LAUNCH: Today Is The Day
February 5, 2008
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Blog Readers… My new book Zero to One Million launches today. Would you buy a copy on Amazon today before midnight Eastern Time? The link is: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0071496661/ Today, February 5, is the big push day that we are trying to become #1 on Amazon. If we can sell 2,500 copies of the book today we should make it to #1. I would like to sincerely ask for your assistance to reach this lifetime goal. In Zero to One Million, I share my story going from an 11 year-old with a dream living in Bradenton, Florida providing computer help to senior citizens for $5 per hour to today at age 23 running iContact in Durham, North Carolina, a company with 85 employees, 19,000 customers, and over $10 million in annual sales. I share a ten step process for building a company from scratch to over one million dollars in annual sales. I share everything I’ve learned about opportunity evaluation, raising investment and venture capital, product development, marketing, web marketing, web 2.0, online advertising, sales, finance, attracting and retaining superstars, managing a team, managing projects, setting goals, building systems, and scaling a company. I wrote the book with a desire to make this information accessible to anyone who wants to become a successful entrepreneur. This McGraw-Hill edition is fully updated from the original self-published edition from 2003. Would you buy a copy or multiple copies of the book yourself today as well as spread the word to as many friends and colleagues as possible today? The book costs just $11.53 on Amazon. All the proceeds from the book are being donated to my non-profit organization, The Humanity Campaign, which works to reduce poverty and hunger by increasing access to education, healthcare, technology, and entrepreneurial opportunity. You can read a recent article from the Raleigh News & Observer about these efforts at http://www.newsobserver.com/business/story/900111.html. If you buy the book today, I’ll send you additional gifts including videos from me on how to raise venture capital and how our generation can change the world and bonuses from my entrepreneur friends Derek Gehl, Buck Rizvi, Carlos Garcia, and Shawn Casey. Just forward the Amazon receipt to bonus[at]zeromillion.com to receive the gifts. If you want to buy multiple copies for your friends, company, or local libraries–I am providing additional bonuses. If you buy five copies you’ll receive a video from me on how to access the world of institutional capital. If you buy 25 copies you’ll receive a signed copy of the original version of the book. If you buy 50 copies you’ll get a 15 minute strategy phone call with me. If you buy 250 copies I’ll invite you to visit me on-site in Durham for a day-long mastermind strategy session with the other large buyers. If you buy 500 copies, I’ll invite you to join my mastermind group of millionaire entrepreneurs for a quarterly meeting. You can buy multiple copies here on Amazon . In the message I sent yesterday, I shared the real reason I am doing this…
But as I mentioned above, I need your help today to get the book to #1 on Amazon.com and have a chance to reach the weekly New York Times Bestseller List. Here are a few things you can do…
Thank you very, very much for your help and assistance. I sincerely appreciate your help with Zero to One Million and look forward to working with you for many decades to change the world together. Please let me know if you have any questions or if I can be of any assistance whatsoever to you now or in the future. Love, hope, peace, prosperity… Cheers, P.S. – Thank you very very much for your help!
“Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.” – Vincent Van Gogh |
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The Opportunity of Our Lifetimes
January 23, 2008
Our generation–those born in the 70s, 80s, and 90s–has a great opportunity ahead of ourselves. We have the ability for the first time in human history to eliminate extreme poverty within our lifetimes and ensure shared access to prosperity regardless of color, geography, or nationality. This possibility is worthy of a boisterous cheer.
By 2050, we’re projected to have 9.5B humans on this planet, however. Our planet will not allow a world of 9.5 billion humans living in the manner the average citizen of the Western world lives today, yet alone the 6.6 billion we have today.
Here inlies the great connection between sustainability and poverty. Unless we as a global society invest to develop the needed technologies to allow for humans to become sustainable in food, energy, and water production we will end up having less resources than are necessary for 9.5 billion people to live in a world without extreme poverty–let alone a world in which there is true shared prosperity, mutual security, and equality of opportunity. This is the greatest challenge of our lifetime as entrepreneurs, social entrepreneurs, scientists, technologists, and public servants. We must have sustainability to end poverty.
As a friend of mine from high school recent wrote me, “We must work toward the creation of a world where the standard of living, human rights, basic freedoms, and sustainability are all compatible.”
The two billion people that Goldman Sachs projects will be added to the global middle class by 2030 may never make it if sufficient food, energy, and water resources don’t exist. Dominic Wilson and Raluca Dragusanu, showed in a Goldman Sachs Economic Research paper published on July 8 called “The Expanding Middle: The Exploding World Middle Class and Falling Global Inequality” that close to 70 million people a year are entering the global middle class. They define this range as those with per capital income $6,000 and $30,000, purchasing power parity adjusted. They foresee shifts such as:
- Changing spending patterns.
- Increased pressure and competition for resources
- Greater threat of environmental degradation
- Rising environmental consciousness
- Political and social changes
Through one lens, we could have resource wars, strife, famine, and terrible droughts, melting ice caps, biodiversity extinctions, and rising sea levels.
Through the other lens, we could have a world of growing prosperity, security through commerce, and gained respect among cultures and religion, a world of ubiquitous broadband, a world of communications technology that will enable humans to gain a common language and understanding, a world in which dictators can no longer use scare propaganda to wedge the false division of us vs. them, a world in which there is access to education, healthcare, nutrition, and opportunity for all, a world in which entrepreneurship thrives and technology drives improves food production, water access, and non-carbon based energies, a world in which our identity as human is so much more important than what divides us.
We have come to a turning point in history. This is both the challenge of our lifetime, and the great opportunity of our lifetime. How can we enable the great economic and creative potential for all humans while ensuring we leave a world of environmental stability to our grandchildren?
Will we invest in the creation of a new Apollo Plan for Energy? We will create the Global Bill of Rights that provides access to education, healthcare, and nutrition? Or will we fall into a once great society as the benefit of inexpensive petroleum leaves? Will Malthus finally get his way?
Is growing economic prosperity possible in a world of declining resources and increased commodity prices? Does our lifetime end up being marked in history as the time of resource wars, increased poverty, and environmental damage? Or does it end up being marked by global collaboration, shared prosperity, and sustainability. We have a choice.
This is the greatest opportunity of our lifetime, and our greatest challenge.
How selfish soever man may be supposed…
January 23, 2008
I just sent this to a couple of my friends and wanting to blog it as well. I just watched the video of the much-talked about Gates speech on Creative Capitalism on Friday at Davos. For me, it was one of the most inspiring and influential speeches I have ever heard. Though Gates is not the best speaker in the world, his message is right on. The WSJ article on the speech is here and the video of the speech is here.
I especially enjoyed the Adam Smith quote Gates references:
“How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortunes of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it.”
Here’s an excerpt from the speech transcript:
In many crucial areas, the world is getting better.
These improvements have been triggered by advances in science, technology, and medicine. They have brought us to a high point in human welfare. We’re really just at the becoming of this technology-driven revolution in what people can do for one another. In the coming decades, we’ll have astonishing new abilities: better software, better diagnosis for illness, better cures, better education, better opportunities and more brilliant minds coming up with ideas that solve tough problems.
This is how I see the world, and it should make one thing clear: I am an optimist.
But I am an impatient optimist. The world is getting better, but it’s not getting better fast enough, and it’s not getting better for everyone.
The great advances in the world have often aggravated the inequities in the world. The least needy see the most improvement, and the most needy get the least — in particular the billion people who live on less than a dollar a day.
There are roughly a billion people in the world who don’t get enough food, who don’t have clean drinking water, who don’t have electricity, the things that we take for granted.
Diseases like malaria that kill over a million people a year get far less attention than drugs to help with baldness.
So, the bottom billion misses the benefits of the global economy, and yet they’ll suffer from the negative effects of economic growth they missed out on. Climate change will have the biggest effect on people who have done the least to cause it.
Why do people benefit in inverse proportion to their need? Well, market incentives make that happen.
In a system of capitalism, as people’s wealth rises, the financial incentive to serve them rises. As their wealth falls, the financial incentive to serve them falls, until it becomes zero. We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people serve poorer people as well.
The genius of capitalism lies in its ability to make self-interest serve the wider interest. The potential of a big financial return for innovation unleashes a broad set of talented people in pursuit of many different discoveries. This system, driven by self-interest, is responsible for the incredible innovations that have improved so many lives.
But to harness this power so it benefits everyone, we need to refine the system.
As I see it, there are two great forces of human nature: self-interest, and caring for others. Capitalism harnesses self-interest in a helpful and sustainable way, but only on behalf of those who can pay. Government aid and philanthropy channel our caring for those who can’t pay. But to provide rapid improvement for the poor we need a system that draws in innovators and businesses in a far better way than we do today.
Such a system would have a twin mission: making profits and also improving lives of those who don’t fully benefit from today’s market forces. For sustainability we need to use profit incentives wherever we can. At the same time, profits are not always possible when business tries to serve the very poor. In such cases there needs to be another incentive, and that incentive is recognition. Recognition enhances a company’s reputation and appeals to customers; above all, it attracts good people to an organization. As such, recognition triggers a market-based reward for good behavior. In markets where profits are not possible, recognition is a proxy; where profits are possible, recognition is an added incentive.
This week’s Economist had a section on corporate responsibility, and it put the problem very nicely. It said it’s the interaction between a company’s principles and its commercial competence that shape the kind of business it will be.
The challenge here is to design a system where market incentives, including profits and recognition, drive those principles to do more for the poor.
I like to call this idea creative capitalism, an approach where governments, businesses, and nonprofits work together to stretch the reach of market forces so that more people can make a profit, or gain recognition, doing work that eases the world’s inequities.
Some people might object to this kind of market-based social change, arguing that if we combine sentiment with self-interest, we will not expand the reach of the market, but reduce it. Yet Adam Smith, the very father of capitalism and the author of “Wealth of Nations,” who believed strongly in the value of self-interest for society, opened his first book with the following lines:
“How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortunes of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it.”
The 40 Business & Personal Lessons I Learned in 2007
January 1, 2008
Personal Lessons
- Life is precious and can be very short. Value it, keep things in perspective, and count your blessings. In February, I was driving down I-95 in Maryland in a snow storm on a Sunday evening trying to get back home to North Carolina when my car spun out after accelerating out of a toll booth area. I did a 180 degree spin, hit the front of another car, then continued another 180 degrees until I was straight again. My engine had cut off and I was drifting at 3-4 mph towards the curb when I realized a semi-truck was coming at my car. It missed me by about five feet. I really wanted to get back home that night so I could be at work the next morning but realized very quickly that it wasn’t worth trying. I sometimes can get wrapped up in what is next, what objective I am I pursuing now, and what appointments I have coming up. I realized it wasn’t really a big deal at all if I was stuck in Maryland for the night while the storm passed and missed a few things at work the next morning. I’ve also learned metaphorically not to accelerate in the snow without tread on your tires–you might spin out.
- One can see much further if he stands on the shoulders of giants. I’ve been fortunate to develop a few great mentor relationships over the past year and added a few tremendous people to iContact’s Advisory Panel like Jud Bowman, Merrill Mason, Mike Doernberg, Mike Fitzgerald, and Buck Rizvi. I met Brett Icahn, Bill Clinton, and Marc Benioff during 2007 and learned from their wisdom.
- It’s hard to stay in the game for very long when you’re not happy. Consistent hard and intelligent effort over multiple years is a key part of what makes a start-up succeed. It can be hard to sustain consistent effort for five, six, seven, or eight years. I’ve found that taking the time needed to make sure you are happy in what you are doing is an important investment. If you do not take this time you will generally not be able to last long. While I worked harder than ever before in 2007 (except perhaps in 2003 our first year), I’ve made sure I’ve taken time to build personal relationships, create memories, be with family, hold Entrepreneur and Social Entrepreneur meetups, read about the world, and speak to aspiring entrepreneurs–things that keep me happy and productive. I’ve found that I cannot help others if I am not happy and healthy.
- I am an extrovert–I feed off the energy from others. I love to meet with and interact with passionate, driven people. I took a few MBTI-type tests in 2007 and in each one I was very much an extrovert. I refresh and get my energy by being around people. I do enjoy being alone in multiple-hour blocks in order to get work done, but as soon as the work is done I want to be around people again.
- We are all humans and should stop killing each other. I find it difficult to understand why human genocide and warfare still happen in an age of easy communication. I will spend much of the rest of my life working to create stronger societies and reduce human suffering and end extreme poverty and war while creating access to education, healthcare, technology, and food. I became more committed to this life mission in the past year. There is absolutely no good reason in our world of opulence and riches that 26,000 children should die every day from preventable diseases and starvation in the developing world. We should have a global identity and stop create false separations and divisions.
- The world has more opportunities than you might think. Sitting in a room planning to start iContact in 2003, Aaron and I could not and did not fathom we’d be able to create an 80 person company with a $10 million run-rate by the end of 2007. It was beyond my imagination. I am a very confident and goal-oriented person but could not even see beyond getting 2500 customers. We now have 18,000. Opportunities and possibilities will open up that today you cannot even think of today–if you just take the leap of faith and get started and keep at it. The opportunities get bigger and more interesting as your grow. If you are in business, you learn about raising financing, strategic acquisitions, convertible debt, private placements, private equity, and leveraged buyouts. As you add experienced people to your team that understand and have completed sophisticated transactions, many opportunities open up to you. The world of institutional capital is absolutely fascinating–and yet is almost off limits unless you bring someone onto your team that understands it or are able to build your company beyond a few million dollars in sales. At that point, they start calling you.
- Keep associating with extraordinary people. I have been greatly helped by the relationships I’ve been able to make with people in New York, Boston, D.C., Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. For understandable reasons–I’ve found that large groupings of young, ambitious, extremely smart, passionate, dedicated people tend to live in major cities. I love North Carolina and hope to spend the majority of my life in the State. But there is no doubt at the moment that there is a brain drain of the best and the brightest to New York, Boston, D.C., and Atlanta after they graduate from UNC, Duke, and N.C. State. I started the Entrepreneur & Social Entrepreneur Meetups in June as one way to get smart passionate driven people who care about changing the world to associate with others who are similar and encourage them to stay in North Carolina after they graduate. The meetups have grown from 8 attendees at the Wine Bar in Chapel Hill in June to 60 attendees at my house of social entrepreneurs in Chapel Hill today. I’ve found that tremendously positive developments can occur when you connect smart people and when you choose to associate with extraordinary individuals.
- Don’t write off dating women of any type. While in New York with a group of friends in February, I wrote off dating women who were older than I due to many of them wanting to get married right away. As soon as I did this, I met a wonderful 25 year old woman in New York who I learned a lot from and then began dating a 28 year old woman from North Carolina who I also learned a lot from. I was wrong to write off women who are older than I. I learned I could often relate better to women who were in the professional world already doing something to change the world versus in school. At a point during the Summer, seemingly not having learned the full lesson yet, I wrote off dating younger women due to not being able to relate professionally and often intellectually with them. At one point I decided to stop trying to actively date women seriously at all until I was older and could actually meet someone younger than I was who was making serious efforts to change the world and reduce human suffering. As you can predict, I of course was proven wrong again. The lesson I learned is that while I can develop helpful guidelines that are often true in regards to dating, I should not categorically write off women of any type. I found the chances just as high to meet a brilliant driven ambitious 20 year old as they were to meet a professional 27 year old who could care less about getting married right away.
- Humans have a deep desire to be accepted for who they are and not judged. Being judged personally can have positive consequences such as getting helpful feedback or getting life guidance, but it can often hurt. I’ve yet to truly figure out and reconcile when it is a positive experience to judge another human and when it is best to simply accept them as they are. Perhaps the separating line may be in business versus outside of business. In business, judgment and guidance based on facts and metrics can be very helpful. Outside of business, I’ve seen that humans often want to be loved and accepted and not judged–at least before they are truly known by an individual. I admit I’m a bit confused still on this lesson, but I’ve learned it to be true in many cases personally nonetheless.
- Gratitude is an extremely powerful character attribute. I watched the movie The Secret three times in 2007. While it has some seen some deserved criticism for being ‘over the top’ a bit, it nonetheless is one of my favorite movies of all time if not my favorite. The principles it shares are the exact principles I’ve used for the past six years and are the same principles found in Think and Grow Rich, one of the thirteen books that have changed my life since I was 17 (the others are Rich Dad Poor Dad, Rich Dad’s Guide to Investing, The Lexus and The Olive Tree, The Commanding Heights, The Spirit of Enterprise, The Worldly Philosophers, The End of Poverty, My Life, The Secret History of the American Empire, Understanding Power, Good to Great, and The Giants of Enterprise). One of the key principles of The Secret is the Attitude of Gratitude. Gratitude is such a tremendous power for good–and I’ve learned that in the past I have not shown nearly enough of it.
- Humans have a deep desire for love and affection in their lives. It is so nice to have someone to make you eggs and toast (metaphorically). One of the nicest experiences I had in 2007 was when a women I was dating made me eggs and toast for breakfast in bed. It felt so nice to have someone to care about you in that way. I’ve found that this desire for human affection and love can sometimes cause someone to stay with an individual that is just not right for them in the long term, if that person does provide support and affection.
- If you are going to meet someone for the first time, Google them first. Find a couple topics for discussion prior to meeting someone for lunch. Take five minutes to learn their background whenever possible. I have gone into a few of the business lunches I had in 2007 without knowing a thing about the person other than the company they worked for due to being rushed prior to lunchtime. I have made it a point to review my next day’s schedule before I go to sleep each night and do any needed research on people then–and this practice has been helpful.
- My definition of love is different than that of most. I define love as a ‘deep personal care for an individual.’ Thus I tend to love anyone that I truly care about and very much enjoy spending time with. Thus I found it very possible to love multiple people at the same time. I’ve learned that many others feel that you can only truly love one person at a time. While I agree with this statement in terms of physical love, for me I find it possible to love two or three people at any one point in time. As this can often frustrate the heck out of women I’m dating, I’m trying to figure out a way to reconcile the many forms of love and express the difference between loving someone and being in love with someone, which may be different. I’ve learned that I have to be very careful and explicit in how and when I say I love you to a women because of this difference in definitions.
- Be real, smile, connect. Don’t just talk about business. One of the most valuable lessons I learned in 2007 was that my natural ‘expressionless’ face often looks like a ’stone face’ and can intimidate people or make people think I am cold-hearted. I was completely unaware of this. I learned the lesson from feedback I received at the Grinnell Leadership Seminar in August in Chapel Hill. I learned instead to be real with people, relax, stop being so serious all the time, and to not just talk about business–to not act like the whole world is always on my shoulders. I also learned to let my free child out, live through my heart more often, and to ‘Ride the Dragon’ when times are difficult. I learned from my roommate James that I can often be very intense and serious immediately when meeting new people as I would immediately inquire about their passion and want to talk about business, current events, poverty, war, social entrepreneurship, politics, or religion rather than less intense topics like music, movies, food, or games. I’ve learned with the help of my friend John, the Grinnell group, and James to be less serious–at least initially when meeting people. I’m still working on getting rid of the stone face, chilling out more, and being more real–while still working hard and getting things done.
- Share your passion with people. Another lesson I learned at the Grinnell Seminar was to share my passions with people. I often was afraid to share my passion with people in business settings due a feeling that it was not fully relevant to the business. My passion is learning about and working to reduce global poverty and human suffering both at home and in developing countries. On day three of four of the Grinnell Seminar we were asked to share our passion. They told me that when I did this my eyes lit up and I became real to them. I then learned the most important lesson of all–that they would much rather follow that passionate person with eyes lit up than the stone faced serious leader they were exposed to on days one and two. I’m still working on figuring how and when it is best to share my passion with others, but feel the mental freedom to do so has been a bliss.
- Marriage is very rarely perfect. Growing up I believed marriage to be a union between two people who were destined to be together and that other than the rare argument, marriage was generally perfect. Seeing the interactions and hearing the stories of many married couples, I now know this to not be true and that a successful marriage takes at the minimum tremendous communication skills on both sides, generally overlapping life plans, and a willingness to compromise with one another.
- Love and good health are the two of most wonderful things God created. While I believe the purpose of my life is to be happy, help others, and create further life–two of the absolute best things in this world are love and good health. Humans spend more time and money working to acquire and keep both than any other two substances. Love can surely move mountains.
- A Great woman can make a huge difference to a Great man. I’ve seen this be true in many of the biographies of leaders, Presidents and Captains of Industry that I’ve read in 2007 and seen it true in my own life.
- Don’t lead women on. Even if you don’t want to ruin what you have now, don’t lead women on. It’s mean and not worth it to do so. I’ve learned this lesson in 2007. I was hurt by a woman during 2007 who I felt led me on. After I could understand what it felt like from the other side it became easier to no longer do–though I still was by no means perfect. I’ve still struggled at times with avoiding this behavior, but I am committed to working on it and being as upfront as possible about feelings–or sometimes delaying sharing feelings until after I know they are stable. Often my feelings are not stable and are tied to how I feel at the moment rather than how I feel overall. I’ve worked on being able to discern which type of feelings are which.
- Don’t ever let your mind limit yourself. Just because you can’t understand how you’ll achieve any great goal–whether it is to become a billionaire, end world poverty, find a soulmate, or become a global leader–doesn’t mean you should not set the goal. As you progress toward your vision you will figure out how. Man often overestimates what he can accomplish in one year but greatly underestimates what he can achieve in five, ten, and twenty years.
Business Lessons
- I have to solicit cross-team input in order to get it. I’ve learned that input and feedback from team members has tremendous value and have learned that it is often difficult to get enough of. I learned to proactively seek it through surveys, skip-level meetings, and pulse-check lunches, discussions, and coffees with different staff members. I found that the best ideas very often come bottom-up.
- A percentage of people will always criticize you regardless of how you perform. I learned in 2007 that regardless of how well you are performing, a small percentage of people will always be critical of you. In the political world, if you can achieve a 60% approval rate you’re doing a tremendous job. It is very difficult to operate in a world in which 40% of people don’t approve of what you are doing–but I’ve learned it comes with the territory of a leader.
- Stop worrying so much about what people think of you. Just be different, work hard, and get results. Be concerned with what you do and make sure it aligns with your values and principles, but don’t spend endless mind cycles worrying about what people think.
- You need to have thick skin and persistence to succeed in this life. I learned from my friends Carolina that you must be direct and upfront with people to get what you want in life. I’ve learned through my friend Joktan and my CFO Tim that you often have to negotiate what you want in life. I’ve learned further through enduring criticism that one must have thick skin, perseverance, and persistence to succeed. There will always be someone coming after you.
- Our team is extremely valuable to the company. In the beginning it was just me and Aaron. Then we added Josh, David, David, Brad. Today we have 80 team members and are growing. I’ve learned that the value of our team is immense. We have made many investments in better benefits, more vacation time, stock plans, and conscious culture-creation for the team and every time the investment has paid off in creating a family that is happier and more productive.
- Slow times should scare you. While slow times are rare at iContact these days, in the past few years we have had 2-3 slows times that I noticed–periods of 3-4 weeks in which not very much was happening either due to Holidays, vacations, product cycles, or coincidence. In every case, we’ve had an issue underneath the surface that came out as soon as the slow time ended. I’ve learned that whenever I feel there is a time that is slower than usual, to work extra hard and spend and extra time listening to what’s going on at the staff level of operations.
- Randomly tell people that you appreciate them, that they are doing a great job. People don’t get enough praise. When someone is doing a job well, mention it to them. Don’t let your only interactions be interactions in which you suggest different behavior.
- Attack issues head on. Be direct and communicative, not passive aggressive when addressing issues. Take a couple minutes to think then act immediately. I took the time to have a three hour late-evening meeting with my partner Aaron in May to clear up some issues we were miscommunicating about before an early morning flight to New York the next day. Holding that meeting was very helpful to our alignment and continue positive interaction. While I’ve not always been successful in doing this, I’ve learned to take the time to meet with people in person to clear up any issues as soon as you detect there may be an issue.
- It can be very helpful to fundamental investing results if you have an understanding of global macroeconomic trends and causes. Understanding why currency values, interest rates, and commodity prices fluctuate has been very helpful in determining which personal investments to make. The basic lesson that when interest rates go down in a country while a budget deficit rises, currency values will also go down in a country has made Warren Buffet quite a lot of money in the past two years. The great value of a liberal arts education in hindsight is that you can more easily see the bigger picture of how the world operates. Markets are by no means efficient and he who has a perspective that others cannot see will be able to produce premium returns. Now if I could only predict where oil will be in five years. A financial planner friend of mine thinks it will be at $60 per barrel due to the large supplies currently being found and the lag between the time higher prices cause higher technology investment and when higher tech investment causes an increase in supply. Personally, I don’t see any way the price of oil will do anything but go up in my lifetime with a limited supply and demand that will increase many times over before we are able to greatly eliminate dependence on oil as a source of energy.
- It can be very helpful to fundamental investing results if you can have advisors that set policy on your team. By watching a documentary on the Carlyle private equity group I learned that you can get great returns if you know what the policy and government interaction is going to be on highly regulated industries like defense in advance and you have former Presidents and Secretaries of Defense and State working for you.
- Don’t make people feel like you are going around them. Skip-level meetings are often very helpful (where you meet with people who don’t directly report to you in order to get a better pulse on the business) but be sure to explain to the person who reports to you that you are theoretically going ‘around’ why you are doing what you are doing and that it is not caused by anything they are doing wrong. Unless of course it is–in which case you need to talk to them about what’s going on right away anyway.
- Don’t make people feel you are consulting others about their field without them. If you are going to consult with someone outside your company about a topic you have someone in charge of, tell the person in charge of the department what you are doing and why in advance and either invite them to join you or meet with the person afterwards or explain your reasoning why you’d rather meet with the person alone.
- Speed of implementation matters. Cutting just a day off each stage of a project can save a week of time or more by the time a project is done. Weeks of time saved can greatly increase customer acquisition and internal efficiency. Encourage your team to get one additional thing done before they leave in order to reduce time delays from projects. The very large majority of ‘real hours’ (versus ‘human hours’) spent on a large project is time waiting on persons to review, approve, or provide the next part of the project. It can take many extra weeks to complete a project that only requires only a few hours of human effort if each phase waits in the inbox of an individual for three days instead of two.
- Take the time to explain to people how your thinking process works. I once felt that because I was CEO I was justified in making small decisions (like the background color or text font face on a web page) without taking the often extended amount of time needed to fully think through and explain my reasoning. I learned that while I may have been justified, I found that things would get done better and more effectively if I did take the time to think through and explain my reasoning fully.
- Always create a competitive round when you are raising VC. Work to get multiple term sheets when you raise venture capital. Our pre-money valuation increased a full 50% from when we received our first term sheet to when we received our fourth a couple weeks later in May. There really isn’t an easier way to create perceived value than to get competition in a round. If you can create a parallel process and receive multiple term sheets you will have more power. Group mentality does at times take hold, causing the valuation to be bid up with multiple players in the deal and some of the secondary terms to be softened.
- Have comparables ready when talking valuation. Be prepared with revenue multiples from both public companies that are similar to yours and private comparables. Depending on many factors (team, technology, industry stage, revenue growth, market size) one can expect to be able to raise funds at 2x to 10x your revenues from the trailing twelve months or 1x to 4x your projected revenues from the next twelve months. If you don’t have any revenues yet, the valuation will be whatever you can negotiate with an investor and based upon your experience and any intellectual property you have. At the end of the day, the market valuation for your company is what an investor is willing to pay—and as such it is important to have multiple firms competing to invest in your firm if possible. Depending on the stage of your company, you may be able to raise funds at a 30% to 70% discount off the public market trailing or forward revenue comparables.
- When giving VC presentations, prepare well and give a knockout presentation.. Invest in a graphic designer to make your presentation look nice and go heavy on actual examples of customer use and light on complex slides. I have seen a short flash product demo video or customer video interview within the presentation work well. Don’t let any slide have more than five bullet points or fifty words.
- When negotiating raising investment, have a top tier legal advisor on your side. Once you receive a term sheet, have your attorney review it right away and provide feedback before you discuss it with the investment firm. Your negotiating power will be based upon how much you need the money, the reputation of the firm, your reputation as an entrepreneur, any past successes you’ve had, your experience, the quality of your management team, the members of your advisory panel, the size of your addressable market, your market timing, the quality of your technology and IP, your ability to walk away; and whether you have other competing term sheets.
- Make sure you know which terms are important to you in term sheet negotiation. Generally the valuation, option pool size, liquidation preference, participating preferred, founder revesting, and preferred stock veto rights are the most important terms to negotiate. You may wish to have your attorney or CFO if you have one negotiate the finer points directly with the firm’s attorney.
- The investment firm providing the highest valuation isn’t always the best firm to work with. I learned that there are many important factors in a venture capital deal. The most important is not the valuation, but instead whether you have good chemistry with the firm who wants to invest and in particular with the person who would be joining your Board of Directors. You will create, or destroy, much more value in the years following the investment by having the right person on your Board and the right firm backing them than you will by going with the firm that provides the absolute highest valuation possible. The other downside of pushing up the valuation beyond what you feel is fair is that the ‘winning’ investor will often ride you much harder to justify their higher purchase price–often creating lots of stress that simply is not worth the cost.
The Superficial Luxurious Degeneration of America
December 8, 2007
I’m in Las Vegas for the second time about to get on the plane home. I was here for a web marketing conference called PubCon. I’ve enjoyed my time here. I saw the Blue Man Group and the Wayne Brady Show. I also did the all-American thing and lost $100 at the blackjack tables after a poorly executed Martingale strategy on the $5 tables at the Sahara. I leave, however, feeling the same way I felt last time–a bit dirty, a bit uncomfortable.
I’m disappointed with the excess and waste of the Westernized luxury culture. Wealthy men with fake-as-can-be paid escorts on each arm at the $5000 per hand blackjack tables, faux-venetian canal boats, Rolex, Prada, Burberry, and Louis Vuitton stores galore, Ferrari and Maybach dealerships, swinger clubs with $65 entrance fees, men on the streets passing out cards with naked women available for between $35 and $150.
I wonder to myself–Does this city in many ways represent a key part of what is wrong with our culture or a key part of the freedom that causes it to thrive? I am as pro-competitive market economy as the next guy, but I have to wonder what role do super-luxury goods play in a just society. I’m not talking about the $200 purses or $40,000 cars–the splurges that perhaps are bad within the realm of defensible-reason in moderation for quality or happiness-inducing reasons. I’m talking about the $10,000 purses and $500,000 cars.
I was taught in my economics education that societies should work to maximize utility. But whose utility does it maximize to spend $75,000 on a diamond necklace in which the original diamond miners in the DRC were paid $10 to mine the raw materials for? The purchasers? What benefit could the male purchaser of a diamond necklace of this cost gain other than the ephemeral loyalty of an ever-expecting superficial person? It is not my place to judge or question their morality, but I must wonder.
Are there not so so so many better things to invest money into other than temporarily attractive fake parasitic members of the opposite gender? And trust me, I’m not talking about women in general, just a very specific type of women that happen to be all over Las Vegas and Beverly Hills. And some wealthy women are just as guilty as the wealthy men. If the advertising and celebrity indoctrinated culture of spend-and-trash materialism didn’t create false desires to ‘be better’ and ‘have more’ could we perhaps focus our investments on something that actually matters to our society?
Could we focus our efforts and funds instead on education, healthcare, and nourishment for the 26 million children who die every day on our highly-optimized six-sigma logistically perfected world from preventable disease and starvation? I’m not talking about giving questionable ideology-inspired bilateral or multilateral aid to dictatorial governments that don’t represent their populace. I’m talking about giving directly to proven projects in our community, country, and world run by local entrepreneurs through groups like GlobalGiving, Kiva, UNICEF, UNESCO, Doctors Without Borders, Heffer International, and Save the Children. Could awareness of the dire situation of so many of our fellow sisters and brothers reduce the demand to waste money on super-expensive non-necessary junk?
But then I came back to questioning myself. What right do I have to question the utility-maximizing choices of ultra-rich people? If they want to spend 1% of their income on a $500,000 car, shouldn’t they be able to? Isn’t the freedom to do just that an ingrained part of our American culture? Is it fascist to even suggest that we should create a society in which it would not be legal to buy a $500,000 car?
I have to agree–we should not make it illegal to buy a $500,000 car or a $10,000 purse. That wouldn’t jibe with the values of our liberty-based democratic republic and market economy regardless of how wrong or wasteful it may be. Our country was also built on the value of equality of opportunity, however. And equality of opportunity surely does not exist quite yet in America.
So perhaps instead of regulating the supply side of the equation we should work on reducing the demand side of the equation. If we can create a consciousness of the realities in our world today–and create a shared awareness of what is actually important (family, friends, health, laughter, memories, the ability to create, a sense of shared humanity, an end to genocide and warfare, environmental sustainability, an end to extreme poverty and hunger, and the prevention of preventable diseases), we may be able to create a world in which the super-luxury wastefulness of the Westernized Vegases, Macaus, and Dubais can legally exist, but end up being destinations that focus on entertainment rather than superficial luxurious waste. Is possible to have entertainment without super-luxurious waste? I think so. Is it unrealistic to attempt to reduce the demand side if we agree we should not regulate the supply side? Can a committed society actually build national human consciousness over a period of decades? I am not sure.
I sometimes wonder, is celebrity culture actually more interesting than the natural drama of the future of the world? I see lots of Entertainment Tonight shows but very few United Nations Tonight shows. Maybe the issue is how the news is presented. Perhaps we need to popularize and dramatize the storylines of the world’s future. Perhaps we need a new form of realtainment that combines The National Enquirer with The Economist. ‘Pakistani Inflation Worry’ turns into ‘Smack-Down Out East: Will Musharref Bodyslam His Central Banker?’ The Current Channel on cable has done a good job at this–but it just doesn’t reach enough people.
With all due respect to Nickelback, at the end of the day who really wants to be drugged up rockstars living in hilltop houses and driving fifteen cars with girls coming easy and the drugs coming cheap? I don’t want a brand new house on an episode of Cribs nor a bathroom I can play baseball in with a king size tub big enough for ten plus me. I think, and I may be wrong here, that the large majority of people want to be happy with friends and family around them and the knowledge that they’ve made a difference in our world.
The government, businesses, and the media tells us to ‘be American’ and buy, buy, buy. The goods end up quickly in landfills. Until the full cost of producing products is internalized instead of externalized in the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles we will be incented by misaligned priorities. Hurricane Katrina was a terrible disaster that had an immense human and environmental effect–and yet it increased our GDP due to the cost of rebuilding. That wasn’t economic growth–that was economic recovery. We’re adding revenue to our asset column without first subtracting the associated expenses from the liabilities. We’re off-balance sheet financing our future.
As a final thought, perhaps we shouldn’t focus on Gross Domestic Product (GDP) but rather Net Domestic Product (NDP), the GDP minus the costs to replace the non-renewable environmental resources that are used up in producing the input goods and final goods. If we invested in companies on the NASDAQ and NYSE based on their EAARC (earnings after all real costs) instead of their EBITDA we would be a lot closer to having a market that valued companies appropriately based on their contribution to their customers and society.
I’ll end this essay with a quote from the comedian George Carlin. While I enjoy living in the fast paced globalized technology-driven business world as much as anyone—I agree with his core message…
The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider freeways but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less, we buy more, but enjoy less. We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but less time. We have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more problems, more medicine, but less wellness. We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom. We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values.
We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often. We’ve learned how to make a living, but not a life. We’ve added years to life not life to years. We’ve been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor. We conquered outer space but not inner space. We’ve done larger things, but not better things. We’ve cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul. We’ve conquered the atom, but not our prejudice. We write more, but learn less. We plan more, but accomplish less. We’ve learned to rush, but not to wait. We build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies than ever, but we communicate less and less.
These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion, big men and small character, steep profits and shallow relationships. These are the days of two incomes but more divorce, fancier houses, but broken homes. These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throwaway morality, one night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer, to quiet, to kill. It is a time when there is much in the showroom window and nothing in the stockroom. Give time to love, give time to speak! And give time to share the precious thoughts in your mind.
Gates vs. Easterly on Aid
October 23, 2007
Jeff Jarvis’ BuzzMachine provides a good insight into and video live from Davos.
The video with Arianna Huffington on new media and old media and politics is especially interesting.
And this post describing an exchange between Bill Gates and William Easterly on aid is brilliant.
“Easterly says that when VC companies screw up, they die. Aid agencies don
Quotes from Day 2 at Altitude
October 23, 2007
Another great day at Altitude. Here are the quotes from the day that Eben highlighted:
“Opportunities multiply as they are seized.” – Sun Tzu
“Next to knowing when to seize an opportunity, the most important thing in life is to know when to forego an opportunity.” – Benjamin Disraeli
“The essence of genious is to know what to overlook.” – William James
“It is better to be first than it is to be better.” – Al Ries and Jack Trout
“As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I watch what they do.” – Andrew Carnegie
“Data is most valuable at the point of origin. The value of data is directly related to its timeliness.” – Lawrence Miller
“When you have mastered the numbers you will in fact no longer be reading numbers, any more than you read words when reading books. You will be reading meanings.” – Harold Greene
I actually got more work done today than I do in a normal day in the office with 88 emails sent and a number of key projects worked on.
Review of The Winning Investment Habits of Warren Buffet and George Soros & Three Questions
October 23, 2007
I only had 38 emails going into today compared to the usual 450 (mainly because of having a 4 day week and actually not having such a crazy schedule that I couldn’t answer them during the week) so I’ve been able to spend the past ten hours reading The Winning Investment Habits of Warren Buffet and George Soros, a book I picked up yesterday. The author Mark Tier has come up with 23 investment habits of the ‘Master Investor’ that both Soros and Buffett have shown. Tier also talks about the background, styles, trades, and philosophies of Benjamin Graham, Carl Icahn, John Templeton, Peter Lynch, Philip Fisher, Jimmy Rogers, and Jesse Livermore. I’d say the book was good and would recommend it to anyone fairly new to investing or someone looking to understand how to control the psychological and emotional side of investing and be presented with a view of different systems that have been effective. I would probably not recommend it to an advanced investor with many years of experience, unless they feel like they are in need of focusing on improving their emotional control and are looking for a new systems.
I wanted something that could present a fairly simple and straightforward strategy while helping me develop the mental guidelines to not let emotions control investment decisions. My only suggestion for improving the book would be for it to provide more information on the specific how’s of getting started with a strategy.
The depth of the history behind Buffett and Soros’ trading philosophies that Tier shared was very interesting and inspiring. I find it quite amazing how Buffett and Soros have been able to obtain 24.4% and 28.2% average annual investment returns since 1956 and 1969 respectively. While I have read books about and by Buffett before, after reading this book I know even more that I am much more attuned to the Buffett style of fundamental investing compared to the Soros style of technical investing–though some of his investing based on economic and geopolitical events I could see myself someday modeling. At the end of the day I prefer looking at P/E, ROE, the competitive landscape, and management quality and investing in companies and people rather than candlesticks or directional momentum arrows.
Personally, I have about 5% of my liquid assets in an account I manage and the rest in an account managed by professional money managers. I will probably keep it that way for a few years as for now I feel my time can best be spent working to build the value of iContact. I do want to keep learning and start to spend an hour or week or so making investment decisions for the TD Ameritrade account, so I figured I would start again by reading a book that can help me simplify and add to my personal equity investing beliefs. I have followed the philosophy of Buffett (value investor based on fundamentals) in public equity investing so far (as well as some safer index fund strategies) and wanted to learn more about his strategies.
Until I have much more time to devote to the effort, I will likely never come close to reaching the percentage return levels from public company investing that I can achieve in investing in my own private company (being an ultimate inside investor as Kiyosaki calls it), but someday I would enjoy managing a fund that invests in both public and private companies–so I figure I should keep learning a little bit here and there as I can. Some of the topics in the book like competitive advantage, control-over-emotion, and stock evaluation will be helpful in the continued day-to-day building of iContact.
Now wanting to learn more about the specific Buffet strategy of value-based fundamental investing, I will probably try to find a book that details how to develop a system based on this philosophy and how specifically to find great companies with great teams at periods during which their stock is undervalued by the market. I do have three questions after reading the book that I would welcome any advice on in the comments:
- How does one know when a company is trading at a stock price that is sufficiently low to buy shares. What quantitative measures other than ROE, P/E are good to look at and what are the targets for these figures? What qualitative measures other than competitive landscape and management quality are good to look at? Obviously Buffett wants to buy companies that are valued at less than the present value of their future cash flow–but what are the main determinants in predicting cash flow 10 and 20 years out?
- Tier spoke a lot in his book about Buffet and others going to talk to management teams before making buying decisions. I am a bit unclear regarding the rules for what constitutes illegal insider trading in the U.S.? How is it that you can speak to the management teams to get insight on their business and their competitors’ businesses without it being classified as illegal insider information that you cannot trade based on?
- Tier talks about taking losses quickly, beating a hasty retreat and admitting mistakes, but what is Buffet’s guidelines for getting out and admitting a mistake? Per page 85 he says When the business no longer meets his criteria. When it’s broken and we can’t fit it. To me, this means a fundamental shift in the company’s management, earnings results, or product prospects–and nothing to do with the price. Is there a metric-based guideline that is good to have (10% earnings drop, 15% price drop). How do you know when to admit your mistake and move on in a public equity investment?
Below are my notes from the book. Off to write up my Directors’ Report for last week and compile survey results. I truly do love Sundays.
Notes from The Winning Investment Habits of Warren Buffet and George Soros by Mark Tier
- Don’t buy a stock when you expect the price to go up. Buy it when it meets your investment criteria.
- Intriguingly, often when the market is collapsing, investment professionals suddenly discover the importance of preserving capital and adopt a wait and see attitude, while investors who follow the first rule of investing, never lose money, are doing the exact opposite and jumping in with both feet.
- When you can’t find an investment that meets your criteria, don’t invest at all. Put it in T-bonds.
- Only invest when you can buy at a price significantly below your estimate of the business’ value. (the margin of safety)
- Buffett’s only concern is whether his investments continue to meet his criteria. If they do, he is happy–regardeless of how the market might be valuing them. He simply doesn’t care what the market is doing. He wouldn’t mind if the stock market closed down for 10 years.
- Graham’s ideal investment was a company that could be bought at a price significantly below its liquidation or book value
- Anecdote about Mr. Market and his whims and changing emotions. The more manic-depressive his behavior, the better for you. At times he falls euphoric, at other times he is depressed.
- Mr. Market is there to serve you, not to guide you. It will be disastrous if you fall under his influence. Use your own, independently derived standard of value for determining when a business is cheap or expensive.
- One way or another, the market is always wrong.
- Buffet started with Graham’s model but became influenced by the Fisher model starting in 1963 with his purchase of American Express (after his partner Charlie Munger’s influence, who he met in 1959).
- Fisher – Reading the printed financial records about a company is never enough to justify an investment. One of the major steps in prudent investment must be to find out about a company’s affairs from those who have some direct familiarity with them.
- Fisher – If the job has been correctly done when a common stock is purchased, the time to sell it is–almost never. His average hold was 20 years.
- There are only 3 times to sell a stock–when you’ve found you made a mistake, when the stock no longer meets your criteria, or when you find a fantastic opportunity and the only way to buy it is to sell some stock.
- If there is one factor that sets the Master Investor apart, it is the amount of thinking they have done.
- To Buffett, a company’s worth is the present value of it’s future earnings.
- Companies that focus on making their moats (of competitive advantage) wider and deeper, and fill them with piranhas, crocodiles, and fire-breathing dragons, are what Buffett is after.
- Diversification is for commoners.
- The right amount of a good investment to buy is as much as possible
- Diversification is a protection against ignorance. It makes very little sense for those who know what they’re doing. — Warren Buffett
- The opposite of diversification, concentration in a small number of investments–is central to both Buffett’s and Soros’ success.
- To Soros, investment success comes from preservation of capital and home runs.
- Soros incorporated the Quantum Fund in a tax haven, the Netherland Antilles, so it can compound its profits tax-free.
- How did Soros and Rogers find stocks? They read. Intensely. Trade publications like Fertilizer Solutions and Textile Week were common.
- Read annual reports of the companies you plan to buy–as well as those of their competitors.
- You make your money when you buy
- Monitoring your investment after you make it is just as important as buying
- Story of Harold saying, How would you like to be the target of a class-action lawsuit on behalf of the minority shareholders for failing to maximize this company’s value?
- The Master Investor has the patience when he can’t find an investment that meets his criteria to wait indefinitely until he finds one that does.
- Soros insists on formulating a written thesis before taking a position.
- Soros – To be successful, you need leisure
- The Master Investor acts instantly when he has made a decision.
- The Master Investor never makes an investment without first knowing when he is going to sell (based on pre-set criteria)
- The Master Investor almost never talks to anyone about what he’s doing. He is not interested or concerned with what others think about his investment decisions.
- In evaluating people, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if you don’t have the first, the other two will kill you. – Buffett
- Warren gets people to work their butts off after he buys the business. Now that’s a good skill to have.
- Buffett’s two roles are 1) capital allocation and 2) to motivate people to work who simply have no need to
- One of Buffett’s conditions when he purchases control of a company is that the existing owners stay on to manage it. Part of his success is choosing to only do business with people who simply love their work the way he does.
- Munger – I had a considerable passion to get rich. Not because I wanted Ferraris–I wanted the independence.
- If you are inspired by what you do, then any money you make while pursuing your goals is merely a side effect.
- Buffett – Money is a byproduct of doing something I like doing extremely well.
- When Soros burned out in 1981, he was already worth $25 million, but he had no accomplished what he set out for in life.
- Soros wants to write a book that will be read for as long as civilization lasts.
- For Buffett and Soros, making money is a means to an end, not an end in itself.
- The artist has a vision of his painting–of his ultimate goal. When he paints, his focus is on his craft, on the way he applied his brush to the canvas. He is absorbed by the process of paining. When he is totally involved in what he is doing, the master painter enters a mental state called flow. Flow is a state where absorption is so complete that one’s entire mental focus is on the task being performed.
- Buffett- The first question I always ask myself about a business owner is: Do they love the money or do they love the business, because the day after I buy a company, if they love the money, they’re gone.
- Neither Buffett nor Soros have passed the Series 7 exam. Soros took it and failed. Buffett was the CEO of Salomon Brothers and never took it.
- The Master Investor puts his net worth on the line and has most of his net worth in his company.
- Carl Icahn’s strategy is took take large positions in ‘undervalued’ stocks and then attempt to control the destinies of the companies in question by a) trying to convince the management to liquidate or sell the company to a white knight b) waging a proxy contest, or c) make a tender offer or and/or d) selling back our position to the company.
- They buy companies trading at or below book or liquidation value where no one including incumbent management had a significant stake in the company.
- He would create confusion in the market place by talking and talking and talking to keep the management off guard–he would sow confusion.
- Alfred Kingsley joined Icahn as his associate in 1968
- They then seek a seat on the board. Icahn is actively involved in creating his own exit path by finding the highest bidder.
- Icahn’s biggest mistake was buying TWA in 1985
- Templeton – Buy in bear markets. The best time to buy is when the markets are down and most investors, including the professionals are too scared too invest.
- Templeton got a Rhodes Scholarship after finishing an economics degree at Yale
- Templeton moved to the Bahamas so he could live there tax-free. Templeton views his money as a sacred trust that he can use to help other people.
- Templeton shorted individual dot com stocks in January 2000 systematically 11 days before the 6 month lockup period was set to expire and made $86 million.
- Buffett and Soros believe that they deserve to succeed and make money and that they are in control of their own destiny.
- The strategies were: Buffett-Buy a good business that can be purchased for less than the discounted value of its future earnings. Soros: Buy (or sell) an investment that can be purchased or sold prior to a reflexive shift in market psychology/fundamentals that will change its perceived value substantially. Icahn – buy a company with no controlling shareholder trading below its breakup value that’s a potentially appealing candidate for a takeover. Graham – buy a company that can be purchased for substantially less than its intrinsic value.
- One investment approach is to find good investments by reading and then talking to managers, competitors, retailers, suppliers, and others in the business.
- A complete investment system has detailed rules covering what to buy, when to buy it, what price to pay, how to buy it, how much to buy as a percentage of your portfolio, monitoring the progress of your investments, when to sell, portfolio structure and the use of leverage, search strategy, protection against systemic shocks such as market crashes, handling mistakes, what to do when the system doesn’t work
Keynote at CEO: Finding Your Purpose in Life
October 23, 2007
Here is the slide deck from my keynote speech on Saturday afternoon at the Collegiate Entrepreneurs Organization Annual Conference(7MB).
The speech was titled Finding The Purpose of Your Life in Six Lessons. I had a blast giving the speech. I can’t say I’ve ever danced to Soulja Boy in front of 800 people.
The accompanying music for the slides is Yeah by Usher Feat. Lil Jon and Crank That Soulja Boy by Soulja Boy.
Here’s the BHAG gorilla…
Who Are YOUR Role Models?
October 23, 2007
Who Are Your Role Models?
I’ve given some thought to the people I follow, read about, and try to learn from. While we all have faults, secrets, and imperfections, there are a good two dozen people that I consider today to be my role models in a few different fields.
The question I want to know is who are YOUR role models? Who should I consider starting to follow and learn more about that isn’t on this list? Would you leave the names of your role models in the comments?
Here’s to all the solemn souls who have cared for humanity that have come before and all those blessed brothers and sisters who come after. Here are my current role models.
SOCIAL ENTREPRENEUR/ACTIVIST ROLE MODELS
Mahatma Gandhi (The non-violent revolutionary)
Mother Theresa (The lady who cared for the sick and poor)
Martin Luther King, Jr. (The Man with a Dream)
Susan B. Anthony (Civil rights and suffrage leader)
Paul Farmer (Doctor for the Poor, Mountains Beyond Mountains)
Mohammed Yunus (Banker to the Poor)
Dennis Whittle (Founder of Global Giving)
Bill Drayton (Founder of Ashoka)
Matt Flannery (Founder of Kiva)
Jessica Jackley Flannery (Founder of Kiva)
Dan West (Founder of Heifer International)
Bernard Kouchner (Co-Founder of Doctors Without Borders)
Kerry Kennedy (Human rights activist)
Laura Arrillaga (Venture philanthropist)
BUSINESS ROLE MODELS
Bill Gates (the innovator and hard-line businessman)
Jeffrey Skoll (the eBay founder and social entrepreneur innovator)
Warren Buffet (the smartest fundamentalist around)
Marc Benioff (the SaaS phenomenom-maker)
Marc Andreessen (keeps hitting home runs)
Steve Jobs (he comeback kid)
Larry Page (the technologist and business innovator)
Sergey Brin (the dynamic duo part deux)
Richard Branson (loses his virginity every day)
Thomas Edison (succeeded by failing 3,635 times)
Steve Jurvetson (the VC gadget-lover)
Andrew Carnegie (the library funder)
J.P. Morgan (the financial system saver)
John D. Rockefeller (the competitor)
John D. MacArthur (the PBS funder)
Sam Walton (the great retailer, scaler, and SIFE founder)
Henry Ford (his ability to scale, not him per say)
Larry Ellison (his ability to sell, not him per se)
Tom Perkins (his ability to put together venture deals, not him per se)
Jimmy Wales (the maker of ubiquitous information)
ECONOMIST ROLE MODELS
Jeffrey Sachs (End of Poverty, Common Wealth)
Hernando De Soto (The Mystery of Capital)
George Soros (Open Society)
Milton Friedman (Capitalism and Freedom)
John Maynard Keynes (The General Theory)
JOURNALIST/AUTHOR ROLE MODELS
Tom Friedman (Lexus and The Olive Tree)
John Perkins (Confessions of An Economic Hitman)
Robert Kiyosaki (Rich Dad Poor Dad)
Napoleon Hill (Think and Grow Rich)
Jim Collins (Good to Great)
POLITICAL ROLE MODELS
Abraham Lincoln (The Uniter)
Benjamin Franklin
(The Inventor)
John F. Kennedy (The Dreamer)
Benazir Bhutto (The Fighter)
John McCain (The Fighter)
Barack Obama (The Changer & Inspirer)
Al Gore (The Authentic)
Bill Clinton (The World Changer)
Jimmy Carter (The Carer)
Hillary Rodham Clinton (The Courageous)
Mario Cuomo (The Speaker)
…And anyone who worked or is currently working to increase human prosperity, ensure an economically prosperous and sustainable world, and reduce human suffering, poverty, disease, warfare, and genocide.
Who do I need to know about??? Who’s doing amazing things??? Leave a comment…
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