Can Entrepreneurship Empower Palestinians?

Last week I was asked to join a group of coaches and investors to design and lead a program for Palestinian entrepreneurs from the West Bank. This week I have been doing a lot of thinking. Thinking about conflict resolution. Thinking about peace. Thinking about empowerment and the role that...

Making the most of any situation

I did a workshop this week in Palermo, Italy for a group of MBA students and startup companies at the ARCA Technology Incubator. Palermo is a fantastic place of chaos, crowds, energy and even innovation. I once heard a story about an American law professor who was in Italy holding...

More Serial Entrepreneurs?

Yesterday I led a workshop for 20 young entrepreneurs in Dusseldorf, Germany. I asked them if they knew the expression “serial entrepreneurs”. Few did.  I asked if they knew the term “serial killers”. Yes. They all had watched enough TV crime shows to understand that term. OK, so I challenged...

Fake It or Be Yourself?

Years ago I heard a great story about networking. It came from an investor who had a different strategy than most. He was part of a delegation of US businessmen who were going to travel to Japan to setup new business relationships. Most of them attended a class where they...

Connecting the Dots

Like most children, I loved drawing Connect the Dots pictures. I can envision myself staring at a new and particularly complex page of dots and numbers and trying to imagine what could possibly emerge from all that chaos. Today, as an adult I look forward in my life and try...

Celebrate Your Failures

Last week Google announced that their product called WAVE would be dropped, just 6 months after its birth. What was interesting about this announcement was that Google said “We celebrate our failures.” This is a smart core value for a business to have. Last I checked, Google was not only...

Marathon Man for Startups

Have you seen the old movie called Marathon Man? Dustin Hoffmann plays the part of an amateur marathon runner who gets mixed up with a group of nasty ex-Nazis who torture him with a dental drill. His training as a marathon runner helps him to endure the pain until he...
Image from www.all4humor.com

Am I crazy to be an entrepreneur?

I woke up this morning and my first thought was that “I am crazy”! Stark, raving, mad, lunatic crazy. It was all triggered by an argument that I had with my business partner yesterday, which was by no means his fault. Crazy can be defined as doing the same thing...

Personal Ad: Great Technology Seeks Sexy Problem to Solve

You would not believe how many times I have met brilliant entrepreneurs with amazing, cutting-edge technologies who are clueless about their markets and about who will actually be willing to pay money for their inventions. I talked with a guy who works at a local patent office recently. He said...

It is hard to change just a little. Easier to change a lot.

To succeed as an entrepreneur you have to pay attention. You must pay close attention to what is going on around you – to your company, your market and to your own mindset.  And quite often you will discover that you need to make changes. The problem with change is...