Last word on Venn Diagrams

I thought I was all done with Venn Diagrams (after my last post), especially about nerds and geeks, but here is the last word, from XKCD:

 

Here is the last word on bikes:

And this really is the last word:

Venn Diagrams of the World, Union!

After my posting What about Dweebs, which neatly shows a Venn Diagram taxonomy of Dweebs, Geeks, Dorks and Nerds, I let my obsessive side loose looking for other Venn Diagrams relevant to the various parts of my VC:VC world. In case you want to refer to it as I make wry comments later, I reproduce the picture here. It turns out there are a bunch of us obsessing about Venn Diagrams right now (some googling will confirm that).





As a Brit, I liked this one, explaining the whole “United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland” thing. 

And now, to prove I am a nerd, and a British one at that, a Venn Diagram Pun:

The VC:VC construct itself is a Venn Diagram of some of my life interests … where my venture capital world, my cycling, and my community interests coincide (or overlap).





Here’s another Venn Diagram I first saw on the walls of Techstars Boston, originally posted by Bud Cadell on his blog under the title How to be Happy in Business. This is a non-trivial commentary on building and running a business (geeks and nerds in particular need no further prompting to study this closely). I found another variation (see right) on this theme on Flowing Data (which also links back to Bud’s graphic as well). Both make important points… but, if only business was so easy.

Stan Nowak, Founder and CEO of Silverlink Communications, a Sigma portfolio company on whose board I sit, talks about the importance of seeking out markets with scale, urgency and willingness to pay. With a tip of the hat to Stan, here is it is as a Venn Diagram.


How about a diagram describing something technical… well, I previously shared my sketch of Dennis Devlin suggestion about information systems security, noting that a system is secure when it does exactly what it is supposed to do, and nothing more! (It strikes me this is a good definition of quality as well as security.) 

For fun, check out this interactive TwitterVenn website that uses a Venn Diagram to show overlap between terms you can find in the tweets over a the last day. You can use your own search terms … these are “chocolate, milk, hot”.

Over in the non-profit world, check out the questions Sasha Dichter asks with “The Simplest non-profit Venn Diagram ever”.

How much overlap do think there is between the circles?

 



And finally, my own comment on how too few charities and too many startups are in the wrong place…