The problems that you see startups tackling are dramatically different in different cities. Silicon Valley is unlikely to produce the same set of companies as New York or Cleveland because the region has a different set of strengths and defining institutions.
Millennials get a bad rap sometimes about their grit and perseverance.
Money often moves around like a high school kid with no personality - it goes with the crowd.
If I need a pick-me-up, I pull up a memo file on my phone and type in three things I'm grateful for. The things I've typed on other days are still there. It's a long list. Always helps.
I probably looked pretty conventionally successful as a 24-year-old getting paid $125,000 a year, plus bonus, wearing suits, and living in a Manhattan apartment. But I hated my job, I didn't admire the people I was working with, and I felt that I was becoming a smaller, less imaginative, less risk-taking, less likable version of myself.
I have started or run several companies and spent time with dozens of entrepreneurs over the years. Virtually none of them, in my experience, made meaningful personnel or resource-allocation decisions based on incentives or policies.
Of course, women are free to start any kind of company they want. But women sometimes identify different problems than men do and start different sorts of companies as a result.
You will almost always leave a professional services environment with a few noteworthy friends and relationships. These contacts can prove to be extremely valuable both personally and professionally.
One reason why entrepreneurs are admired is that they often take on a degree of risk in launching a new business.
Freelancers generally want as friction-free an engagement as possible.
Most Americans agree that technology is going to eliminate many more jobs than it is going to create.
If you're positioned to start your own organization, that's great - but rare.
Professional services industries like finance, consulting, and legal services are, by definition, meta-industries. That is, they serve to help large companies raise money, buy and sell each other, reorganize, implement new systems, conduct complex transactions, and so forth.
People generally think of technology simply as a spur to start new businesses. But the Internet has also made it possible for more businesses to compete for any given opportunity.
We're conditioned to let businesses fail, regardless of how much we like them. We believe that if the market doesn't want that bookstore to exist, then it shouldn't exist.
Starting a business is similar to an athletic endeavor, like serving a tennis ball. Telling you how to do it is useless. You actually get better through a combination of practice, coaching, and repetitions with money on the line.
FOMO (fear of missing out) is the enemy of valuing your own time.
Just about any growth company is going to need smart salespeople, account and project managers, business development, marketing, operations, customer service, content creation, communications, analytics, and social media.
Overnight successes are generally years in the making. And most progress is made in isolation, far from the public eye.
I sometimes compare starting a business to having a child. You have a moment of profound inspiration, followed by months of thankless hard work and waking up in the middle of the night.
I spent five years running Manhattan GMAT helping young people get into business school.
After graduating from Brown, I went to law school and became a corporate lawyer in New York City.
If a company is growing, then people's roles often grow and change, and opportunities abound.
Non-profits should be looking to enlist and retain the best people to aggressively solve problems, not to perform adequately and persist. We should expect people to innovate and do the highest-quality work and then reward them accordingly.
After a couple of years in a professional setting, you'll get used to dressing presentably, preparing for meetings, speaking appropriately, showing up on time, writing professional correspondence, etc.
If you're a set of guys looking to start a company, think about women you could team up with - they will see things differently and solve problems you didn't even realize you had.
Very few parents keep up with who the top professors are or whose classes their kids are taking, partially because most undergraduates interact more commonly with graduate students.
If you go deep into a problem, you'll find most all of the time that there are yet more problems to be solved from the ground up.
It's easy to see how non-profits become engrossed in catering to donors, which may or may not be the best thing at all times, while if a company is ultra-engaged with its customers, it's universally positive and helpful.
Technology companies tend to operate in winner-take-all spaces and thus adopt a very high-commitment culture.
Unfortunately, hardworking, academically gifted young people are kind of lazy when it comes to determining direction.
I meet young people all the time who say something like, 'I want to work in venture capital.' And I can see why. Who wouldn't want to be smart, well-paid, dispense large sums of money, and tell people what to do?
The image of entrepreneurship as the province of the unprivileged and un-entitled - the Horatio Alger, rags to riches myth - flies in the face of reality.
Back in 2001, my first start-up was mentioned in the 'New York Times' and 'USA Today.' I figured that would drive thousands of visitors to the site and tons of new business. Instead, only a handful of people visited our site, and not much business came of it at all.
The best organizations are filled with people who have a wealth of choices as to what work they choose to do. We need to give them every reason possible to solve the world's problems.
The reason Donald Trump was elected was that we automated away four million manufacturing jobs in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. If you look at the voter data, it shows that the higher the level of concentration of manufacturing robots in a district, the more that district voted for Trump.
The best policymakers know that in start-ups, as in politics, not everything works out exactly as planned.
People love Twinkies, and everyone knows about them, yet Hostess went bankrupt. Attention and commercial success have an uncertain relationship in business.
When I was growing up, I'd study for days trying to get good grades. When I'd get an 'A,' I'd feel elation for about 30 seconds, and then a feeling of emptiness.
If a new company is formed, it hires people and creates jobs in its community. As it grows, people's opportunities multiply and wages rise. Inequality diminishes as more people get pulled into good jobs.
Asking the government to fix our economy is like asking an editor to fix a movie, but in this case, the editor's not even of one mind.
I like most of the venture capitalists I know; they're smart, well-intended guys who genuinely enjoy helping entrepreneurs succeed. And I love venture capital and investment capital of all categories - its economic impact is proven. The more of it the better.
In my experience, fledgling entrepreneurs focus way too much on the money - you can get most things done and figure out a lot without spending much. That said, most businesses require money to launch and get off the ground.
We need people building companies all over the country to innovate in aviation, consumer products, education, health, cybersecurity, biotech, manufacturing, and everything in between.
If we create enough new companies, there will be additional opportunities for people at every rung of the educational ladder.
What was a profitable business in one era can become a public utility and a recognized public good in the next.
All you need is self-driving cars to destabilize society.
Finding initial funds is the primary barrier most entrepreneurs face. Many people don't have three or six months' worth of savings to free themselves up to do months of unpaid legwork.
