inc nuggets.docx

8/13/2019 inc nuggets.docx

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Tim Westergren, founder of Pandora

Learn public speaking.

Of all the skills that an entrepreneur can have, I think the ability to convey an idea or

opportunity, with confidence, eloquence and passion is the most universally useful skill.

Whether you're pitching a group of investors, rallying your employees, selling a customer,

recruiting talent, addressing consumers, or doing a press tour, the ability to deliver a great

talk is absolutely invaluable. And it is perhaps themost under-recognized and under-nurtured

skill.

Dan Cristo, founder of Triberr

You know how they always say, "Dress for the job you want, not the job you have"? I say,

"Do the job you want, not the job you have."

Your ideal job probably requires skills and experience you can't get in your current role. Go

ahead and learn those skills outside work through side projects or volunteering. Then bring

these new skills into your current role. This is my core principal of job advancement.

Saul Klein, founder of Kano Computing

The perfect start-up has all three founders:

- Someone who understands how to build technologies and systems to solve problems

- Someone who understands the human factors behind those problems, why they exist, what ittakes to fix them and how to shape the experience

- Someone who understands how to reach, talk to and sell to the people whose problems are

being solved--and keep finding more of them

The ideal start-up has two of the three founders, but all three skills are present between them.

Farhad Meher-Homji, founder of Brightlabs

Just because you trust someone, doesn't mean you can depend on them as well. Trust and

delivery can be two different things.

Michael Wolfe, CEO of Pipewise

Pick where you want to live and the people you want to hang out with first.

Then find a career that lets you do that.

Edmond Lau, early engineer at Quora

When I interned at Microsoft the summer of my junior year in college, I received a goodpiece of advice secondhand from a friend's mentor: always re-examine and reflect on where


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you are in your career at least every two years. Even if you're perfectly happy with your job,

the exercise forces you to check that you are actually enjoying your work and learning on the

job rather than just being comfortable.

Phineas Barnes, partner at First Round Capital

Know that there are three choices you get to make and the rest is heavily influenced by

circumstance and luck. You choose your idea. You choose your business partners. You

choose your investors. Your choice of partners and investors should be thought of as

permanent and are therefore the most important two decisions you make. The idea can

change and evolve but this ability and the direction of this evolution will be highly influenced

by your choice of partners and investors.

Chris Prescott, founder and CEO of Fantasy Shopper

Learn to say no.

In the early months, you'll be in hustle mode and will likely be saying 'yes' to every

opportunity, getting whatever and whoever you can to help with momentum. Assuming all

goes well, you'll reach a tipping point where people start coming to you instead of you going

to them--be that speaking events, trial services, coaching, investment etc etc. You will no

longer have the time or need to say "yes" to everything, so get the confidence to start saying

"no" to stay focused on your vision

Peter Berg, founder of October Three, currently on Visa's

innovation team

Be really picky with your hiring, and hire the absolute best people you possibly can. People

are the most important component of almost every business, and attracting the best talent

possible is going to make a huge difference. Quality and quantity of output is not linear (e.g.

one rockstar programmer can produce much better code than two average or slightly below

average programmers). Throwing more people at a problem doesn't necessarily solve it faster,

but it definitely costs more. So hire the best people. (And if you make a mistake, don't be

afraid to let them go.)

Mark Otero, founder and CEO of KlickNation

Fail fast: Start with a working set of assumptions and test them out in the market very fast. If

your assumptions are wrong then pivot, adjust, and make a decisive decision. Remember,

entrepreneurs love the process, the idea is one of many you'll have to achieving greatness,

and commercial success.

Know your weaknesses: Knowing your weaknesses is as important as knowing what your

strengths are, and even more important as your company grows; hire or have co-founders

who are great in areas where you are weak.

John Lilly, partner at Greylock Partners


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All advice you get about your start-up might be totally, completely wrong. Also, it all could

be absolutely, 100% right. No matter what the source, no matter how expert or accomplished

the advisor. Start-ups, like any organization, exist and thrive despite a million totally

plausible reasons that they shouldn't.

Great entrepreneurs seek help and advice from as many sources as they possibly can, figureout how to make use of some and discard the rest. But every successful start-up looks

different; every one will have pieces of advice they hold to be absolutely true--and lots of

times other very successful start-ups will knowthat same piece of advice to be dumb and

useless.

Ask for advice. Listen. But make your own way.

Jeremy Liew, partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners

"Never give up"--and its variants--is often bad advice. It can certainly help provide some gritduring the tough times, but many start-ups find that life is pretty easy when things are going

well, and the converse is also true. If it's hard, you may be doing something wrong. Working

harder is usually not the solution (actually working harder is usually the solution for when

things are going well). Doing something differently (up to and including giving up and trying

something else) is usually the right answer if it just feels all too hard and has done for a long

time

Some start-ups are successful after long periods of failure, but they are few and far between.

It's tough to turn around momentum, and many of the wildly successful start-ups saw real

momentum early on, with challenges largely around scaling gracefully, not around getting

momentum in the first place.

John Seiffer, founder of CEO Boot Camp

Advice about the power of passion is wrong. Of course you have to be passionate--why else

would you work those crazy hours and blow all that money. But the people whose companies

crashed and burned were passionate too.

Consider interviewing people who've been married for 50 years. I bet they'll all say they're in

love. But so will the people who've been married 2 weeks and will divorce in the next 2

years.

Or you know that movie about the guy who sacrifices everything building a landing platform

for space aliens in his living room? He looses job, wife, kids yet still goes at it. Then at the

end the aliens come to get him and they are friendly, super intelligent etc. Well, guess what?

They don't make movies about the guys who loose everything building a landing platform but

in the end, the aliens don't come--he just dies homeless under a bridge. Lousy movie but

happens more often in real life.

Jon Davis, employee at Quora and owner of a private real

estate firm


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Fill out the application.

Because sometimes your fears of opportunity are the only actual thing preventing you from

getting your dream job, that business loan or a new home. Sometimes you sit and look at the

jobs website a dozen times thinking that you don't want to face the fear of rejection and you

never do it. Sometimes you think to yourself that if they were to hire you, you would surelyfail. Sometimes you think about the change in your life and what it might mean. Sometimes

you might turn out to be more scared of the change than you are with the situation you want

so badly to change. This is why you are still there asking what is good advice for your career.

Sometimes the best things in life are huge and terrifying, different and drenched with change,

but they require you to take that step in the middle of one night. You click that button, fill out

that form, make the call, send the email. Take the chance, take the risk and fail. Fail until you

finally get the call back, which never comes to the very scared person who never filled out

the application.

Hassan Baig, founder of White Rabbit Studios

"Invest time in a 'scalable' career." -- Nassim Nicholas Taleb

This isn't advice I received first-hand, but nevertheless I think it qualifies as an answer to this

question.

A "scalable" career is one where growth is not dependent on the number of hours of work put

in. For instance, imagine you're a tax consultant. You probably charge an hourly rate for your

consultative services. This of course implies that every marginal hour of work you put in

generates value at that very margin. In other words, you're selling your time--whichunfortunately you have only 24 hours of per day. Such a career would be naturally tough to

scale up.

So what's the alternative? It is picking a career for yourself where growth is dependent on the

quality of your decisions. This philosophy ensures you're monetizing your

intellect/foresight/pattern recognition skills instead of your time, and can thus generate really

high pay-offs (provided you can get it right).

Joshua Ledgard, founder of KickoffLabs.com

Succeed (or fail) at someone else's (well funded) startup.

Within the product teams at Microsoft I learned a ton about shipping software and managing

people, but it didn't expose me to the business and marketing site of the coin much. The

downside of a larger company is the unintentional silos that go up.

I tried to find job internally that was both a promotion andwould start exposing me to those

things. When I couldn't find it ... I left and joined a


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- Run my own team.

- Manage the budget and revenue for this team.

- Work closely with sales, marketing, and consulting aspects of the business.

- See just how important customer support is to the success of a startup that wants to make

money.

ared Kim, founder and CEO of Forge

Contrary to the stereotype, startups are a marathon, not a sprint.

The truth is, you are not going to be a billion dollar company or acquired in the next 18

months. This shit takes a long time.

Surround yourself with people you will want to work with for the next 5 years and beyond

(e.g. co-founders, employees, advisors, board members, investors, etc).

Don't burn out. Take care of yourself by getting 8 hours of sleep, eat healthy, and exercise. If

you don't take care of yourself, there's no way you can take care of your company in the long-

term. Obviously there will occasionally be the special circumstances that will prohibit you

from keeping a normal schedule (e.g. the days leading up to launch), but make those days the

exceptions not the norm.

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