These are lessons I’ve learned over a decade of supporting early-stage entrepreneurs at Stanford and in El Paso. No entrepreneurial journey is the same, but these principles are broadly applicable.
- Only entrepreneurs can build companies.
- Only entrepreneurs can build themselves into entrepreneurs.
- There are unknowable and uncontrollable factors that can dictate an entrepreneur’s success or failure. Even the best founders can fail if market conditions aren’t favorable.
- In most cases, you will not have the applicable skills or experience to help entrepreneurs with their particular problem.
- The best ways to reliably support entrepreneurs are to 1) help them maintain morale and 2) find people who can help.
- There is no right way to build a company, but there are countless wrong ways.
- Bad advice is worse than no advice.
- Your advice should be regarded as one data point.
- The winner is often whoever stays alive the longest.
- Every successful tech company must break a few important conventions, but it must not break all conventions. The challenge lies in picking the right conventions to break.
- Most companies should do most things conventionally so they can focus on breaking the right conventions.
- There are no shortcuts. Whatever impedes the entrepreneur’s path should become the path.
- A company needs people who can sell and people who can build.
- It is significantly easier to become a salesperson than it is to become a builder.
- A salesperson who cannot hire builders will not succeed.
- Everyone wants to connect the dots, but few people want to go through the trouble of collecting dots.
- 99.9% of great ideas come from experience or networks with experience. Students and young entrepreneurs typically have little of either.
- Expertise must be lived, and it goes stale fast.
- Real entrepreneurs don’t need permission to start.
- Money is an accelerant, not permission.
- If you think you know how to find the next great entrepreneur, quit your job and make billions as an investor.
- You cannot alter risk preferences of sophisticated investors. Entrepreneurs should only take investments from sophisticated investors.
- If you continuously tell people they are something, they will eventually start to believe you.