Who are your mentors? Whether or not you have formally designated mentors or advisors, as an alert entrepreneur you are probably bold about asking for guidance whenever a trusted party is available to you. Just like it’s nearly impossible to diagnose a flaw in your …
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36 articles in category Essays
Having now observed or read over 150 pitches in the last 3 weeks and having been on the road a bit, I’m focusing on the overworked term of “use cases.” There’s a lot of de-risking left to be done in ideas that depend on …
Read more →Google defines “anxiety” as a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome. It can be a serious disorder, but anyone bold enough to be a startup founder likely confronts more than his or her …
Read more →In total I witnessed 83 pitches at SXSW, and 82 of them mentioned blockchain. I guess that was a minimum criterion for a successful presentation at that event. There’s one such dominating trend like that every year at SXSW, and there’s always a replacement …
Read more →The road has beckoned, and I’m publishing off cycle a bit in order to attend a series of events. Today concludes my time at SXSW in Austin. It was for me another productive year at this ever more massive festival of technology, film and …
Read more →This week took me to the Rise of the Rest conference in Washington, DC. ROTR is Steve Case’s bold effort to address startup formation outside the three metropolitan regions that garner 75% of venture capital – San Francisco, Boston and New York City. The …
Read more →To you as a founder, details are important. When you are generating revenue and incurring payroll and other expenses, making sure the books stay in balance seems like an obvious task. But, I continue to be amazed at the amount of “found money” to …
Read more →Woody Allen is most commonly credited with the saying: “Eighty percent of success is showing up.” I might add “on time” to that. I am happy to be maintaining a tightly packed schedule these days. I do try to work in some mentoring on …
Read more →This essay is written the week of SpaceX’s successful launch of its Falcon Heavy. Give Elon Musk credit for working only on the grand challenges at this stage in his career. His flagship companies SpaceX and Tesla lost a combined $1.5B or so in …
Read more →One of the startups in our workspace concluded this past week that all the gold is indeed in California and decided to head west. They have a plan with scope and consequence; but it’s a double bottom line concept, for which the field of …
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