“Hustle, stick to it, the pain will eventually pay off.” The quivers of many self-proclaimed business gurus are filled with these paper-bullet admonitions. ‘More pain, more gain”—we treat the capacity to endure pain as its own special currency—the more you endure, the more currency you accumulate to tip the scales of success in your favor. It’s from this ability to endure pain in the never-ending…
(This article was originally published in TechCrunch: https://tcrn.ch/2r9lVsW ) Often times when I attend a conference or a networking event I am surprised how many people operate at the periphery of the tech industry. Social media gurus, SEO ‘ninjas’, bloggers, etc. It’s a coterie of tech ‘club promoters.’ The hype men of the industry. ‘Hack your way to success.’ ‘Meet the right people.’ ‘Become…
I routinely run into folks working in finance romanticizing the virtues of startup culture. It’s easy to romanticize when you constantly are fed stories of a group of founders working out of a garage going on to sell their businesses for millions, if not billions. It’s the modern-day retelling of the tale of Don Quixote. How exciting it must be to go boldly into the arena to pursue your dreams and…
I understand how the trappings of tech culture seem alluring. Perhaps it’s the open office spaces, the ping pong tables, or the ubiquitous bring-your-dog-to-work policy. Maybe it’s the idea of meetings with venture capitalist who are always eager to jump on a call to discuss your ‘exciting project.’ I get it. It can all seem like a high stakes role playing game that revolves around you, the ‘tech…
Startup growth can be painfully slow. So slow that many entrepreneurs just give up and quit when their launch doesn’t go as expected. When you think about it, who can blame them for quitting. Yes, it is really hard. So hard that you may end up in a nut house if you think about it too hard. However, that’s not why I expect that most founders opt out. They fail because they never had a chance, not…
Suriname is a small Caribbean nation on the Atlantic coast of South America. It has a population of a little over half a million people. If you’re like me, you had probably never heard of it. And you’ve certainly never heard of Edward Gessel. Edward Gessel serves as the Chairmen of Suriname’s Special Olympics delegation. Suriname’s participation in the Special Olympics was nothing less than…
This is the age of the selfie-stick. We lionize those that clamor for our attention and impulsively beat our own chests because of an unflinching belief that we are special. One only needs a pulse to understand the importance we place on the self. These are the fruits of narcissism. It’s easy to lament its corrosive effects on our culture; it’s much harder, however, to look inward and see how we…
“No man’s good by accident. Virtue has to be learnt.” —Seneca Some of us dream of Elyssium. We point to the moon and see it in arm’s reach. We quit our comfortable jobs to embark on a new venture, or catch a Greyhound bus to Hollywood from somewhere in the obscurity of the Midwest to pursue our dreams of appearing on the silver screen, or wake up at dawn to train to compete at the highest levels.…