Pino yawned, removed his Samsung Visions S3, and rubbed his eyes. It was well past midnight and his code was starting to blur. "Time to go home," he said. From the desk, faintly, he could hear the Visions respond: "Would you like me to hail you a cab?" He sighed and put them back on. "No, Petra. I think I'll walk."

The top trend of the day in the start-up world is sharing. You can share cabs, town cars, your house or apartment, the tools in your garage and just about everything else that you own. From AirBNB to Uber to Lyft and any number of other hot tech companies -- it's a sharing economy. It got me thinking: Do you think media could be shared?

Are you considering a deep professional commitment to someone? A potential hire? A new boss or employer? An agency? A business partner? An investor? It's fine to review provided references. It's also good to review published recommendations on LinkedIn or other venues of reputation arbitration. They're better than nothing, and often reflect reality, though to varying extents. Because everyone has gotten into the game of reputation management, you have to work harder to surface truth.

In this age of programmatic ad buys and self-serve platforms, one of the most overlooked leadership skills in business today is the ability to sell something. Fifty years ago, all of the great ad agencies were built this way, with CEOs like David Ogilvy landing clients on the basis of his wit, charm and "soft sell" salesmanship. Before getting into advertising, Ogilvy was, among other things, a door-to-door stove salesman. "The experience of door-to-door selling turned Ogilvy into a salesman," Kenneth Roman wrote in his book "The King of Madison Avenue."

"If we want users to like our software, we should design it to behave like a likeable person." So said Alan Cooper, the father of Visual Basic, back in 1999. He went on to further articulate the characteristics of this mythical "likeable person" -- a checklist that can also help us refine exactly what makes a visionary person or company.

When we think of opportunity, we refer to a window: The Window of Opportunity as a metaphor, symbol or conceptual representation of a space, which - if open - is possible to get through (why is it not a door then?) or perhaps pass something through, if not a human body equivalent.

So far, so good -- if you're reading this, it's proof that you don't necessarily listen to directions. That means you're perfect for this business!

Among the top challenges tech startups face is a failure to boldly communicate the core problem they are trying to solve, and for whom. Instead, they tend to muddy the message by including too many audience segments, and resorting to a long list of features, capabilities and widgets.

I came to New York to work in media a decade ago, and there's no other place I'd rather do business. Each morning I step off my commuter train I feel invigorated about being in the big leagues, competing at the highest level. I've learned a lot after a decade working in the city, from the big stuff to the minutiae. Here are 10 hard-won tips:

Last year was just the preview. Video-on-demand (VOD) and digital video recorders (DVRs) will be the kingmakers of television this fall season. The winners and loser of the broadcast TV season premieres will be determined not by who gets the biggest live audiences the night shows air, but by who get the biggest delayed audience -- and, specifically, by who does the best job capturing the fast-growing and increasingly valuable pool of VOD viewers.