Something I don't talk a lot about is that until early high school my family survived on section 8 housing and commodity food. Some people may recognize this can, but if you don't the tl;dr is it's the least appealing part of any commodity food box, whether you eat pork or not.
There was also a "Beef With Natural Juices" with a similar level of visual appeal. But, when you live below the poverty level...what you get is what you work with.
Since my parents were first and second generation immigrants that started over, we didn't have any wealth to speak of.
That meant that when things went badly (and when you're poor nearly anything unexpected goes badly) we were at a high risk for being on the street. My parents hid this from us, but it was present in all sorts of ways.
For example, when I was 11 or 12 a neighbor's dog chased me and I broke my arm hopping a fence.
We had no health insurance and my accident nearly destroyed our family, although I didn't know it at the time. I just thought getting a Raiders cast was cool, which, fortunately the doctor said no to because he knew that wouldn't be safe in the neighborhood we lived in.
The hockey stick growth slide is broken (here's a better one)
Without question, the most popular slide in a startup pitch deck is the one showing hockey stick growth.
When you find product/market fit and start seeing rapid customer acquisition, the theory goes, your basic X/Y axis of time and revenue will show exponential jumps. Your monthly revenue goes from $7,000 > $70,000 > $700,000, hence the hockey stick graphic.
Obviously, this is an extremely attractive slide to put in your pitch deck or financials. And while it’s clearly oriented toward venture capital investors, over the last decade hockey stick growth thinking has made its way into private equity and the broader marketplace as others learned from and emulated the growth of Facebook, Google, etc.
The slide does have value, but investors, companies, and founders still frequently mistake the hockey stick as a model for growth, rather than the consequence of it.
Read MoreWhat happens when you frame the work
One of the hardest parts of making the jump to being a manager, leader, or starting a company/org is learning to frame your work.
This is a brutal truth: most people don’t know how to frame the work they are doing.
It shows up all the time…
Two people schedule a meeting and spend the first 20 minutes telling a third person about a conversation they already had.
Someone with writing as a core part of their job delivers two projects. One is amazing and on-point, the other is ok but written for the wrong audience.
A partnership opportunity appears out of thin air but the company/org can’t move fast enough to leverage it.
The myth of only hiring high performers
One of the things that’s surprised me over the last few years: most people are coachable, but the majority of managers/leaders are looking for people they don’t have to coach.
This shows up in job descriptions regularly. Sometimes it’s arrogant, like when a founder or executive says “high performers only, we are not here to babysit you.” Other times, it’s more subtle, with a bullet point or two emphasizing the search for someone who is “highly autonomous.”
On the surface, this makes a manager or leader look/feel smart. You’re hiring someone who’s ready to go to work, they are motivated, and they will deliver results without needing much ( or any) support.
There are a few problems with optimizing this way…
Read MoreThe difference between a marketplace and a community
It’s hard to overstate how much power online platforms now have across the globe.
They enable us to easily book a room in São Paulo, scan the news headlines in Nairobi, search for a job in Wellington, and connect us to the people, products, and services around us.
The dominant model for all of this activity is the modern marketplace.
Amazon, Airbnb, Didi Chuxing, Uber, Stripe, WeWork, these are all marketplaces, designed for people to buy and sell products and/or services. The model also extends to social media, where platforms like Facebook have marketplace features and are also viewed as a marketplace for information, ideas exchanged, views shared, beliefs tested etc.
But a marketplace isn’t a community, and as it turns out the difference matters quite a bit.
Read More