From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
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.
Israel is not called 'the start-up nation' for nothing. We have great statistics to show the number of start-ups per capita, the number of PhD's per capita, V/C Dollars per capita, Patents per capita and more. Israel creates a huge amount of innovative start-ups which are often bought out before they are even revenue producing!
One of the best ways to make money is not to lose it. If you can learn not to lose money, you're making money. When you lose your own money, it hurts, it makes you careful, but you cannot let it take the mojo… the hunger out of you.
There is no magic formula for great company culture. The key is just to treat your staff how you would like to be treated yourself. People are fundamental in driving the success of a business. You should treat your employees like the smart and capable adults they are.
One entrepreneur likened getting venture capital funding to strapping a rocket onto a car; if the car isn't stable, secure, and ready, it leads to a disaster. Similarly, hiring salespeople prematurely can indicate a probable failure because you're still figuring out your direction. Thus, the sustainability of the business gets compromised.
Being an entrepreneur, an inventor, is about having ideas and having the doggedness to see them through. As an inventor your ideas should be based on creating a solution to a problem – a solution which focuses on function over form.
My wife Freada coined a phrase, distance travelled. We're very interested in where somebody started in life, and what hurdles and barriers they have already overcome in their journey – and how that grit has got them to where they are now.
Many great startup ideas fall into the 'sounds like a bad idea, is a good idea' category. In fact, most of them do. These are the most dangerous ideas—the ones that sound plausibly good but aren't. There was nobody desperate for a social network for sports fans, so it failed.
Fear depends on your context, and how much you think you have to lose. You may be young or broke and have nothing to lose. In that case? Either you figure out a way to get something, or you don't get it. Simple.
There's a culture in Silicon Valley that believes that you should be obsessive and not be able to think about anything else other than your business. You shouldn't have kids… friends… just your company as a vehicle to make millions of dollars. That's the kind of founder that many investors want to back, but we need to kick those people out.
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.'
Small companies will get an idea and try to scale up. Big companies have to decide when to extend, when to extend and scale, and when to do something new. They need to build capabilities in terms of insight and execution to do the new thing.