There are no classes in life for beginners; right away you are always asked to deal with what is most difficult. — Rainer Maria Rilke
In 1929 a collection of ten letters was published under the title “Letters to a Young Poet”, written by Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke to Franz Xaver Kappus, a 19-year-old officer cadet. The young officer had written Rilke a letter asking for guidance and they corresponded — the two never met in person. In this piece are “double-quoted” extracts from Rilke’s letters.
When the great business thinker Peter Drucker wrote that the “CEO” title was “an American invention”, he was referring to this label in the organizational charts of large corporations. What’s odd about this title in start...
When things are going well, everyone wants to take credit. When things are going poorly, everyone wants to point a finger elsewhere.
While startups don't have any monopoly on finger pointing and blame shifting in an organization, we deal with this way more as startup Founders because let's face it, stuff goes wrong all the time!
But if we know going in that problems are going to be rampant, it's as important as ever to build a culture of accountability in our startups so that everyone is 100% focused on driving outcomes.
It's impossible for our team to be truly invested in the outcomes of success (or failure) if we don't believe we're accountable. As an employee, if I work really hard, or very little, and I...
If you are one of those people who consumes every bit of Silicon Valley management science you can find, you will be familiar with Ben Horowitz, co-founder of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. If you aren’t — for some reason — his writing will be a breath of fresh air, compared to the rest.
Horowitz was a little known figure for most of his time in the Valley, until his blog, swagger, swearing, and love of hip hop made him one of the most entertaining smack talkers and truth talkers in our industry.
Here’s how he got his start:
Sarah Lacy: How did you first get involved in Silicon Valley?
Ben Horowitz: I was actually a student at Columbia in New York. I got a summer internship at Silicon Graphics, and I had no idea what Silico...
Nancy Duarte is a pro when it comes to presentations. Not just giving presentations, but starting them, finishing them, and every step in between. Author and co-founder of Duarte Designs, Nancy Duarte is a seasoned veteran when it comes to incorporating storytelling into speaking and creating connections with an audience.
The below video is the fifth part in a series of 10 in which Nancy shares the key components to making a successful pitch using creativity and critical thinking. Find out what she has to say:
As an entrepreneur and founder of a startup, you already know you can do a lot of things well. You’re the head under many hats; the go-to guy or gal for a plethora of issues.
Nancy agrees with you. Entrepreneurial-minded people see n...
“Sometimes your spidey sense is like, ‘I don’t know if either one of these are right,’ but you have to go somewhere. Spinning your wheels, being in neutral? That’s bad.”
When you hear Founders out in the media talking about their product, most of what you hear them talk about is all the things that went right: the hypotheses that were confirmed, the “ahah” moments where all the pieces fell into place.
What you don’t hear most Founders talking about: all the things they didn’t know – the times a big bet didn’t pay off, the times when what you thought was true turned out not to be the case, the times when the market turned on a dime and suddenly everything you’d been working to build was no l...
Social media is an area where many .orgs come up short. In fact, it’s common for a lot of businesses to stumble with social media outreach. A new organization might have a handle on its social media campaigns, but as its audience grows, social media transforms into something that requires more time and attention.
Organizations often make the mistake of assigning social media to a volunteer or staff member already burdened with other tasks, and they don’t take the time to make posts geared toward the right audience..
Another common mistake is to split the duties across multiple volunteers. This can be effective, but only if you have a very precise and defined workflow, and a team with strong internal communication.
Finding the people with t...
Polymail is “the most powerful platform for email productivity in a beautiful native app — on desktop and mobile.”
Look, no one really likes email. In fact, people’s avid dislike of email has brought us everything from Slack to multiple apps trying to fix the problem that is email. And perhaps no one hates email more than startup founders, who spend even more time than the average Joe glued to their email inboxes.
And while I’ve written about quite a few solutions to the email problem over the years, I have to say that it looks like Polymail has finally, actually solved email. They’re still in closed alpha, but, from all reports, this is the email app we’ve been waiting for.
Ok...
Our startup's culture can all be mapped back to one person — us.
We are the cultural North Star of our startup, and everything we do, and how we act, puts our ship on a course for good things, and if we allow it, really bad ones. Our challenge is that we often don't recognize how even our simplest actions broadcast across the entire organization and poison the actions of everyone else. Our worst behaviors, even those that we think are positive, become the virus that infects everyone.
All of that shitty infighting and toxic politicking — that's on us. Either we encouraged or we let it happen — either way, we're responsible. We may not see it that way though, we may think that "everyone else is being shitty" but that...
Before we even dive into what a “B corp” is, we need to talk about terminology. Like a C corps or an S corps, people are often referring to a “benefit corporation” when they say “B corp.” But B corp is actually different from a benefit corporation, although they’re related.
A benefit corporation is a type of formal legal business structure, like a C corp or S corp. In addition to making a profit, shareholders hold benefit corporations responsible to contributing in some way to the public good. In some states, benefit corporations are required to produce proof that they’re contributing to the public good. They’re taxed the same way as C corps, which means they’re subject to double taxation.
Benefit...
Most people who start their own businesses must make a transition from employee to entrepreneur. There are some exceptions, such as people who are brought up in a family of business owners. For the most part, though, society trains us to be employees. This starts in school and continues as we begin to earn money with part-time and full-time jobs.
So when you decide to take the plunge and start your own business, it can be easy to unwittingly bring an employee mindset with you. Here are some pointers to keep in mind to help you make this crucial transition:
There are both pros and cons of leaving your job and putting all of your energy into your own business. On the one hand, you can devote all of your time to ...