Meet Your New Role Model: The Workhorse

I never liked the term Unicorn. It never made sense to me to aspire to something mythical and therefore of theoretical value.

I’ve written before about the risks associated with trying to make unicorns and the fact that entrepreneurs are the ones who bare the burden of the risks associated with a go big or stay home company building philosophy. Unfortunately, over the past several years, tech-entrepreneurship seemed to become synonymous with making unicorns. If you weren’t working toward a billion dollar valuation in short order, you were wasting your time and the time of all of the investors to whom you were pitching your business plan.

For entrepreneurs who – for the past five years – have been enamored to achieve unicorn status, it may be time to leave the…

Meet Your New Role Model: The Workhorse

Vulnerability and Entrepreneurship

I was browsing through the new Tattered Cover store in the recently renovated Union Station in Denver a few weeks back and found myself standing in the Business Psychology section of the store. For some reason, I have a habit of finding that section without trying – gravity seems to pull me there. In any event, I started thumbing through a book by Brene Brown, named Daring Greatly. The subtitle of Daring Greatly reads: “How the courage to be vulnerable transforms the way we live, love, parent and lead.” There aren’t many books that stand-out to me as having altered my world view; Daring Greatly definitely did.

I had not heard of Brene Brown’s work before I picked up the book…

Vulnerability and Entrepreneurship

What it means to be non-linear

Some years ago, I promised myself I would start a blog, but only after I crossed the chasm of having been in the venture business for five+ years. After all, what could you possibly have to say that is of interest to anyone before you’ve seen a few great outcomes and a couple of disasters. Well, I’ve now been in the game for over six years and I’ve finally gotten off my duff to get this going.

I’ve learned a lot in my six years in the business. The first thing I’ve learned is that I have a lot more to learn. Failure is part of the system; you can not be a VC without encountering frequent failure. I’m pretty comfortable with that; the trick is to learn from your mistakes and learn fast.

What it means to be non-linear