Imagine I gave you pasta, marshmallows, tape, and some string, and told you to build the tallest tower possible in 45 minutes. As a business leader, how would you do? Certainly better than a 5-year-old, right? But when researchers actually tried this experiment, pitting kindergartners against CEOs, lawyers, and MBA students, it was the kids that came out on top, building towers averaging 26...
There are dozen automobile companies. Dozens of airlines. Over a thousand banks. Hundreds of venture capital funds and thousands of mutual funds. There are even two stock markets in the US, and the old rivalries of Coca Cola vs. Pepsi, Visa vs. Mastercard, and Mac vs. PC. But there is just one Berkshire Hathaway. Why? Why after sixty years of near-continuous success is there not just a distant...
The big shift I’ve seen in 2020, 2021, and 2022 is that the default mode of business (in impact investing) is meetings on Zoom vs. meetings in-person. The new normal for my workday is spending a few hours talking to people around the world via Zoom, with 99% of those meetings set by Calendly.com. All those people have the option of a phone call, and maybe once per month someone choose a...
“The Missing Middle” is what we call the gap in finance the majority of entrepreneurs face in getting from a viable prototype or early customers to a full-scale proven business. In Part 1, Luni explains who he is, and how he came to fill in this otherwise missing middle. In Part 2, Luni jumps back to the history of venture capital to explain the pervasive paradigm that leads to...
Newer is not better. Older is not better. Better is better. Just because something is old does not mean it is bad (or good). Just because something is new does not mean it is good (or bad). Evaluate each proposal on its own merits. – Unknown (internet)
@mattschnuk on Twitter shared an anecdote on teamwork. It’s a good story, but Matt’s conclusion is wrong in an interesting way The thread goes on to explain an experiment where team of kindergartners, CEOs, lawyers, and MBA students are challenged to build the tallest tower out of pasta, marshmallows, tape, and string, presumably in a reasonably short amount of time. The result is not...
Warren Buffett shares advice to investors every year. One big theme: Stop thinking that there’s a magical secret formula for making tons of money overnight. Or in short. get rich slowly. This is true not only for investors, but also for entrepreneurs. The world celebrates the overnight successes. Groupon. Facebook. Uber. AirBnB. Enron. The world keeps doing that, no matter how many times...
The following video does a great job of quickly summarizing the typical problems with foreign aid… So… if that doesn’t work, what does? For-profit capitalism. That may sound backwards, but it truly does work, when implemented correctly. I’ve seen this first-hand, as this is what I do as my main job. I find overlooked entrepreneurs in Africa whose work alleviates hunger and...
I came across this quote online: “Two weeks of coding can save you an hour of planning” and not only laughed, but cried, as the same is even more true over on the business side of startups. If I had a nickel every time one of my entrepreneurs spent months on operations, bashing the company’s proverbial head against the wall trying to fill orders or gain customers, when a few...
This isn’t how I run my businesses, but one mistake most first entrepreneurs make is to not spend any time thinking about the corporate culture of their company. Fail to plan that, and you end up with Dilbert or The Office, with employees who are there for the job, not to build the successful startup. Nike’s Principals Our business is changeWe’re on offense. All the time.Perfect...
