I try and keep politics off of this blog, but sometimes the coverage from politics sparks a question about entrepreneurship. Specifically today it was an explanation in The New York Times about how the law punishes conspiracy above and beyond the underlying crime. That triggered the question of what is the difference between a conspiracy and a corporation? Both are groups of people planning to...
Episode 4 of ZigZag included the backstory of the company behind the podcast. It was not an a-typical startup story, but one line caught my ear. I don’t want to think about the money. This too is not a-typical of founders. They have an idea. They want turn it into a product (or service). They like the concept of having customers and running a business. But when the time comes to ask a...
One of the challenges of being an “impact investor” is explaining to others what you mean by “impact” as the definition varies from person to person. The best explanation I’ve ever heard came from Ted Levinson of Beneficial Returns on a panel at a recent SOCAP 365 event in San Francisco (which I heard on the “Unusual Investments” episode of the new Money...
It took me a few months to finish People before Profit, the inspiring story of Bob Moore, the founder of Bob’s Red Mill. A friend recommended it, as (spoiler) at age 70 Bob gave the company to his employees. From my other readings on economics, I’m concluding that its the inequality of ownership that is the root cause of both wealth and income inequality. I was thus eager to read...
Venture capital should never have become the standard way for us to fund new businesses. As an asset class, it’s uniquely designed to fund disruptive innovations. It does this by funding ventures that are likely to fail, but — if successful — can result in outsized outcomes. In other words, it’s a ‘home run’ based model. For a venture capitalist, seeing 6 or 7 out of 10 portfolio companies fail...
Multiple times per year I host U.S. State Department delegations, Eisenhower Fellows and other people eager to replicate a startup ecosystem in their home city/country. They are always surprised when I talk about Seattle as a city that has a thriving ecosystem, with the two richest men of the world, both entrepreneurs, with hundreds of other millionaires created from those same pools of wealth...
Speaking of Seattle, living here often feels like being in a forgotten room in a house, or off in a corner of an otherwise busy meeting room. Seattle is a city that many people have heard of, but it’s the 15th largest city in the U.S. and (counting the metropolitan area) around the 50th most populous city in the world. But in terms of geography, it is literally off in the corner of the...
A few times per year I’m reminded that what I do for work is completely unrelated to what I studied in college. Or at least it seems that way on the surface. I studied Mathematics and Computer Science for my Bachelors degree, then Computer Science and Engineering for my Masters. I’m thus trained as a reductionist, a logician, a bit of engineering, and a lot of focus on proving how...
From the inside of the startup process, as the entrepreneur, the pass to success seems rather simple. You’ve got a great idea. It’s obvious that it will work. It’s frustrating that others are not simply following along. Reality is that entrepreneurship is complicated. Few ideas truly are great. Most startups fail. Sometimes analogous situations make this far more obvious. ...
Starting startups is hard. It’s a process full of Catch-22’s. But it doesn’t end there. If you successfully navigate the path from idea to startup to revenues, the next stage is just as tricky, just as difficult, and full of new issues to overcome to reach the next milestone, profits. First-time entrepreneurs don’t realize (or know) that these stages exist, let alone...
