Author, Investor, Speaker, Mentor
This Facebook post by Facebook developer Ryan Patterson got a lot of attention; as of the writing of this post, it had 734 Likes (thanks to an appearance on the front page of Hacker News): http://on.fb.me/ZBOV8W It is a sincere and well-written post. But I want to address what I perceive could be a dangerous … Continue reading To succeed, focus on something other than “rightness”
Henry Blodget is a smart journalist who knows how to drive pageviews. He certainly got me to click through when he picked the headline, “DEAR ENTREPRENEURS: Here’s How Bad Your Odds Of Success Are” http://read.bi/17yADel Blodget riffs on a tweet by Paul Graham to estimate the odds of startup success: “Graham says that 37 of … Continue reading The Real Odds That Your Startup “Succeeds”
If you’re not reading Eric Barker’s blog, Bakadesuyo, take a moment to subscribe (at least for as long as RSS readers still exist) before reading the rest of this post. Eric spends an incredible amount of effort distilling the nuggets of wisdom from hundreds of books so you don’t have to. You’ll thank me later. … Continue reading Nice guys finish first *and* last
When startups fail (and the vast majority must, by the laws of probability), it’s hard not to search for a scapegoat. After all, doesn’t everyone deserve a glowing profile in TechCrunch? Often, embittered entrepreneurs fall back on two explanations: Luck, and connections. The luck-blamers take the position that startups are a crapshoot. “It’s all a … Continue reading If you don’t succeed with your startup. It’s not your fault. If you’re not successful, it is your fault
I had the good fortune of being allowed to be a mentor at the Unreasonable Institute this year. If you ever get the chance, it’s something you should definitely do. In my two days at the institute, I got to meet a bunch of amazing people who are making a real difference in the world. … Continue reading Everyone Feels Like An Imposter
To be truly successful (e.g. not just professionally, but personally, and as part of the community), a person must know themself. Happiness comes when your self-perception and the outside world line up. When a person who has a high self-opinion is seen by the outside world as a failure, the result is anger and resentment. … Continue reading You Can’t Be Truly Successful Without Self-Awareness
It’s funny to be called “successful” in Silicon Valley. So often, we think of success as being measured by liquidity events or other markers of worldly success. The reason I think I’m successful is that I have everything that money can’t buy: love, family, friends, health. Yet these are things that we rarely hear about … Continue reading Successful in Silicon Valley
I had lunch today with two entrepreneurs. I had been an advisor to their previous company, a promising startup that, due to some external personnel issues, had been forced to close down despite some early traction in the marketplace. I met these entrepreneurs when they cold-called me based on my LinkedIn profile. And while they … Continue reading An Entrepreneurial Success Story
When I ran across this passage from Keith E. Stanovich’s book, “What Intelligence Tests Miss“, I came to a full stop. Here are the mental dispositions he states as contributing to real world performance: “The tendency to collect information before making up one’s mind, the tendency to seek various points of view before coming to … Continue reading What Intelligence Tests Miss (is Wisdom)
It’s a paradox. Any time you hear the story of a wildly successful person, they tell you to “do what you love.” Yet for most, this advice rings hollow. How do we reconcile these two facts? The problem is survivorship bias. It’s probably true that people become successful by doing what they love. But it’s … Continue reading Doing What You Love