be much better managers by also being makers.

Startups feel like a race against the clock, because they are. The trick is to extend a startup's runway (or as one of my investors put it, "oxygen in the the scuba tank") long enough to become successful. This means creating the right team, finding product/market fit, executing flawlessly, and either becoming profitable or raising enough money to keep oxygen in the tank until you do (or until you get acquired trying).

One thing I've firmly come to believe after doing several startups is that a startup doesn't die until its founder(s) give up. By that I mean, there's always one more thing that the founding team can do to eek a bit more oxygen from the tank, even when things look hopeless. But when a founder gives up, there can still be money in the bank and it won't matter; the startup is done. It kind of feels like the tail wagging the dog, in a way -- startups succeed from pure, raw determination of the founders as they race against time.

What got me thinking about writing this post, though, is an awesome blog post I read about putting time in perspective. So often in startups it can feel like time's running out that it's refreshing to think about time on a grander scale. Here's an infographic from that article that really does put things into perspective. A great quote from that article is:

Vision Mobile just created a fantastic report called "State of the Developer Nation." Here are some highlights and thoughts:

There's no question that apps are here to stay (and that was a big question, even just 24 months ago). Over half of all phones sold worldwide are now smartphones:

With lots of app growth already and doubling in the next 24 months:

I never thought I'd say this, and I'm not sure how I feel about myself for saying it, but it's an exciting time to be in advertising.

There's a famous quote attributed to John Wanamaker, a pioneer in marketing from the late 1800's that goes:

Indeed, it's almost certainly way more than half. But the lack of quantifiability has always been the elephant in the room, even now, 150 years later.