A lot of people reach out to me for advice or to sell me on whatever they are doing. Some of that is fun and interesting, but much of it is in a form that wastes my time and theirs. That waste too often is due to to messages that fail to explain what the sender does and others that use hundreds of words when one sentence would be sufficient. When you are sending a message (via LinkedIn, email...
What if 99% of success is luck? Not just success in startups (which is what I do, teach, and write about), but also success in life? If you are following this blog, you know I’ve been thinking about income inequality, digging into the questions of its root cause, and potential solutions. But what if there is no solution, as it’s true cause is a series of random chances, some good...
The more I work with entrepreneurs, the more I realize how the skills required to succeed as an entrepreneur are not taught in schools. One of those skills is brevity. Specifically, we are are not taught how to edit our thoughts down in size. We are rewarded in school for writing multi-page essays and papers, providing as many details as we can fit into the assigned length. Out in the real...
One of the best parts of Debt: The First 5,000 Years was pointing out the myth that economies always begin with barter (hint: they never have). Similarly, whenever a market starts to heat up, we inevitably hear about the tulip bubble in Holland in the 1630’s. Well… turns out those stories are myths as well. Anne Goldgar has written a book, Tulipmania: Money, Honor and Knowledge in...
One of my former MBA students is turning his business school project into a real company… one that changes the way we bury our loved ones.
Entrepreneurs worry about their product, marketing, sales process, recruiting, finances, and operations, but often don’t think twice about designing their corporate culture. Forget about culture, and successful startups soon turn into The Office and Dilbert. There isn’t yet a The Next Step book on how to design a corporate culture, but I do teach the topic in both my MBA...
Investing is hard. It’s yet-another topic that isn’t taught in school, and rarely taught by family either. Here in the 21st Century, where a lot of wealth in America is self-made, the newly minted wealthy need help learning how to invest. For startup investing, the biggest challenges for investors are finding investable companies (a.k.a. dealflow) and doing enough due diligence on...
All startups are difficult… and they don’t get easier when your startup is in a foreign country… selling a service that no one there has seen before. Few books due the startup journey justice. Bright Lights, No City is one of the rare exceptions, telling the story of Burro in Ghana, a company founded by Whit Alexander, creator of Cranium, as told through the eyes and talented...
With all the buzz about impact investing (see BlackRock’s letter), it’s no surprise that Social Capital Markets’ new SOCAP 365 impact investing conference in Seattle was sold out. Investors, venture capitalists, family foundations and more joined to network, learn and make commitments in furthering the growth of the impact investing field. The day was filled with the realities of the impact...
Putting yourself in the other person’s shoes is sometimes hard, especially when you are a first-time entrepreneur and you are reaching out to an investor. Here are a few tips to help: 1- Wasting time. If your words make you sound like you’ll be a waste of time, most investors will not even both to reply to you. If your words are in fact wasting time, those words might not even be...
