startups

Are you living in a task-valuation bubble?

Alright, this is the startup geek in me coming out. Allow me to explain.

When we talk about “bubbles” these days, we usually mean some kind of investment is over-hyped and over-valued and therefore going to crash (or burst, as the case may be).

Many in the startup world are openly declaring the confidence game is over for startups. As if the big girls and boys who invest in those companies can be taken by the pitch “trust us and we’ll make you a lot of money.” The thing is, they’re all in on it together– trying to prop up valuations until they can dish it off on the investors who come later. That’s the game.

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Don’t Be Afraid of People. People are All You’ve Got.

Phone calls, coffees and meetings, oh my!

Scared to talk to someone you don’t know? Why? What could happen? Listen, I get what the fear of rejection is all about. I spent the first part of my career in sales and like countless other salespeople, I became a magical excuse machine for all the calls I did not make. We’re social animals; 40,000 years ago, strangers could kill you. So could your tribe rejecting you.

But we don’t live 40,000 years ago. Today, solutions are built on radical collaboration. The faster you gain empathy, insight, perspective, knowledge and help from other people, the faster you succeed. When I did that in sales, everything changed. So too with startups. The best big ideas are never (never EVER) born or perfected in a vacuum. That’s why lean startup and design thinking principles start with asking questions. Not building (and certainly not perfecting) a big fancy solution.

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