Tag: success

Entrepreneur Self Sabotage

We all have 2 different minds. One is logical, the other is emotional and they don’t always agree with each other. Sometimes they will do whatever they can to sabotage each other. Consider the following entrepreneur story: Gauri Nanda was a graduate student at MIT who got an $80K loan...

If there is no struggle, then there is no progress

"If there is no struggle, then there is no progress" The title of this blog is a quote from Fredrick Douglass. He was born a slave in America in 1818. After two failed attempts to flee from a brutal slave owner, he finally succeeded in escaping to freedom and went...

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...

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...
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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...

The Most Common Mistakes that Startup Companies Make

There is an old saying that goes: Success is the result of Good Judgment Good Judgment is the result of Experience Experience is the result of Bad Judgment Have I learned anything after almost 20 years of doing startup companies? I try not to make the same mistakes more than...