Pay me to do lead generation is a signature Gua Gua Guacamole recipe of mine.

I first recognized the pattern with celebrities and athletes. They would get paid to appear. After the cocktail party or networking event or two-minute speaking gig, they would collect a stack of business cards. Most were people eager to pay them more money to do similar "work."

It used to be that if you owned shares of a public company, you actually felt like you owned shares of that company. The concept of actual ownership by individuals is long gone. Shareholders as owners are nothing but a concept , and echo from days gone by.

That shouldn’t be a surprise. It’s just as rare for individuals with less than 10 figures in their networth to even consider actually buying shares as a path to ownership.

Bruce Li kicks butt.

But the guy is like a small Shanghainese dude the size of a Shih Tzu. He kicks massive ass. How does he do it?

Bruce Li says stuff like "resist like water," but here is how he does it: He uses you to kick your own butt.

Your strengths?! Hurt you.

I am co-teaching a class at Harvard Business School on entrepreneurship called "Launching Technology Ventures" along with my friend and colleague, Professor Tom Eisenmann.  The class kicked off this week with two cases:  Dropbox and Aardvark.

As I reflect on the class discussions, one of the interesting tension points that arose is the challenge an entrepreneur faces in selecting their primary product design approach.  Should they follow the Steve Blank, Customer Development Process school of product development or the Steve Jobs "vision" school?  In other words, should they pursue a user-centric design paradigm -- setting priorities based on rigorous tests and listening excercises that determine what users want -- or should they pursue a more top-down approach akin to Steve Jobs, who famously said: "It is hard to design by focus groups because most of the time people don't know what they want until you show it to them. "

The AlwaysOn X Fund portfolio advanced 3.4% last week, while the NASDAQ was up 1.1%, and the S&P 500 was up 0.1%. For the year, the AO X Fund is up 9%, the NASDAQ is up 8.1%, and the S&P 500 up 4.7%.

Apple had an extremely strong quarter, with earnings growth of 116% and revenue growth of 73%. iPhone sales were the main driver, with 34 million iPhones sold during Q4, up 128%. iPad sales were also strong with 15.4 million units sold, up 111%, and Macs grew 26%, with 5.2 million sold. iPod sales continued to decline, down 21%, with 15.4 million sold. Retail revenue was up 37% vs. last year, and Apple generated $17.5 billion in cash from operations and now has $98 billion in cash on its balance sheet. For the week, AAPL advanced 6.4%.

Consider two hypothetical restaurants: type one and type two.

Restaurant type one: Imagine yourself wandering the streets of a new city. You could be on Ocean Drive in South Beach, or Piazza Navona in Rome. You're thinking about dinner, and you come across a restaurant conveniently located on a busy stretch of street. Outside, it displays its panoply of meal choices in wax replica splendor, or "freshly cooked" under Saran wrap. On the sidewalk, an aspiring tan model flanks a manager-host, who wears a loud tie to go with the even louder voice he uses to solicit passersby. "Would you like to come in and eat 'world famous x'? Or maybe try the daily cocktail special?"