I'm Kinda Blunt & To The Point
☿ VC, PE, Entrepreneur, Startup related ☿
~Quintin Adamis
The trouble with perspective.
I deeply subscribe and seek to embody the attributes of the Creative Leader. This leadership philosophy has proven to be the better long-term way to drive:
- innovation
- risk-taking
- strong team moral and loyalty
- trust in leadership
- strong communication
- open-ness
- less egos
- “we” versus “me” mentality
- “build to learn” culture
- a team that works well with uncertainty and ambiguity
- forward thinking
- success
- strong product based on real world needs
A market that is perceived as crowded can actually be quite empty. No one is really providing a great product or service. These crappy competitors are getting some customer traction because the market needs a product similar to what they have. But they have not built anything good enough to defend against the next young Google or Facebook.
Remember, just because someone has tried it before doesn’t mean you can’t make it work. Just because someone else is doing it, doesn’t mean you won’t win. You need to ask yourself is the competitor led by great people who can fast follow? Is their product and brand really strong? Do they have unfair or proprietary distribution? If the answer to these questions is no, then you may want to ignore the naysayers and go for it.
There’s one more thing that obviates the need for traction: social proof. If Marc Andreessen is investing in your round, the round will get done, it doesn’t matter what your product, traction, team or technology look like.
To raise money, you really only need to be exceptional in one of these categories:
1. product,
2. team,
3. traction,
3. social proof.
Since everyone thinks they’re exceptional, here is some calibration by way of analogy: it is the equivalent of getting into Harvard or getting 1600 on your SATs. That’s the bar to get funded. The bar for success is 1000x higher.
Babak Nivi (via krisnair)
For almost a year now I’ve been debating on whether or not to write this post and whether people would view it as controversial. It’s just one of those subjects that has a mix of old and new viewpoints about it, but the fact remains that the world is changing faster than many can keep up with. Here in the US, Medical Marijuana has spread to 18 states and has 11 others pending consideration. In the early 90s, this would have been something completely unthinkable considering it was the height of the War on “Drugs”. Today if you were to make a first-time visit to California, you’d witness employees of USC smoking on campus and old women over 60 lighting up in her car outside of a grocery store. I know, I saw this first hand. The use of medical marijuana has become as casual as cigarettes in many places. Sudo-legalization has also given rise to growth of all aspects of this industry. Equipment for growing, online magazines, foods, transport services, brick & mortar locations… you name it and there will more than likely be companies filling that space. It’s given rise to an uncertain billion dollar amount in consumption itself in an industry where the illegal venues rake in around $100B. Reports from 2010 have stated California patients themselves spent more than $13B. Data is all over the place, similar to startups, and is usually based on estimated small consumption amounts calculated off the actual number of nearly 2M registered patients. It’s been estimated that the current market is between $30-40B in the US.
Link»>The Next Multi-Billion Dollar Niche Industry
A grave mistake is to paint only for the end results and not for the joy of painting
Leanne Cadden
less humans, more robots: Rant on startup journalists and startup event junkies
Context: Last two weeks were eventful; I’m doing something which i avoided since i failed last: attending startup events and talking to ‘oh my god, startup journalists’ - this is an unstructured and angry comment on some of you I’ve met in the last 15 days. You know who you are.
Nobody can…
tartu
Absorb what is useful, reject what is useless, add what is specifically your own.
Bruce Lee
