Startups

Thoughts on what makes startups successful, what makes a great founder and how to navigate the world of startups.

What do successful startup founders have in common?

As a group, startup founders are an incredibly diverse collection of people. If you were in a room with 50 randomly selected founders, you’d find yourself with people from every demographic group. They’d have many different skills and have had a wide variety of life experiences. Some would be introverts. Some would be extraverts. Some …

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Why is startup fundraising so damn hard?

If you’re a startup founder looking or considering looking for funding, I’m sure you’ve heard all sorts of stories about fundraising. And, if you’ve asked (or probably even if you haven’t), I’m sure you’ve gotten all sorts of advice. Like everything difficult in life, there’s always lots of (usually bad) advice. And, getting investors to write …

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Power of Curiosity

One of the common characteristics I’ve found in most successful innovators is a strong sense of curiosity.  They are genuinely interested in deeply understanding customers, existing solutions, competition, etc.  It is through this deep understanding that they often find new ways to look at problems, ways to bring ideas from other disciplines, ways to separate …

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Celebrating failure – the catalyst for evolution

Perhaps the most frustrating part of building new products or innovating in general is that you’re almost never right when you start.  No matter how much analysis you do before you start, how confident you are, you’re still almost always wrong about most things. Almost all great breakthrough products succeeded after they failed – often …

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