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.
My pledge a week ago was a Daily Habit of Creation, not a daily blog post. I did promise to share the day’s creation on the blog, so today the question is to you… have you listened to the podcast? Did you know The Next Step: Podcast exists? That channel is primarily focused for entrepreneurs. It’s a mix of lessons from The Next Step books, plus interviews with entrepreneurs and...
Startups suffer from two types of problems. Neither is fun. Both are stressful. You only want one type, but don’t have control of which you’ll get. One set of problems are the search for more customers, the search for more investors, the search for more talent to get you out of the current hole you are in. These are not the problems you want. The other set of problems are too many...
There is something about people who aim to improve the world and circles. Maybe its the camaraderie vs. the hierarchical structures of family, work, and school. Maybe its something else. Whatever the cause, I find myself sitting in a lot of circles in my work and life. Today it was the Seattle Impact Investing Group’s offsite. I won’t tell you what we discussed, as the core purpose of...
Change is hard. Making change happen even harder. Looking for the origins of change fits in with my questions of how things used to work three or more generates ago, and my general search for hidden assumptions. I was thus delighted today when I flipped on the Planet Money podcast, Episode 925: A Mob Boss, A Garbage Boat and Why We Recycle. I was in high school living in suburban New York when...
