From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
You are going to have to get out there and sell yourself. Make a fool of yourself – whatever it takes. Make sure you appear on the front page and not the back pages.
our school system is the best performing urban school system in the entire state of California. In less than 5 years. Because of Bennioff and the Sales Force foundation with Circle the Schools and all these other programs.
You become an entrepreneur, not by intent, but by accident. It may be that you see a need in a market and decide to act on it. Those for me are the true entrepreneurs- people that just start building, perhaps even without a plan, they just do it. Look at the most famous ones.... Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, they never went to shows or to training, they just got on with it.
Every time we achieve some version of success, whether you've sold that first company or maybe you've just sold your first tube of lipstick or your first consulting contract, every time we achieve some version of success we see another version of ourselves that we didn't even know was possible. We as humans wonder what else potential we have to explore.
Great founders such as Brian Chesky of Airbnb, Drew Houston of Dropbox, or Adi Tatarko of Houzz, are all on a mission to build a product or service that corrects something that they believe the world got wrong. They are on a mission to correct a personal problem or personal pain.
Right now, is the absolute best time in human history to be a disruptor. The world is awash with cash chasing disruptive ideas and most companies have one (if not both) hands tied behind their back.
When you innovate under constraints like this, you go to a different level- that's the opportunity India provides.
The objective was to engage with endeavors so unique that they defied categorization, the pioneering ideas born on the fringes, among the mavericks.
Never was wealth the driver for me. – it was always hey, there's a cool idea here, let's make something of it. It was nice to be well rewarded, but the interesting part was working the problem, thinking about new things and how to bring them forward from being ideas to being products or new ways of doing things.
Too often I feel there is also a search for 'the next' Steve Jobs or Joanna Shields. These are extraordinary people and yet I believe we should not treat entrepreneurialism as requiring a narrow checklist of certain characteristics. The key both in the US and the UK is to have hand-raisers – people who want to take a chance, and get involved.
I woke up every day both inspired and terrified by the thought of building something from scratch and helping to save lives. It's a pretty good way to live, being both inspired and terrified.
A lot of entrepreneurs don't make that switch. They cling to that brand identity of 'I'm an innovator,' still tinkering with the product while everyone else is saying, 'Hey, it's good enough — let's hire our first salesperson.'