Walk around with a hammer, and many things look like nails. Live your life as an entrepreneur (or startup investor) and it seems like entrepreneurs are everywhere.
Just how many entrepreneurs are there? According to the editors at asianentrepreneur.org, just 400 million globally. That is around 5% of the total population. Everywhere… but uncommon.
I have a hypothesis that successful entrepreneurs can perform at least seven varied skills, one of which is Design. Not the narrow definition of Design, as in the ability to draw, but the larger definition, as in the ability to create a whole customer experience, from name and logo through purchase flow and product look, feel, and action. As an entrepreneur who can’t draw, I’m...
I’ve been writing and talking for years about how “California Capitalism” is the wrong answer for 99.9% of all startups. I expect I’ll be talking about this for at least another decade, maybe two, before the investment world comes around to see what they are doing wrong. I don’t blame investors. They are simply stuck in a paradigm, and if you go back and...
Here in 2018, it seems a bit 19th Century to focus solely on writing books. Yes, I also write a blog, and those were not invented until the late 20th Century, but podcasts are one of the 21st Century’s contributions to media, and feels like a medium that is just starting to take off. I’ve thus jumped on the podcasting bandwagon using The Next Step brand from my books as the title and...
It’s business-plan-contest season here in Seattle, and for me that means judging business plans at the University of Washington, Seattle University, Seattle Pacific University, plus a dozen other schools who have sent teams to the five major competitions at those universities, including the projects from my own Entrepreneurship students at Presidio Graduate School. You’d think that...
Glen Herud wrote: I founded Happy Cow Milk to make a difference. But last week I had to admit to myself that I failed. I made the decision to shut down the business and I faced the hard truth that I haven’t really made any difference at all. So what went wrong? So begins the post mortem of Happy Cow Milk, as told by the founder himself. It’s not an uncommon story. Founder has a dream. ...
Two weeks ago I was in Boston, speaking at the Angel Capital Association, surrounded by many hundreds of fellow startup investors. As is usually the case in such gatherings, the most common word in the room was “exit” as that is the obsession of the modern startup investor. My talk included that word as well, but only in contrast, as it’s title was “Investing without...
What sets Apple, Martin Luther King, and the Wright Brothers apart?
Simon Sinek explains the answer, using one simple diagram, one key word, and from biology. And this theory matches why mission-driven companies find so much more interest than yet-another tech company. It’s all about the Why.
startwithwhy.com
The Verge just posted an article about a new film, “General Magic“, the most important company to come out of Silicon Valley that no one’s ever heard of. That is a startup that brings back old memories en masse, as it was one of the big platforms that my first startup, Nimble, wrote and sold software. For those of you who never heard of it (which should be 99.999% of you), General...
Speaking of luck, a few years ago I volunteer to help an organization that hosted the Dalai Lama in Seattle 10 years ago. Two months ago, members of this organization were invited to Dharmashala, India to have an audience, and I was invited along. I write books and blogs. I teach story telling. But no words can describe this experience. Neither do the following videos, but they do demonstrate...
