Learn more about entrepreneurship with this collection
How to start a successful business
How to build a strong team
How to market your business
Being a contrarian
It's very conventional to say you're a contrarian these days. So it's actually pretty easy to become contrarian. It's hard to be contrarian and right.
When you think about being contrarian, you have to think about how is it that smart people disagree with you, from a position of intelligence. And that there is something that you know that they don't know that will actually play out to be true.
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The founding team
It's usually best to have two or three people you trust on a team rather than being a solo founder. It's not to say that solo founders don't actually play out successfully. But most often, two or three people are much better.
If you have two or three founders, you have different ski...
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How to be a great founder
Well, you should have some superpowers. It's generally speaking useful to be a good product person. It's useful to have good skills in leadership, bringing networks in, persuading people, and it's useful to be able to -and this is kind of fundamental- recognize whether you are on...
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The choice of location
Great founders seek the networks that will be essential to their task. And they realize it's not just about, "I am superman, I can do this anywhere". In order to be successful, you have to go to where the strongest networks are for the particular kind of thing that I am d...
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Product distribution
People frequently think product strategy is fundamental to startups- I have a product idea, that's a thing, I'm a founder.
Actually, the next level down on strategy is usually product distribution, because no matter how good your product is, if it doesn't get the customers...
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Long-term vision vs solving a local near-term problem
You should jump between them. You should always have a long-term vision in mind. But if you are not focused on solving the problem that's immediately in front of you, you're screwed.
So part of the question about how to put these things together is you say, "okay short...
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The risk takers
Founders are thought of as being risk takers. Where everyone else cowers in fear, they boldly go out. You have to be a risk taker, you have to be thinking about how you make a really coherent risk because in fact the only really big opportunities happen to be ones that ha...
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The ability to say coherently what you are targeting
That is actually pretty important in being able to judge a founder. Because if you don't have that level of clarity, you are not going to be able to assemble the network behind you.
You are not going to be able to get investors, you are not going to be able to get employe...
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Be both flexible and persistent
And the reason for this is that entrepreneurs are frequently given the advice to have a vision and stay firm against their adversity.
- Realize that you have this vision that is contrarian to what people think and just stay on track. Get through th...
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How do you gather networks around you?
It's a constantly changing problem to face when you are trying to found a company. There is not one skill set, there is an ability to learn and adapt. And an ability to constantly have a vision that's driving you, but also to be taking input from all sources and ...
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Delegating vs. doing the work
As a founder, should you be doing the work? Or should you be recruiting people and delegating the work? The answer to this is, actually, you need to do both.
In fact, not only you need to do both, but you need to sometimes do one at 100% and sometimes the other at 100%. ...
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We spend most of our time with work teammates. It makes sense to be better teammates ourselves. I read and stash about that.
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Other curated ideas on this topic:
Take a mental health break
It's hard when you can't function as well as you're used to, but slogging on doesn't work when you're in a downward spiral.
When you're at a crossroads in terms of your mental health, you need to really say, 'OK, I'm going to ask for five days off. That might mean the difference ...
Sharpening your thinking
Without writing, it's pretty hard to capture and freeze your thinking, so that you can sharpen it: for example, observing when you're using words that are not well defined or when you're saying things that don't need to be said.
Find your yes
Before you can become good at saying no, you have to know what you're saying yes to when you're saying no. Every opportunity that you pass with a no is really saying yes to something else.
And if you feel like saying yes, ask for time to think about it before providing an answer. It...
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