The Wisdom List: Leif Abraham

What I Wish Someone Had Told Me

1. Optimism, obsession, self-belief, raw horsepower and personal connections are how things get started.


2. Cohesive teams, the right combination of calmness and urgency, and unreasonable commitment are how things get finished. Long-term orientation is in short supply; try not to worry about what people think in the short t

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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.

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If you seek extraordinary performance, focus on what you know very well, do your homework, have conviction and take a stand. It’s the right way to build a product, to build a company — and to be an exceptional investor.

Building high growth companies is hard — without a sense of purpose, you will inevitably burn out. That is why behind every investment we’ve made is a founder who has found his/her true purpose.