Startup Journey Quotes

Pivoting is not the end of the disruption process, but the beginning of the next leg of your journey.

In the end, every startup is different. But in the beginning every startup is the same.

Starting each day with a positive mindset is the most important step of your journey to discovering opportunity.

The entrepreneur’s mind-set is completely different to the employee’s mind-set. The entrepreneur finds it abhorrent to conform to organizational norms, whilst the employee finds joy and stability in all that’s tried and true. It’s not that one’s wrong and the other is right. It’s the mind-set that differentiates the two.

The best entrepreneurs are not the best visionaries. The greatest entrepreneurs are incredible salespeople. They know how to tell an amazing story that will convince talent and investors to join in on the journey.

I simply don’t have it in me to define my life’s success playing someone else’s game and following someone else’s rulebook.” --Dipa to her Grandfather

Entrepreneurs pay the price of a road less traveled, while everyone else takes the freeway and perpetually misses their own exit.

Along the journey we commonly forget its goal. —Friedrich Nietzsche

The resignations infuriated Elizabeth and Sunny. The following day, they summoned the staff for an all-hands meeting in the cafeteria. Copies of The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho’s famous novel about an Andalusian shepherd boy who finds his destiny by going on a journey to Egypt, had been placed on every chair. Still visibly angry, Elizabeth told the gathered employees that she was building a religion. If there were any among them who didn’t believe, they should leave. Sunny put it more bluntly: anyone not prepared to show complete devotion and unmitigated loyalty to the company should “get the fuck out.

Thiel’s loathing for government spending did not apply when the government spent money on him. His next big startup, Palantir—a name borrowed from Tolkien—depended for survival upon the least transparent, least accountable, and most profligate extension of the federal government, the CIA. The agency invested in Thiel through its Silicon Valley VC front, In-Q-Tel. With Palantir, this self-described “civil libertarian” became an important player in the growth of a secretive, invasive, and patently unconstitutional global surveillance apparatus. Asked in a 2014 online chat if Palantir was “a front for the CIA,” Thiel replied, “No, the CIA is a front for Palantir.” With 70 percent of the U.S. intelligence budget going to the private sector, this dismissive wisecrack was not so much an outright denial as it was a sly wink at the extent of corporate dominance over even the most powerful federal agencies.

Dr. Z would one day explain the father-son relationship to me this way: For the son, his father begins as a deity on a pedestal. The father can do no wrong. As the son ages, he discovers that his father is flawed, mortal, and full of frailty: an oedipal fall from grace. The son is filled with disappointment, hurt, and anger over his dad’s imperfections. The father starts to sink in the son’s eyes, slowly sometimes, and other times all at once. What follows is conflict and resentment. As the son’s psyche grinds against his father’s, men are forged. Boys become men. Or they don’t. Only some dads survive the son’s journey intact. Before they do, they all fall down.

We've known each other for years." "In every sense of the word." Tanya gave him a nudge and they shared another laugh. In every sense of the word... Daisy felt a cold stab of jealousy at their intimate moment. It didn't make sense. Her relationship with Liam wasn't real. But the more time she spent with him, the more the line blurred and she didn't know where she stood. "Daisy is a senior software engineer for an exciting new start-up that's focused on menstrual products," Liam said. "She's in line for a promotion to product manager. The company couldn't run without her." Daisy grimaced. "I think that's a bit of an exaggeration." "Take the compliment," Tanya said. "Liam doesn't throw many around... At least, he didn't used to." At least, he didn't used to... Was the bitch purposely trying to goad her with little reminders about her shared past with Liam? Daisy's teeth gritted together. Well, she got the message. Tanya was a cool, bike-riding, smooth-haired venture capitalist ex who clearly wasn't suffering in any way after her journey. She was probably so tough she didn't need any padding in her seat. Maybe she just sat on a board or the bare steel frame. Liam ran a hand through his hair, ruffling the dark waves into a sexy tangle. Was he subconsciously grooming himself for Tanya? Or was he just too warm? "What are you riding now?" "Triumph Street Triple 675. I got rid of the Ninja. Not enough power." "You like the naked styling?" Liam asked. Tanya smirked. "Naked is my thing, as you know too well." Naked is my thing... As you know too well... Daisy tried to shut off the snarky voice in her head, but something about Tanya set her possessive teeth on edge. "Do you want to join us inside?" Liam asked. "We're going to have a coffee before we finish the loop." Say no. Say no. Say no. "Sounds good." Tanya took a few steps and looked back over her shoulder. "Do you need a hand, Daisy?" Only to slap you.

But Holbrooke brought to every job he ever held a visionary quality that transcended practical considerations. He talked openly about changing the world. “If Richard calls you and asks you for something, just say yes,” Henry Kissinger said. “If you say no, you’ll eventually get to yes, but the journey will be very painful.” We all said yes. By the summer, Holbrooke had assembled his Ocean’s Eleven heist team—about thirty of us, from different disciplines and agencies, with and without government experience. In the Pakistani press, the colorful additions to the team were watched closely, and generally celebrated. Others took a dimmer view. “He got this strange band of characters around him. Don’t attribute that to me,” a senior military leader told me. “His efforts to bring into the State Department representatives from all of the agencies that had a kind of stake or contribution to our efforts, I thought was absolutely brilliant,” Hillary Clinton said, “and everybody else was fighting tooth and nail.” It was only later, when I worked in the wider State Department bureaucracy as Clinton’s director of global youth issues during the Arab Spring, that I realized how singular life was in the Office of the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan—quickly acronymed, like all things in government, to SRAP. The drab, low-ceilinged office space next to the cafeteria was about as far from the colorful open workspaces of Silicon Valley as you could imagine, but it had the feeling of a start-up.

capital expenditures required in Clean Technology are so incredibly high,” says Pritzker, “that I didn’t feel that I could do anything to make an impact, so I became interested in digital media, and established General Assembly in January 2010, along with Jake Schwartz, Brad Hargreaves and Matthew Brimer.” In less than two years GA had to double its space. In June 2012, they opened a second office in a nearby building. Since then, GA’s courses been attended by 15,000 students, the school has 70 full-time employees in New York, and it has begun to export its formula abroad—first to London and Berlin—with the ambitious goal of creating a global network of campuses “for technology, business and design.” In each location, Pritzker and his associates seek cooperation from the municipal administration, “because the projects need to be understood and supported also by the local authorities in a public-private partnership.” In fact, the New York launch was awarded a $200,000 grant from Mayor Bloomberg. “The humanistic education that we get in our universities teaches people to think critically and creatively, but it does not provide the skills to thrive in the work force in the 21st century,” continues Pritzker. “It’s also true that the college experience is valuable. The majority of your learning does not happen in the classroom. It happens in your dorm room or at dinner with friends. Even geniuses such as Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates, who both left Harvard to start their companies, came up with their ideas and met their co-founders in college.” Just as a college campus, GA has classrooms, whiteboard walls, a library, open spaces for casual meetings and discussions, bicycle parking, and lockers for personal belongings. But the emphasis is on “learning by doing” and gaining knowledge from those who are already working. Lectures can run the gamut from a single evening to a 16-week course, on subjects covering every conceivable matter relevant to technology startups— from how to create a web site to how to draw a logo, from seeking funding to hiring employees. But adjacent to the lecture halls, there is an area that hosts about 30 active startups in their infancy. “This is the core of our community,” says Pritzker, showing the open space that houses the startups. “Statistically, not all of these companies are going to do well. I do believe, though, that all these people will. The cost of building technology is dropping so low that people can actually afford to take the risk to learn by doing something that, in our minds, is a much more effective way to learn than anything else. It’s entrepreneurs who are in the field, learning by doing, putting journey before destination.” “Studying and working side by side is important, because from the interaction among people and the exchange of ideas, even informal, you learn, and other ideas are born,” Pritzker emphasizes: “The Internet has not rendered in-person meetings obsolete and useless. We chose these offices just to be easily accessible by all—close to Union Square where almost every subway line stops—in particular those coming from Brooklyn, where many of our students live.

The solution to this dilemma is a commitment to iteration. You have to commit to a locked-in agreement—ahead of time—that no matter what comes of testing the MVP, you will not give up hope. Successful entrepreneurs do not give up at the first sign of trouble, nor do they persevere the plane right into the ground. Instead, they possess a unique combination of perseverance and flexibility. The MVP is just the first step on a journey of learning.

PRIME Prime is an ever-changing condition, a segment of a journey, not a haven at the end of the road. Companies in Prime are recognizable: All aspects work well together, all operations thrive, and all members of the organization know where it is going and how to stay on track. Prime is a state of balance: Flexibility and control, function and form, imagining and producing, innovation and administration. But companies in that exultant equilibrium — so hard to achieve, so easy to lose — continually risk sliding back to childish habits or stumbling into the rigidity of old age. An organization is no less vulnerable in Prime than it is at any other stage of its lifecycle. The cash shortage of Infancy, the founder’s heavy hand in Go-Go, the infighting of Adolescence — those are challenges it has overcome. Now the complacency that comes with a surfeit of success looms as a potential and significant threat. I have a rule of thumb by which I judge an adult company: If it does not produce significant new products or spin off promising start-ups within any three-year period, it is either decaying or on the brink of decline. Ask yourself what percentage of your revenues come from products you were not selling three years ago? Be honest. There are enhancements, changes that are cosmetic in nature that make old products look new. Pharmaceutical manufacturers are well known for

The young man making a hash of his visit to the Garden of Allah that December evening was a mess of contradictions. He was a cofounder of one of the most successful startups ever, but he didn’t want to be seen as a businessman. He craved the advice of mentors, and yet resented those in power. He dropped acid, walked barefoot, wore scraggly jeans, and liked the idea of living in a commune, yet he also loved nothing more than speeding down the highway in a finely crafted German sports car. He had a vague desire to support good causes, but he hated the inefficiency of most charities. He was impatient as hell and knew that the only problems worth solving were ones that would take years to tackle. He was a practicing Buddhist and an unrepentant capitalist. He was an overbearing know-it-all berating people who were wiser and immensely more experienced, and yet he was absolutely right about their fundamental marketing naïveté. He could be aggressively rude and then truly contrite. He was intransigent, and yet eager to learn. He walked away, and he walked back in to apologize. At the Garden of Allah he displayed all the brash, ugly behavior that became an entrenched part of the Steve Jobs myth. And he showed a softer side that would go less recognized over the years. To truly understand Steve and the incredible journey he was about to undergo, the full transformation that he would experience over his rich life, you have to recognize, accept, and try to reconcile both sides of the man.

Your business and finance mentor helping you achieve success with business, finance, and real estate solutions. Small business startup, small business funding, real estate investment. Dare to think and act differently from the majority and you will be amazed at what you can accomplish. Join me on my journey to achieve success and let me help begin your journey. By sharing my experience, allow me to motivate you to understand there are other options available and you don't have to do what everyone else is doing. By sharing my tips, let me guide you down the road less traveled where opportunities are abundant. You can follow your dreams and you can make them come true!

An accurate budget must be built on a base of thorough research. You must do research on your community to find out what it will cost to get a church off the ground. You need to solidly answer questions such as:, What will the cost of living in this community be?, What will my salary be? How about salaries for additional staff?, How much will it cost to rent space for the church to meet in?, How much will it cost to operate a business in this city (office rent, phones, computer equipment, copy equipment, and so on)? Talk with other pastors in the community. Find out what their start-up costs were and what they are currently spending to maintain and operate the church. Other pastors can be a valuable resource for you on many levels. The worst mistake you can make is to start the budget process by viewing economic realities through a rose-colored lens. If you speculate too much or cut corners in this area, you’ll end up paying dearly down the road. Remember, God never intended for you to go it alone. There are people and resources out there to help you prepare. Ask others for help. God receives no glory when you are scraping the bottom to do His work. So don’t think too small. Church planting is an all or nothing venture. You can’t just partially commit. You have to fully commit, and often that means with your wallet. Don’t underestimate the importance of having a base of prayer partners. You need prayers as desperately as you need money. You need prayers as desperately as you need money. An unhealthy launch may occur when a new church begins as the result of a church split, when a planter is disobedient in following God, or when there is a lack of funding or solid strategy. Finding the right teammates to help you on this journey is serious business. The people you bring on to your staff will either propel you down the road toward fulfilling the vision for your church or serve as speed bumps along the way. You should never be afraid to ask potential staff members to join you—even if it means a salary cut, a drastic position change or a significant new challenge for them. When you ask someone to join your staff, you are not asking that person to make a sacrifice. (If you have that mentality, you need to work to change it.) Instead, you are offering that person the opportunity of a lifetime. There are three things that every new church must have before it can be a real church: (1) a lead pastor, (2) a start date, and (3) a worship leader. Hire a person at the part-time level before bringing him or her on full time. When hiring a new staff person, make sure he or she possesses the three C's: Character, Chemistry & Competency Hiring staff precedes growth, not vice versa. Hire slow, fire fast. Never hire staff when you can find a volunteer. Launch as publicly as possible, with as many people as possible. There are two things you are looking for in a start date: (1) a date on which you have the potential to reach as many people as possible, and (2) a date that precedes a period of time in which people, in general, are unlikely to be traveling out of town. You need steppingstones to get you from where you are to your launch date. Monthly services are real services that you begin holding three to six months prior to your launch date. They are the absolute best strategic precursor to your launch. Monthly services give you the invaluable opportunity to test-drive your systems, your staff and, to an extent, even your service style. At the same time, you are doing real ministry with the people in attendance. These services should mirror as closely as possible what your service will look like on the launch date. Let your target demographic group be the strongest deciding factor in settling on a location: Hotel ballrooms, Movie theaters, Comedy clubs, Public-school auditoriums, Performing-arts theaters, Available church meeting spaces, College auditoriums, Corporate conference space.

Enterprise PMF isn’t just about adoption and usage. It’s also about paying reference customers. That is, good customers who (1) pay you money, (2) actively use your product, and (3) are willing

Interview for culture fit. This seems basic, but it’s usually poorly done. Train hiring managers to interview for not just technical or domain skills but also mindset and culture fit.

Be gracious and respectful when letting someone go. A hiring mistake is on the company. How exits are treated is seen by the market.

In the end, the route of the journey does not matter. So long as you have the will to arrive, you have enough for everything and will arrive when you're supposed to. Learn and enjoy your journey.

Woodism - “Be in it to win for yourself; be open to all the possibilities of the journey!

David versus Goliath Asymmetry lies at the heart of network-based competition. The larger or smaller network will be at different stages of the Cold Start framework and, as such, will gravitate toward a different set of levers. The giant is often fighting gravitational pull as its network grows and saturates the market. To combat these negative forces, it must add new use cases, introduce the product to new audiences, all while making sure it’s generating a profit. The upstart, on the other hand, is trying to solve the Cold Start Problem, and often starts with a niche. A new startup has the luxury of placing less emphasis on profitability and might instead focus on top-line growth, subsidizing the market to grow its network. When they encounter each other in the market, it becomes natural that their competitive moves reflect their different goals and resources. Startups have fewer resources—capital, employees, distribution—but have important advantages in the context of building new networks: speed and a lack of sacred cows. A new startup looking to compete against Zoom might try a more specific use case, like events, and if that doesn’t work, they can quickly pivot and try something else, like corporate education classes. Startups like YouTube, Twitch, Twitter, and many other products have similar stories, and went through an incubation phase as the product was refined and an initial network was built. Trying and failing many times is part of the startup journey—it only takes the discovery of one atomic network to get into the market. With that, a startup is often able to start the next leg of the journey, often with more investment and resources to support them. Contrast that to a larger company, which has obvious advantages in resources, manpower, and existing product lines. But there are real disadvantages, too: it’s much harder to solve the Cold Start Problem with a slower pace of execution, risk aversion, and a “strategy tax” that requires new products to align to the existing business. Something seems to happen when companies grow to tens of thousands of employees—they inevitably create rigorous processes for everything, including planning cycles, performance reviews, and so on. This helps teams focus, but it also creates a harder environment for entrepreneurial risk-taking. I saw this firsthand at Uber, whose entrepreneurial culture shifted in its later years toward profitability and coordinating the efforts of tens of thousands. This made it much harder to start new initiatives—for better and worse. When David and Goliath meet in the market—and often it’s one Goliath and many investor-funded Davids at once—the resulting moves and countermoves are fascinating. Now that I have laid down some of the theoretical foundation for how competition fits into Cold Start Theory, let me describe and unpack some of the most powerful moves in the network-versus-network playbook.

Consider the history of the electric car. If I were to ask you the year, make, and inventor of the first electric car, what would you say? Elon Musk and the Tesla Roadster he released in 2008? How about Nissan and their electric Leaf? As it turns out, it was neither. The first production electric car was built in 1884 by Thomas Parker, a British inventor. Never heard of him? Don’t worry, no one ever has. Simply creating something revolutionary is not enough. Parker’s invention was groundbreaking and could have dramatically changed the world and the environment,

There’s a pretty strong narrative shaming people for being lazy, promoting the solution of shopping locally, and all the effort that goes along with it. But people are too tired. There’s too much competing for our mental energy. It’s totally understandable that customers crave familiarity and convenience. I think the only thing that works is to make the unique more approachable.

I just succeeded in making the country 1.2 percent fatter, so I deserve to splurge a little.

When something goes wrong, you have to make the resolution more memorable than the problem.

Passion. A shared passion for the mission and Founding Idea. ​•​Chemistry. A solid working relationship. Comfortable spending a lot of time together. Similar risk tolerance and commitment level. ​•​Trust. Shared values. Can depend on one another.

To change the world, startup entrepreneurs need to capitalize on the relatively small number of transformative opportunities they encounter early on in their journeys. This is equally true when it comes to your career.

Tope Awotona, founder of Calendly, started three very different companies for three completely different communities before eventually building the scheduling software business in 2013. In 2020, Calendly posted nearly $70 million in annual recurring revenue, more than double its 2019 figure. But Awotona’s first company was a dating app that never really got off the ground. The second was projectorspot.com, which sold (obviously) projectors, but sales were poor and margins small. He tried again with a third startup, selling grills, but as he says, “I didn’t know anything about grills and I didn’t want to! I lived in an apartment, and never even grilled.” Not only was he not part of the grilling community, but he didn’t even want to be! He took a different approach to building Calendly. He had been a sales rep earlier in his career, and he knew the hassle of sending multiple emails to schedule meetings. He had even run into the scheduling problem while trying to sell his own products as an entrepreneur. As time went on and his other ideas failed to gain traction, he saw a gap in the marketplace and resolved to address it for the community of sales reps he cared about and understood. He says that “the journey to creating something that’s impactful, something that serves people, something that you know people are willing to open up their wallets and pay for—is not something that you can do just for money.” While lots of people have scheduling fatigue, Awotona focused on problems specific to sales reps, which helped him define a problem he could both solve and monetize. What does that mean for you? First, get involved in those communities wherever they are, offline and online. Then, contribute, teach, and, most important, listen. Finally, use the filters above to make sure you are picking the right community to serve. Then, your problem becomes: Which problem should I pick?

The path that Wallace followed was an accelerated version of a three-phase journey that awaits most founders as they try to bounce back from their venture’s failure. The first phase is recovery from the emotional battering that the shutdown inflicts. The founder must cope with the grief, depression, anger, and guilt that can accompany any major personal setback—often, as with Wallace, while confronting the stark reality of having no income or personal savings. During the second phase, reflection, the founder ideally moves beyond blaming the failure on others or on uncontrollable external events. Through introspection, she gains a deeper understanding of what went wrong, what role she played in her venture’s demise, and what she might have done differently. In the process, she also gains new insights about her motivations and her strengths and weaknesses as an entrepreneur, manager, and leader. In the final phase, reentry, the founder leverages these insights to decide whether to pursue another startup or choose a different career track.

For the son, his father begins as a deity on a pedestal. The father can do no wrong. As the son ages, he discovers that his father is flawed, mortal, and full of frailty: an oedipal fall from grace. The son is filled with disappointment, hurt, and anger over his dad’s imperfections. The father starts to sink in the son’s eyes, slowly sometimes, and other times all at once. What follows is conflict and resentment. As the son’s psyche grinds against his father’s, men are forged. Boys become men. Or they don’t. Only some dads survive the son’s journey intact. Before they do, they all fall down.

Simon Doiban is a name that is synonymous with the beauty industry. As a serial entrepreneur, Doiban has made a name for himself by launching and scaling successful beauty businesses. From his early beginnings in the industry to his current role as a beauty industry advisor, Doiban has demonstrated an innovative and entrepreneurial spirit that has enabled him to succeed in a highly competitive market. Doiban’s journey in Miami in the beauty industry began when he launched his first beauty startup, a Beauty Spa with updated technology. The startup was an instant hit and quickly gained a large following. However, Doiban was not content with just one successful business. He went on to launch several other beauty startups, each one building on the success of the previous one. Following the example of the first business, he launch a second location of the Beauty Spa in one of the most concurrent zones in Miami, Brickell City Center. This marked the beginning of Doiban’s career as a serial entrepreneur in the beauty industry in Miami Area. Over the years, Doiban has launched and scaled several other beauty startups, each one building on the success of the previous one. His latest venture is a beauty consulting academy. The company has been praised for its innovative approach to beauty and has already gained a large following. Doiban’s success in the beauty industry can be attributed to his entrepreneurial spirit and his willingness to take risks. He has a deep understanding of the beauty market and has been able to identify gaps in the market that he can fill with his innovative products and services. He has also been able to build a loyal following of customers who trust his brand and appreciate the high-quality products that he provides. In conclusion, Simon Doiban is a serial entrepreneur who has made a name for himself in the beauty industry. His innovative and entrepreneurial spirit has enabled him to launch and scale successful beauty businesses, and his latest venture is set to revolutionize the beauty industry even further. As the beauty industry continues to evolve, it will be exciting to see what Doiban has in store for us next.

You have to commit to a locked-in agreement—ahead of time—that no matter what comes of testing the MVP, you will not give up hope. Successful entrepreneurs do not give up at the first sign of trouble, nor do they persevere the plane right into the ground. Instead, they possess a unique combination of perseverance and flexibility. The MVP is just the first step on a journey of learning. Down that road—after many iterations—you may learn that some element of your product or strategy is flawed and decide it is time to make a change, which I call a pivot, to a different method for achieving your vision.

It's all about the journey from curiosity to confidence.

The journey of entrepreneurship is not a sprint, it's a marathon. Success comes to those who can maintain their focus and determination over the long haul.

Likewise, who are you surrounding yourself with in the “classroom” of serial entrepreneurship? Are you in an incubator program? Are you connecting with other entrepreneurs who are at different stages of their journey than you? Have you joined the other million members on Startup Club? If you surround yourself with successful people, then success can become contagious.

If I haven't already inspired you to make changes, take healthy risks, and help others, I have more work to do.

Maximo Caggiano, the Vice President of Finance at Phoenix Sol Consulting, transforms financial challenges into opportunities. His expertise in accounting systems and corporate management is complemented by a love for reading TechCrunch and Wired. Maximo's journey is a blend of financial precision and technological innovation, paving the way for startups and turning visions into reality.

Guiding Principle of Startup Journey is RAPO - Responsible, Accountable, Punctual and Open to Ideas

LOW: Sales Effort Sales effort is a measure of the length of your sales cycle and includes the number of touch points required to make the sale. Where CAC measures the amount of money you’re spending to get a new customer, sales effort measures the time and energy you’re spending. The best way to track sales effort is to look at both the average number of days from someone scheduling their first demo to closing and the number of calls it takes to close a deal. Your ability to keep sales effort low depends greatly on your industry and customer base. If you’re doing enterprise sales, your sales cycle will be long and require more effort than if you’re targeting solopreneurs and other small businesses with a single decision-maker. A three- or four-month sales cycle is reasonable in enterprise sales—and worth it because the ACV might be $50,000. If you’re spending that much time for $5,000 contracts, though, that’s rough. No matter what your sales process looks like, you want your sales effort to be as low as possible. Here are some ways to lower this number. Self-Serve Sign-up and Onboarding. Many inexpensive products can get away with low price points because they have a low-touch or no-touch sales process. They have a self-serve sign-up and onboarding process, which requires almost no sales effort. The higher your ARPA, the less likely they are to become customers without some sales effort. But finding places to offer self-service along the journey can reduce the amount of hand-holding your team has to do while making the process speedier for your customer. One-Call Close. Self-service isn’t going to work in a lot of spaces, but you can try to get to a point where the decision is made by a single person. You can do this by targeting a founder, a developer, or a single manager. You can also streamline the back-and-forth of providing more sales materials, getting on second calls, waiting for input from the committee—and on and on. Educate your customers as much as you can ahead of time so they have the information they need and develop checklists to gather the information you need to close the deal quickly.

Time for original thinking, long term approach, innovation, Building great products, large scales, & solving challenging problems. Enough of myopic/weak startups in India.

Startups celebrating small & big victory is super critical. New highs & new lows are very common but celebrating highs keep energy always high

Nothing comes from highly planned and organized efforts but start-up energy and passion and newness cause chaos, confusion and ambiguity and that results into great product, platform, innovation and even socail revolution

When it comes to founding team for a startup, look for these 5 Cs: Commitment, Character, Capability, Capacity, & Craving. These 5 Cs work!

Entrepreneurship is messy. Startup life is messy. Growing a business is messy. I guarantee you it NEVER looks as glamorous on the inside as it does from the outside. If you are comparing what is going on in your company to what you see your peers and competitors doing, and feel behind or inadequate, or in any way not up to par..... Just let it go. You have no idea what they are going through that you cannot see. You never will. You don't need to. Take a deep breath. Stay on your path. Stay focused on your mission. Stay focused on your customers. Stay focused on your team. Your family. Your health. Find connection and joy in your own journey. Allow yourself to be inspired and fueled by others' success, but by all means, do not allow yourself to get derailed or thrown off of your path. Stay focused.

Making the movie” is the term that a venture capitalist friend applies to the process of building a start-up. In my friend’s tech-company-as-movie analogy, the VCs are the producers and the CEO is the leading man. If possible, you try to get a star who looks like Mark Zuckerberg—young, preferably a college dropout, with maybe a touch of Asperger’s. You write a script—the “corporate narrative.” You have the origin myth, the eureka moment, and the hero’s journey, with obstacles to overcome, dragons to slay, markets to disrupt and transform. You invest millions to build the company—like shooting the movie—and then millions more to promote it and acquire customers. “By the time you get to the IPO, I want to see people lined up around the block waiting to get into the theater on opening night. That’s what the first day of trading is like. It’s the opening weekend for the film. If you do things right, you put asses in the seats, and you cash out.

This is the New Work, but really it is just a new twist on an old story, the one about labor being exploited by capital. The difference is that this time the exploitation is done with a big smiley face. Everything about this new workplace, from the crazy décor to the change-the-world rhetoric to the hero’s journey mythology and the perks that are not really perks—all of these things exist for one reason, which is to drive down the cost of labor so that investors can maximize their return.

The best entrepreneurs … know how to tell an amazing story that will convince talent and investors to join in on the journey.

To startup the healing process, you need to break away from what broke you in the first place. - Roccio Saldana

This book is a call to return to basics and focus on innovation around actual problems that the normal person faces in his life. We provide guidance on an experiential journey to enable entrepreneurs to discover their personal truths, tactics and strategies in the context of the specific problems that they are trying to solve.

Midway on our life’s journey, I found myself In dark woods, the right road lost.

Only rocket science is startup way of doing things. Most entrepreneurs suffer from dilussion of grandeur, speed to market & prototyping.

If you find 9-5 job suffocating, defined role limiting, pace slow, no newness, work politics, u will blossom in startup, will not look back

The solution to this dilemma is a commitment to iteration. You have to commit to a locked-in agreement—ahead of time—that no matter what comes of testing the MVP, you will not give up hope. Successful entrepreneurs do not give up at the first sign of trouble, nor do they persevere the plane right into the ground. Instead, they possess a unique combination of perseverance and flexibility. The MVP is just the first step on a journey of learning. Down

Building a business is a powerful, long-term journey that is about more than how much money you make.

A company’s revenue engine is a critical success factor. I had seen from my own direct experience how easy it was to get caught in silos: marketing people would just think of marketing, salespeople would just think of sales, and accounting wouldn’t think of itself as part of the revenue engine at all. Furthermore, product and the revenue engine were too often thought of completely independent of each other. The need for a more integrated approach was on my mind from the beginning. The revenue engine is a whole system. It encompasses a diverse set of integrated components, each doing its part to advance the system’s purpose. The engine is not just comprised of marketing and sales— it includes product, accounting, and the underlying technology and data infrastructure required to keep everything flowing. It involves people, tools, workflow, and metrics. Its purpose is to optimize reach, conversion, and expansion of customer spend. I call my revenue engine model “the bowtie schema.” It was the product of continuous iteration. As I interacted with marketing and sales practitioners and waded through the research, the model slowly emerged. The final model conveys not just the product and customer journey across the bowtie, but also the foundational layers that support that journey-- the interaction between people tools, workflow, and metrics that make it all happen. The most basic question a CEO must answer is whether the product has achieved a value breakthrough. Without that, the revenue engine is irrelevant. Once product-market fit is confirmed, the next step is to clearly identify your ideal customer profile (ICP) and your business model. This includes the lifetime value (LTV) profile of your company. Assuming a strong product, a clear ICP, and a solid understanding of the constraints composed by your unit economics, the path forward is clear. Then, the focus will turn to uplifting the maturity of your revenue engine and scaling it efficiently.

I call my revenue engine model “the bowtie schema.” It was the product of continuous iteration. As I interacted with marketing and sales practitioners and waded through the research, the model slowly emerged. The final model conveys not just the product and customer journey across the bowtie, but also the foundational layers that support that journey-- the interaction between people tools, workflow, and metrics that make it all happen.

Startup hopeful talking about his app: "You know about angry birds right?", "yes", I said. "It's like angry birds except there are no birds and nobody is angry". LMAO!

Gimmickry was not so much a last resort for desperate startup founders as a necessary means of distinction. The techies all seemed to have come off an assembly line, and anyone who stood out just a little bit became instantly memorable.

Creating the pop-ups—doing something that was a pure reflection of my passions—changed my life. The core idea and drive to execute what I envisioned enabled me to realize my potential for the first time. That shift in how I approached the world supercharged all other areas of my existence. I went from being a struggling entrepre- neur to heading up a food and beverage business with $150 million in annual revenue to chief marketing officer of a publicly-traded hotel company to head of brand and experience at a billion-dollar startup in less than five years. And not only did the pop-up restaurant expe- rience provide me with the opportunity to share my creativity on a large scale while supporting my family, it also gave me the gift of fulfillment and the confidence to trust my instincts and enjoy the journey as much as, if not more than, the result.

Cosgn co-signs your startup journey, empowering you to grow and pay it forward.

Taking a Founder Retreat The two biggest things that have helped me in my journey as a founder are masterminds and founder retreats. Without those, I sincerely don’t think I would be as successful as I have been. My wife Sherry has a PhD in psychology. She started going on annual retreats after we had kids, where she got away for 48 or 72 hours without podcasts, movies, or books—just herself, a notebook, and silent reflection. When she first started taking retreats, it didn’t sound like my thing. I’m always listening to a podcast or an audiobook. I’m constantly working on the next project. But after seeing her come back from these retreats energized and focused, I decided to give it a try. I booked myself a hotel on the coast and drove out for the weekend with no radio, no project, no kids, and no distractions. Over the course of that two-and-a-half-hour drive, things began to settle. I started feeling everything I hadn’t had time to feel for the past year. In the silence, I had sudden realizations because I was finally giving them quiet time to emerge. During that retreat, it became obvious that my whole life had been about entrepreneurship. Ever since I was a kid, I have wanted to start a business. I’ve always been enamored with being an entrepreneur and the excitement of startups. I realized that I was coming to this decision of what to do next because of the idea of wanting to get away from the thing that had caused me to feel bad—as though startups were at fault rather than the decisions I made. At that time, my podcast had more than 400 episodes, which had been recorded over eight years. That wasn’t an accident. It existed because I loved doing it. I showed up every week even though it didn’t generate any revenue. During my retreat, I realized that being involved in the startup space is my life’s work. The podcast, my books and essays, MicroConf—all were part of my legacy. Instead of selling it off and striking out in a new direction, I decided to double down. Within a couple months, I launched TinySeed. Then I leaned into the next stage for MicroConf, where we transitioned from a community built around in-person events to an online and in-person community, plus mastermind matching, virtual events, funding, and mentorship. I also began working on this book. As a founder, it’s important to know yourself. Even if you started out with firm self-knowledge, the fast pace and pressure of bootstrapping a business—not to mention the pressures of the rest of your life—can make it difficult to see your path. A founder retreat is a way to reacquaint yourself with yourself every so often. After my first founder retreat nearly a decade ago, I started going on a retreat every six months. Now I do one a year, and it’s one of the most important things I do for myself, my business, and my family. If you’re considering a retreat, several years ago Sherry wrote an ebook called The Zen Founder Guide to Founder Retreats that explains exactly what questions to ask yourself, the four steps to ensuring you have a successful retreat, the list of tools she recommends bringing along, and how to translate your insights into action for the next year.