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.
A few weeks ago there was a talk on Agroecology by Timothy A. Wise. That term is widely used outside the U.S. for what we’d call sustainable or restorative agriculture. That part of the talk was good, but far more interesting were the stories from the book which the talk summarized, Eating Tomorrow: Agribusiness, Family Farmers, and the Battle for the Future of Food. The author traveled the...
Someone wrote me today: I have taken a lot of time to ponder Rule #1 in your ‘Dividing Equity’, “Expect to be Disappointed”. I have also been diving into ‘Slicing Pie’ and talking to Mike Moyer about his ideologies as well. Similarly, I find the same disconnected energetic as he refers to everyone as “grunts”. I ask the question, why is it so difficult for humans to come together? My answer: For...
Most of us have heard of the Golden Rule and maybe some of us Singer’s Platinum Rule. Somehow, despite these ideas prevalently taught around the world, these rules are not prevalently followed. I propose two simpler rules, the Iron Nickel Rules, so-called as the core of the planet is made from a blend of iron and nickel metals, and these two simple rules can be a core to every relationship...
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. A few months ago I posted some of my most popular answers. Here are some more: Topic: Startups Why do so many startups fail?What aspects of the financial statements should an entrepreneur care most about when starting a business?How do you complete a bottom’s...
