For the first twenty years of my career, I (co)founded a series venture-scale software companies, growing each from an idea and a starting team to a company earning millions in revenue, collectively serving tens of millions of customers. All but the first of these startups are still in operations and a few acquired by Global 1000 companies.
I now use the knowledge gained from those twenty years to help the next set of entrepreneurs. My goal is to have them increase their odds of success by not repeating the common mistakes that I and my peers once made. I do this in many ways:
The Next Step series of books guides entrepreneurs step-by-step through the process of getting from idea to operational startup, breaking the paradigm of startup investing, and explaining years of lessons teaching entrepreneurship.
The Next Step: podcast shares the lessons from the books plus other advice, anecdotes, and interviews, all in bite-sized audio pieces.
Fledge is a global network of conscious company accelerators, providing intense guidance, mentorship, investment, and support for a small set of entrepreneurs.
Answering questions from entrepreneurs on Quora.
Plus in these various efforts, I do my best to uncover hidden assumptions, break investment paradigms, and seek solutions to income/wealth inequality.
And despite now writing checks to entrepreneurs, I still consider myself first and foremost an entrepreneur, and as such every so often I simply have to create something new. Most recently that is investorflow.org, an online network gathering together all the world’s impact investors.
Hope something from this long list is of help to you.
This is the third of a series of blog posts where I’m sharing my learning from visiting Africa (specifically East Africa), to help my fellow Americans and like-minded Europeans. Part one was the visible energy part two opportunities, and this part three on the issues in the way of those opportunities. Issue #1 – 1 billion people, 85%-90% of which are farmers, and yet the continent of Africa...
This is the second of a series of blog posts where I’m sharing my learning from visiting Africa (specifically East Africa), to help my fellow Americans and like-minded Europeans. Part one was the visible energy and part two, opportunities. I’ve spoken and written about how big the opportunities are in Africa, but that was based mostly on seeing the city of Nairobi. My view of the...
I spent half of September touring Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda, not to see the wildlife, but to see first hand seven succeeding startups, all of which have attended one program or another from the Fledge accelerator network. The big learning is that I’ve been underestimating the potential opportunities. Underestimating for orders of magnitude. In this and the next few blog posts, I’ll...
I love teaching, but no longer have a class of MBA candidates to teach each week. To make up for that, I answer questions on Quora. Here are some of the most popular questions: Topic: Startups Why do so many startups fail?What do investors understand that many startup founders don’t?Why should I write a formal business plan rather than just sketch out my ideas if I am not seeking any...
