The Article Every First-Time (And Failed) Entrepreneur Needs to Read

Sometimes the prize feels closer, other times farther away. Still other times it feels like we are drowning in aimlessness and exasperation. An identity crisis looms for any high achiever flirting with failure, and a calculation begins on the conflicting forces of sunk costs and lost time on the one hand, and reputational harm on the other. As entr... See more

Take, for example, the ambition to “make your venture-backed startup profitable”: to develop, market, and distribute a product or service that’s never existed before, in a form that’s valuable and accessible enough for large numbers of people to want to pay you for it, in sufficient quantity that your revenue consistently exceeds your costs.

If you... See more

As you move forward, there are a few things to keep in mind. First and foremost, it’s never too late to “become” yourself. Aristotle, for example, didn’t fully devote himself to writing and philosophy until he was nearly 50. There are also benefits to taking a long, winding path to self-fulfillment. Remember that age typically brings wisdom, resili... See more

3. Learn to think independently

Entrepreneurship is very difficult to teach because original thinking is very difficult to teach. School is not set up to teach this—in fact, it generally rewards the opposite. So you have to cultivate it on your own.

Thinking from first principles and trying to generate new ideas is fun, and finding people to exchang... See more