Why I started this entrepreneurship site

I started this entrepreneurship site for three reasons:

1. I have had a lifelong fascination with entrepreneurship.
2. Thoughtful writing forces a deeper level of understanding.
3. I want to share both interesting research I discover and my experiences as a successful entrepreneur and technologist.

A strategically-minded business will define a mission statement, or purpose, that provides a focus for its team. A good purpose is both meaningful and personal to the founders and will drive them every morning to get out of bed and work towards their mission.  The above is my purpose for running this site—a purpose worth spending a little of my time on.

I have had a lifelong fascination with entrepreneurship.

While in middle school, I began telling people I was going to be an entrepreneur when I grew up. I didn’t quite know what that meant but I imagined it was an important person who jetted around the world, briefcase in hand, making deals. About this same time, I had saved enough money from a summer job to buy my first computer and I was learning how to program it. Little did I know then just how instrumental both of those skills (programming and jetting around with a briefcase) would be for me in my 30’s as  I built a successful technology company.

Thoughtful writing forces a deeper level of understanding.

I learn best through note-taking, writing, and preparing to teach a topic.¹ I am a prolific note-taker, highlighter, and annotator. When I sit down to write about a topic, I sometimes don’t know exactly what my conclusion will be, though it eventually becomes clear sometime during the writing process. For instance, writing article reviews for this site forces me to dive more deeply into interesting research papers I discover so I both fully understand them and can present them, stripped to their essentials.

I want to share both interesting research I discover and my experiences and insights as a successful entrepreneur and technologist.

There are many entrepreneurship sites. In fact, we’re all beneficiaries of the prolific amount of information and experiences shared by the startup community. Many books are essential reading for aspiring entrepreneurs. Numerous highly-regarded blogs spell out recipes for success. I’ve learned a great deal from these books and blogs. But there is also something lacking in much of the startup community’s writing: objectivity. In other words, there is an overwhelming tendency to write anecdotally about experiences and opinions, while avoiding objective information that comes out of well-designed and executed research. I read many research papers each month and sharing the best of them here adds a sprinkle of objectivity to the ongoing startup conversation.

While the founder of software development company Obtiva (acquired by Groupon), many of our startup clients were bootstrappers who needed help with every aspect of launching and operating their fledgling companies. Combining those experiences with my ongoing involvement as a startup advisor and mentor, I have worked with dozens of different founding teams who have experienced the full range of possible successes and challenges—not to mention, surprises. From IPOs and acquisitions to utter failures, I’ve been there.

This entrepreneurship site represents both a notebook for myself and an open conversation with the startup community. I invite you to join me in the conversation, whether through comments on this site or by reaching out to me via LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook.

1. Here is an interesting approach to learning through writing:  Feynman Technique.