After a decade and a half starting and building startups, I woke up one morning with the desire to help other entrepreneurs. I thought it might be possible for them not to repeat all the mistakes I’ve made myself, and seen my friends make. I thought they might like to have a serial entrepreneur to call upon for advice. This epiphany came to me before the latest wave of entrepreneurial...
Speaking about assumptions, there is a long-held belief by the regulators in Washington D.C. and all 50 States that the masses can’t be trusted with investments. An assumption dating back from the 1929 stock market crash. An event now 85 years old, from an era when my grandparents were children. Meanwhile, back in 2009, a small startup in Brooklyn took a small step toward breaking this...
The most interesting ideas come about by questioning assumptions. In science, Copernicus questioned the assumption that the Earth was fixed in the center of the universe. Newton questioned the assumption that an apply falling and the moon orbiting were related. In government, Madison, Jefferson, Franklin, and friends questioned whether a government needed a king. In business, Henry Ford...
Practice makes better. The Ignite format looks simple, 20 slides, auto-forwarding every 15 seconds, making for an exactly 5 minute talk. Hitting the timing of the slide transitions comes down to two strategies. Either practice, practice, and practice, not skipping or adding any words to the script, or don’t even try, making the slides pure images that don’t need to be in sync with...
One of the great benefits of the Web is the ease at which we can share ideas. A decade ago, talks at a conference would be seen by a few dozen to a few thousand people, then never seen again. Now we can watch and share great ideas from TED and elsewhere, from the comfort of our own homes. One consequence of all this great content is the raising of the bar of quality in the presentations. The...
I spent the first twenty years of my career as a software entrepreneur. I started my first software company at age 22, way back in 1992. That was a few years before the “tech” bubble began brewing, back when the only significant software company in Seattle was Microsoft, and it was still small enough to fit into its first 10 buildings, all on one campus. A lot has changed in the 24 years since...
Just who am I? To answer that question, like most Americans, I need to start the answer with an explanation of what I do for a living. As of two years ago, I spend my time helping entrepreneurs with their ideas and startups. That is all I do. When you look at it through the lens of a job, for example on my LinkedIn profile, it appears not as a single entry, but a half dozen. From my daily...
Does the world really need yet-another blog on business and entrepreneurship? Don’t Fred Wilson, Brad Feld, Mark Suster, and others do a good enough job on their blog? Those are wonderful sources of advice for entrepreneurs, but what is missing from that whole circle of thought is purpose. What is missing from most every business, and the whole of business media is purpose. That is, a purpose...
