The Art of the Start: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything

The next time you think that there's something that you "can't live without", wait for a week and then see if you're still alive or not

Many years ago Rudyard Kipling gave an address at McGill University in Montreal. He said one striking thing which deserves to be remembered. Warning the students against an over-concern for money, or position, or glory, he said: “Some day you will meet a man who cares for none of these things. Then you will know how poor you are.” —Halford E. Luccock

The purpose of a pitch is to stimulate interest, not to close a deal.

Good enough is good enough. There is time for refinement later. It’s not how great you start—it’s how great you end up.

Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes. —Oscar Wilde

not pray for an easy life; pray for the strength to endure a difficult one.

The first follower is what transforms the lone nut into a leader,” and in a startup, that first follower is usually a cofounder.

If you can’t describe your business model in ten words or fewer, you don’t have a business model.

BE BRIEF. Brevity beats verbosity in social media. You’re competing with millions of posts every day. People make snap judgments and move right along if you don’t capture their interest at a glance. My experience is that the sweet spot for posts of curated content is two or three sentences on Google+ and Facebook and 100 characters on Twitter. The sweet spot for content that you create, such as blog posts, is 500 to 1,000 words.

If you think that leadership is deciding what you want and telling people to do it, I feel sorry for you. Reality is going kick your ass so far that not even Google will find you.

I have never thought of writing for reputation and honor. What I have in my heart must come out; that is the reason why I compose. —Ludwig van Beethoven

There are very few people who don’t become more interesting when they stop talking. —Mary Lowry

Q: I admit it: I’m scared. I can’t afford to quit my current job. Is this a sign that I don’t have what it takes to succeed? A: It doesn’t mean anything. You should be scared. If you aren’t scared, something is wrong with you, and your fears are not a sign that you don’t have the right stuff. In the beginning, every entrepreneur is scared. It’s just that some deceive themselves about it, and others don’t. You can overcome these fears in two ways. First, the kamikaze method is to dive into the business and try to make a little progress every day. One day you’ll wake up and you won’t be afraid anymore—or at least you’ll have a whole new set of fears.

You can’t build a reputation on what you’re going to do. —Henry Ford

Life is too short to work with people you don’t like—especially

If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late. —Reid Hoffman

Albert Einstein trendedir. Bütün ceplerini ve çantalarını araştırmasına karşın biletini bulamaz. Bu arada kontrolör yaklaşır ve şöyle bir şeyler söyler: "Dr. Einstein, sizi herkes tanır. Princeton'un size başka bir tren bileti alacak parası olduğunu da biliyoruz." Einstein'in yanıtı da şöyle olur: "Benim endişem para değil. Bileti bulmak zorundayım, çünkü nereye gittiğimi unuttum." Tıpkı Einstein gibi, sizler de para için değil, nereye gittiğiniz için endişelenmelisiniz. Nereye gittiğinizi keşfederseniz, para da zaten gelir.

Girişim sermayederi bir kadın, bir akşam babasını otopark servisi olan şık bir restorana yemeğe götürüyor. Yolda giderlerken, babası, gösterişli bir BMW aldığı için kızını azarlıyor. Kadın, restoranın önünde duruyor ve inip içeri giriyorlar. Birkaç saat sonra baba kız restorandan çıktıklarında, otomobilin hâlâ park ettikleri yerde durduğunu görüyorlar. Fırsatı kaçırmayan kadın, babasına dönüp şöyle diyor: "Şimdi anladın mı? Restoranlar, gösterişli otomobilleri kapının önüne bırakırlar, çıkınca getirilmesini beklemek zorunda kalmazsın!" O anda otoparkçı kadının yanına yaklaşıp "Hanımefendi," diyor, "anahtarları vermemişsiniz. Otomobilinizi parka çekemedik.

Çoğu girişimci, yalnızca pirinç ve soya sosu ile beslenir ve bir yandan da iğneyle kuyu kazarcasına kendi işini kurar.

His idea is to get your team together and pretend that your product has failed. That’s right: failed, cratered, imploded, or “went aloha oe,” as we say in Hawaii. You ask the team to come up with all the reasons why the failure occurred. Then each member has to state one reason until every reason is on a list. The next step is to figure out ways to prevent every reason from occurring.

If you make meaning, you’ll probably also make money.

Entrepreneurship is about doing, not learning to do.

It’s easy to imagine a young person asking his parents if he should go to work for a startup and being told, “Don’t. It’s too risky. Get a job in a nice, safe company that will be around a long time—like Lehman Brothers, Arthur Andersen, or Enron.

Entrepreneurship is at its best when it alters the future, and it alters the future when it jumps curves

No hables al menos que puedas mejorar el silencio. (Don’t speak unless you can improve on the silence.) —Jorge Luis Borges

It’s not what you know or who you know, but who knows you. —Susan RoAne

Hiring better than yourself means that you hire for strengths as opposed to hiring on the basis of the lack of weaknesses. A great leader hires people for their strengths and then assigns them tasks that take advantage of those strengths.