Monday, May 30, 2011

Startup-Onomics: The Behavioral Economics Summit for Startups

polaroid.png Has it really been more than seven months since I last posted to this blog? Yikes! Well, at least I have a good excuse: I've spun a new company out of Spanning Sync, raised a round of venture funding, hired an incredible team of engineers, salespeople, and marketers, and entered full startup mode.

My formal economics studies have been put on hold for the moment, but my extra-curricular studies continue unabated. Keynes, Varian, Harford, Ariely, Ahamed, Levy, Benioff, Hazlitt, Thaler, Cowan, Rosen, Carr. My Kindle runneth over.

And then this morning comes the uncannily-timed news of a summit on behavioral economics. For startups. Spooky. And it's in San Francisco just before Dreamforce, which is already on my calendar. Extra-spooky.

I've submitted my application and hope to be accepted to attend. If so, I'll document the whole thing extensively here. Our business, after all, is one that is greatly affected by our prospective customers' ability to gauge risk, a classic problem in behavioral economics. Fingers crossed.