Archive for the ‘Entrepreneurship’ Category
Grow
This’ll be quick.
1. Go read this awesome essay by Paul Graham: Startup = Growth
2. Read it again.
3. Stare at this image:
Good. Now you have awesome ideas and text in your mind1. And an awesome picture in your mind2.
Startups take money (and by default time, since, well, you know that one) and you grow. And growth will ultimately get you value. Without growth, you’ve got grandes problemas. Find something that you can measure in the short-term, that aligns in some way shape or form with your long-term vision, and grow the hell out of it.
BTW, have you even seen something grow so fast and awesome that the hell literally just left? I
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Silos
These grain silos are about 4 miles from where I grew up in Burley, ID. For one of my high school dances, me and a few friends took our dates to the top. Cool, right? See the big bad city of Burley, unique, WAY different. Problem was: They’re grain silos. The dirt and dust up top was literally 16 inches thick. Add in some dudes wearing dark dress clothes, and some ladies wearing long dresses, and things got….how should I say? Powdery? But hey, I’m a farm boy, that’s what you get.
Anyway, this post isn’t a chronology of my high school dates. Granted, that’d be so much better. But this is about Silos in respect to startups and entrepreneurship.
I’m
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E.I.T.
If you run in startup circles (especially if you’re ever interfacing with investors) you are familiar with the role of an Entrepreneur in Residence. It’s an experienced/seasoned entrepreneur in various roles at a Venture Capital firm, or higher education/government institution.
But before you can be an “seasoned” entrepreneur, you start as no entrepreneur at all. Because the only path to entrepreneurship is to be born with certain defective personality characteristics, and then to basically go do it. You can’t learn it in school anymore than watching videos on Youtube can teach you to fly fish. Entrepreneurship is trial and error, mentoring, and apprenticeship.
So mid last year, I was struck that startups don’t have a counterpoint to this prestigious position
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Fear
This is final post in now what has become sort of a 3 parter.
Started with Killer Blue Whales about some of my pressures and fears, then Fontal Assault about how startups teams play into the mix, and now bring it home with Fear.
And for this one, I’m sharing what one of my advisors emailed to me after seeing my Killer Blue Whales post. I sent this out to my team as well. It’s SPECTACULAR.
I can tell you from all my experience the most powerful motivator in the world is not greed, it’s fear. Whether it’s fear over upholding the expectation of others, knowing that others lives and careers and families are depending upon you, or wondering whether your
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Frontal Assault
When I posted last week about Killer Blue Whales, and dumped some insight into my head and some of my fears and pressure I feel as an entrepreneur, this post was already ready to go in my mind.
At the risk of totally way overplaying an analogy* (but I just really wanted to use these pictures)…
and also the risk of mixing metaphors — but I am king of that: from animal kingdom last time to military this week; actually, those are analogies. Can you mix analogies?
anyway, here we go….
You see, I am but a very small piece of a very big, complicated, and complex picture. I think last week, you saw how important your spouse is in
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Killer Blue Whale
I debated on whether to post this off and on for a few hours. But I am extremely focused, in my life, with my team, and with the broader entrepreneur community, to be brutally honest. To engage in no bullshit. To be authentic. Real-time. No spin, no positioning. That’s the opposite of honesty, transparency, truth. Life’s too short. If there’s one thing I want to be known for, is that I tell it how it is.
Entrepreneurs have the highest highs. And the lowest lows. We can simultaneously live in our minds where 1. we are so convinced we can change the world that we set aside normal thinking and strike out to do what most people see as impossible: to
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Extraordinary
Got my daily email this morning from the Utah Avalanche Center with the avalanche advisory for the Salt Lake Area Mountains.
I expect it every day in the winter. I check the conditions, check the mountain weather forecast. Pretend I had a career where I’d be out there in the backcountry multiple times a week. But what I didn’t expect today was one of the best views about life and the excitement, energy, and resolve a New Year brings that I’ve ever read, courtesy of guide and forecaster Drew Hardesty:
We live charmed lives. I remember an old friend – now long gone – would look at me, wide-and wild-eyed, and say, “Today will be an extraordinary day.” And he
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