Because big businesses aren’t built on gimmicks. You can blitz your way through Sand Hill Road and spike up the App Store charts on gimmicks, but you can’t actually use them to replace Gmail, or Salesforce, or Instagram, or Instagram, or Instagram, or Instagram. Even seemingly instant successes can’t become lasting companies without putting in the ... See more

The truth is, you should be looking for hard things. The hard things are what keep the competition away. The hard things are what create barriers to entry. The hard things are the things that, once you push through, make it nearly impossible for anyone else to follow.

Or, as I always tell my students: The hardest-working entrepreneur will always bea... See more

If you have a good idea that excites you, that compels you to take a detour from the comfort of a normal existence along the beaten path, you will first need to navigate this minefield of misunderstanding, whether it lives within you or sits between you and those whose opinions you value and respect. Because while you can never fully know what you’

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We all know “startups are hard,” but I think we tend to imagine that this difficulty is bounded, contained, modelable, a bit like running a marathon: yes, legs and lungs hurt, but that’s normal and appropriate, and we know the route, the distance, and that there’s a finish line. This is a kind of difficulty we can contend with without losing oursel... See more