James Altucher is an investor, programmer, author, and entrepreneur. He is Managing Director of Formula Capital and has written 6 books on investing. His latest book is I Was Blind But Now I See. You can follow him@jaltucher.
This is going be a bullet FAQ on starting a business. No joke. If you’re a lawyer, feel free to disagree with me, so you can charge someone your BS fees to give the same advice. If you can think of anything to add, please do so. I might be missing things. If you want to argue with me, feel free. I might be wrong about any of it. → Read More
I’m breaking all the rules. I’m at a silent retreat for the week. No talking! My wife is two doors down. She said to me before we went silent for the week, “put your computer on airplane mode.” It’s in a beautiful area. There are paths and trees and birds and flowers and benches to sit on with sprawling landscapes and blah blah blah. I like to stay in my room and write. And I break rules. → Read More
Every entrepreneur should self-publish a book, because self-publishing is the new business card. If you want to stand out in a world of content, you need to underline your expertise. Publishing a book is not just putting your thoughts on a blog post. It’s an event. It shows your best curated thoughts and it shows customers, clients, investors, friends and lovers what the most important things on… → Read More
Editor’s note: James Altucher is an investor, programmer, author, and several-times entrepreneur.
I know you do it. We all act like we don’t do it, like we’re all pristine human beings who WOULD NEVER do perverse things like that. But I know you do it. And you do it a lot. You respond to trolls. → Read More
Editor’s note: James Altucher is an investor, programmer, author, and several-times entrepreneur.
A few weeks ago I wrote a post about how this was the year you had to quit your job. I gave the reasons why. It wasn’t a gung-ho “you have to be an entrepreneur” article. It was more: bad shit is happening in the corporate world and bit by bit you’re going to feel the urge to quit. → Read More
Editor’s note: James Altucher is an investor, programmer, author, and entrepreneur.
I wish I had been smarter when I was 23 years old. I did everything wrong: I felt like I needed a college degree. I felt like I needed a graduate degree (I was thrown out of graduate school ultimately). I felt like I needed a publishing company to “choose me” to be a writer. I felt like I needed a big… → Read More
Editor’s note: James Altucher is an investor, programmer, author and entrepreneur. He has started and sold several companies, run a VC fund, and is an active investor in many private companies.
My wife, Claudia was upset with me. She said, “I didn’t shower! I haven’t left the house. I’m having coffee in the afternoon. I feel like I’m turning into you!” And quite frankly, she looked sort of… → Read More
Editor’s note: James Altucher is an investor, programmer, author, and entrepreneur. He has started and sold several companies, run a VC fund, and is an active investor in many private companies. His latest books are I Was Blind But Now I See and 40 Alternatives to College. You can follow him on Twitter @jaltucher. Wade had sex with Karen and now I had to fire him. She was our top… → Read More
This article might change your life or make you rich. It’s time to save the world. There’s a lot of bad news out there. Rising unemployment, soldiers being replaced in their jobs by drones that kill babies, a new housing crisis that will end all housing crises, who is the real father of Kim Kardashian’s child, and on and on.
Meanwhile, many futurists are at work on “what’s new for 2013?” Will… → Read More
Editor’s note: James Altucher is an investor, programmer, author, and entrepreneur.
You can’t make money without selling something real. You can’t make something real without first imagination manifesting itself in your head. You can’t have imagination without surrendering yourself to an idea that you want to create something of value to other human beings. And now it’s too late. → Read More
Editor’s note: James Altucher is an investor, programmer, author, and several-times entrepreneur.
Ugh, I can’t write anything today. It’s the end of the year. Tomorrow is Christmas. You’d think I would have something to say. Merry Christmas. Oh wait, you can’t even say that anymore. I’m Jewish! I have to say something like Happy Holidays. I don’t even know what Hannukah is. → Read More
Editor’s note: James Altucher is an investor, programmer, author, and entrepreneur.
I was lonely and I wanted money. I was living in a one-bedroom apartment in Astoria, Queens, NYC in 1995. I knew nobody in the area. I would write my phone number on two dollar bills and tip waitresses with them. Nobody called me. → Read More
Editor’s note: James Altucher is an investor, programmer, author, and entrepreneur. He is Managing Director of Formula Capital and has written ten books.
Every week for three years, I interviewed four prostitutes, drug dealers, criminals, potential dates (for me), and homeless kids. I have written about this before but my job was to go out on Tuesday nights at 3 in the morning, find out… → Read More
[Editor’s note: James Altucher is an investor, programmer, author, and entrepreneur. He is Managing Director of Formula Capital and has written ten books. His latest books are I Was Blind But Now I See and 40 Alternatives to College. You can follow him on Twitter @jaltucher.]
I’m pretty mediocre. Particularly as an entrepreneur. I’m ashamed to admit it. Many of the readers here are… → Read More
I wanted to have 100,000 Facebook fans for my blog. I don’t have a product to sell. I’m not trying to get advertisers on my blog. I’m not even trying to get more speaking gigs because of my blog. But I believe in the message of my blog and I enjoy having an audience for it. So I wanted to expand that audience.
We have entered the “Choose Yourself” era. No longer do you have to wait… → Read More
The first thing, of course, is that Mike Lazerow, the founder of Buddy Media, met me. This sounds egotistical, but everything I did in the encounter was bad for me.
He cold-emailed me in 2007. I had just launched a company called Stockpickr.com. He liked the idea and his time with GOLF.com (which he had built and sold to Time Warner for $24mm) was running out and he wanted something to do. He… → Read More
The game is over. That game where they get to hire you for 40 years, pay you far less than you create, and then give you a gold watch, and then you get bored, you get depressed, and you die alone.
It wasn’t that fun of a game anyway.
When I had a corporate job I would wake up depressed. I couldn’t move out of bed. The sun would be coming in. A cat on the fire escape staring at me through the… → Read More
Warren Buffett is like my ten year old. When she gives me some BS story about something she needs or something she is suggesting there’s always a good reason for it. But whenever there’s a good reason, there’s always a real reason. And the two are starkly different. My job is to figure out the real reason while horse vomit is still spitting out of her ten year old mouth.
With Buffett it’s the… → Read More
In the dot-com boom I lost $15 million cash. Yes, I am an idiot. You know what happens when you lose that kind of cash? When you go to zero? You lose your libido. You don’t want to have sex ever again. And even Viagra won’t help. I lost my house. I lost my family. I lost all my fake friends. I was sick all the time. When I passed people on the street who were laughing I was definitely sure they… → Read More
My wife was upset at me. “You spent all weekend responding to comments on TechCrunch,” she said, “and it was the one weekend without the kids and you were either on your head phones or playing chess or responding to TechCrunch comments.” And then she walked away. Upset. There would be no way to make it up to her. The weekend was over.
And I had big plans that weekend. My article was… → Read More
Ken Lang could perform miracles. In 1990 we would head off to a bar near where we were going to graduate school for computer science, and we would bring a Go board. Then we would drink and play Go for five hours. At the end of the five hours, after a grueling battle over the board, I remember this one time when magically Ken would show up with two girls who were actually willing to sit down and… → Read More
Editor’s note: James Altucher is an investor, programmer, author, and entrepreneur. He is Managing Director of Formula Capital and has written 6 books on investing. His latest books are I Was Blind But Now I See and FAQ ME. You can follow him @jaltucher.
Many people have said to me in the past few months, “I’m going to buy a home.” Or, “What do you think of the idea of me buying a… → Read More
I’m a complete sexist. I want women to look as good as possible. And I’m not the only one. Women want to look as sexy as possible. That’s why they buy hundreds of millions worth of form-fitting Spanx every year. And now Sara Blakely, the founder of Spanx is worth a billion according to Forbes. She took Justin Timberlake’s advice. A million is not cool. A billion is cool.
So what happened next? → Read More
Editor’s note: James Altucher is an investor, programmer, author, and entrepreneur. He is Managing Director of Formula Capital and has written 6 books on investing. His latest book is I Was Blind But Now I See. You can follow him @jaltucher. → Read More
I just gave up all parenting responsibilities this weekend to Mark Cuban. Meaning, my kids and I watched eight straight episodes of “Shark Tank”.
For the past two years, people have been begging me to watch “Shark Tank”. One friend of mine, who has co-invested with me on two deals, has given me two pieces of advice in life. One is: “you never know what someone is worth until they declare… → Read More
I was once backstage at a news show. Six people were on a box in the screen screaming at each other about the economy. The producer was laughing. He leaned over to me and said, “the whole idea of this is to fill the time between one commercial segment and the next.”
Every day they want to scare me. Greece is going to suddenly disappear. Or have some sort of debt “contagion” that will… → Read More
I’ve published eight books in the past seven years, five with traditional publishers (Wiley, Penguin, HarperCollins), one comic book, and the last two I’ve self-published. In this post I give the specific details of all of my sales numbers and advances with the traditional publishers. Although the jury is still out on my self-published books, “How to be the Luckiest Man Alive” and ”I Was… → Read More
I hate Woody Allen. Here’s why. Because if you’re Jewish and a little neurotic then it has become a cliché that nerdy neurotic Jewish people describe themselves as “Woody Allen-esque” thinking it will attract women. They do this on dating services. The idea is that they will then attract some waif-like Mia Farrow-ish (or the 17-year-old Mariel Hemingway in Manhattan) blonde who will… → Read More
I was on the phone with Tony Conrad at True Ventures pitching a business idea I had in early 2009. The site was built and we even had people registered for it and I had about a half million dollars already committed but I wanted a VC firm on my side as well. I don’t know why. Maybe I thought it would give me some credibility and I desperately craved it after the divorce I had been going… → Read More
I wanted to write an appeal for the Wikimedia foundation. I’m going to be completely honest: the only reason I wanted to write it was for completely self-promotional and ego purposes. On almost every Google search, Wikipedia is the #1 or #2 result. It’s almost like Google is just a middleman to Wikipedia.
So I wanted you to search on “head transplants” and then click on the Wikipedia… → Read More
Berlin, Germany
Berlin, Germany
Tokyo, Japan
Boston, MA
Bangalore, India
Shanghai, China
