If you’ve started a company (or are growing a business) and every time you share your business idea with other people, they start asking “oh, so you’re like [X] company?”, then you have competition. You don’t decide who your competition is, your customers do by their actions and choices.
I originally wrote this in 2010 but wanted to revisit, fix and re-publish for others to read. — If I wasn’t doing my startup in San Francisco, here’s some random thoughts on how I would do it in another city – most likely in my home town of Moncton, NB. (which I ended up doing with Clarity!) 1. Start. Build
“Life’s not about how hard of a hit you can give… it’s about how many you can take, and still keep moving forward.” ― Sylvester Stallone, Rocky Balboa Most people don’t realize how hard it’s going to be when they start a business. What matters most is if you are willing to continue during the struggle, when there’s nothing clear
There are an estimated 49,256 people that move to San Francisco each year. I made that move in September 2008. To say that it was an easy transition would be a freakin’ lie. After 3 weeks I hit a wall and almost returned home.
“My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.” ~ Maya Angelou I’m always getting asked, “How do I discover my passion, my gift and my purpose in life?”
Imagine that you met someone at a conference and instead of thinking that you were just going to know them for the next 15 minutes, you actually reframed that and asked yourself, “What if I would know this person for the next 50 years?” It’s a really interesting question and something that I decided to shift in my thinking about
Building a two-sided market is probably the hardest thing you can build as an entrepreneur. It’s so hard that a few weeks ago, I organized a Marketplace Founders Dinner because I felt like there needed to be an “AA type meeting” for providing support to those founders :). I don’t know if you know what a marketplace is, but it’s
Updated Jan 23rd: Please don’t email me your pitch. I’m not looking for new investments outside my personal network. If you’d like you can follow me on Angel List to get notified of my new investments. Thank you. —- I’ve always found “angel investing” to be such a funny term. It almost comes across as being some kind of religious
I’m often asked how – in a 2 year period – we were able to: have 2 kids build two houses and move launch and grow our companies The truth is… very little sleep and hacking away at our approach to getting work done. I believe most people don’t mean to be lazy. They typically aren’t producing because they haven’t
Launching your startup is probably one of the most important things to get right so you get as much momentum going in the beginning and have as many people as possible show up to use your product or service. I have been starting companies now for 15 years, and one of the things that I’ve really tried to figure out
