www.nytimes.com/2020/12/24/business/small-business-coronvirus.html
“… for some industries, it has been a banner year. Small-business owners serving customers who are trapped at home, shopping online and seeking outdoor adventures have tallied record sales.“
Suster on the role of Entrepreneurs and VC’s.
Entrepreneurs are supposed to have insights that others don’t have and we’re supposed to be good judges about which entrepreneurs and executives have both the most clever ideas and the right skill sets to do transformational things against all odds.
There was something great about the ability to experiment with an idea before committing to it and before sucking other people’s money into it. When it didn’t work, it didn’t work. No need to pivot to save face or get your investors whole. Just shut it down and tinker on another idea.
*The ability to tickle ideas and see how they react is powerful. Don’t get over invested in an idea or business that isn’t and will not work in the market.
There will be 20 videos, some with a speaker or two and some with a small panel. It’ll be 1,000 minutes of content if you watch it all.
*Less than seventeen hours to take it all in.
A VC: Investing In Startups In Europe:
“… european entrepreneurs have fully made the change from locally focused to globally focused and are mostly now building businesses that can and do serve a global user base from day one.”
*Talent and opportunity is global in the Information Age. Leave off the word european and it still has essentially the same meaning for what the opportunity is in the current environment.
*I am not sure what to call the period of time we are in. Information Age seems appropriate to me at the moment. Computer Age and Digital Age also make sense.
Entrepreneur guru Michael Gerber: Businesses fail because of owners, not economy | MLive.com:
“‘We are born to create,’ he said. ‘The only reason our economy sucks is people have forgotten that. … All of you, if the entrepreneur were awakened in you, would transform the state of the economy.’”
Interesting observation. It would be an improvement if more people thought about how they could effectively create a product or service and deliver it to customers.
Seth’s Blog: The future of the library:
“The next library is a place, still. A place where people come together to do co-working and coordinate and invent projects worth working on together. Aided by a librarian who understands the Mesh, a librarian who can bring domain knowledge and people knowledge and access to information to bear.”
Great post by Seth. Not finished reading it, but even just the first few paragraphs got me to thinking about the future of libraries and the skilled Librarians that work there.
See this as a way of focusing on the WHAT, rather than the HOW. Too many people want the HOW to stay the same. The HOW can be done cheaper and more effectively as technology and ideas enable new methods to come to fruition. The WHAT stays the same, regardless of the HOW. Learning, Ideas, Value, Trade, Exchange, these are the WHAT that people want and need, Not the HOW.
A game or a sequence of events. It starts as a pattern. It may not be clear upon a first look. There is always a first piece that tips and sets everything in motion. You put a product, service or idea out for the public to examine. If it meets their needs they might buy it. The key is for you to start, to not be afraid at how IT will be examined and judged. IT may fail. It happens. It’s very rare for a first idea to succeed without any setbacks. Setbacks and failure go with the territory. What you do as a result of those happenings is what matters. Does the idea that failure might, WILL happen scare you to not even try?
Start, start, start. That is probably a good mantra for someone with lots of good ideas but not quite the courage, yes courage, to apply their idea to reality. From dream to reality, now there is an idea. Apple seems to be dreaming and creating products into reality. iPod, iPhone and now, iPad. Those are three really good ones that have had and are creating a great impact on the market. Even the seemingly infallible Apple has failed. Remember the Newton? Here are some more product failures of Apple.
The story of Thomas Edison working on inventing the light bulb usually includes the mention of 10,000 ways not to create a light bulb. That’s 10,000 failed tests! With that many failures one might think this guy will never achieve anything. Ah, there you would be mistaken. Edison is probably considered one of the top 5 inventors of all time. Here is a list of accomplishments of Edison as well some biographical information.
That’s why some people say that anyone who joins a company before they raise money is a founder. In other words, anyone who joins the company before the stock has value to a third party, is considered to be a founder.
via Are founders really 1000x more valuable than employees? – Venture Hacks.
Was previously unaware that this was the case. Certainly to join a venture that has not raised funding can be and is risky. Perhaps it is this risk of it falling apart and building a product or service from a value of $0 that makes one a founder as part of joining the team early.
D.L. Damore 