Date archives "February 2013"

Radical Openess

This video by Jason Silva is brilliantly made. He talks about the birth of an idea and how it evolves over time. Anyone involved in creative pursuits knows the transformative power of a single ‘idea’. The ability for it to transform as we iterate to refine it further. To create something of value where there was nothing before. This video does a great job of encapsulating these ideas into a 2 minute video masterpiece.

The Ultimate Guide to Hiring as a Small Business

As someone who has been in the HR space for over 5 years, I have helped many companies of varying sizes with their recruiting function, from large organizations like Standard Chartered to 2 person startups. Regardless of your size, recruiting well is a very challenging job. Unfortunately, it gets harder as the size of the company becomes smaller. I wrote a very comprehensive article detailing some key steps for your Small Business to get a leg up on out recruiting competition.

I look forward to getting your feedback and thoughts on the piece.

The Ultimate Guide to Hiring as a Small Business

Finding Simple Solutions

Steve Blank has one of the best definitions of what is a startup:

“a startup is an organization formed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model.”

To ensure that a business is scalable, the problem the startup builds a solution for should have a large addressable market.

An important aspect of it being a repeatable process is a function of how simple the solution is.

Thus the harder the problem and the simpler the solution, tends to make for businesses that achieve scale much faster. This does generalize other factors such as network efforts and available distribution platforms etc.

However at it’s crux I do believe simplifying your business to benchmarking how difficult the problem you are solving for is compared to the simplicity of the solution is a great way to quickly evaluate the viability of your startup.

Our Dreams

Dreams. Dreams are aspirations in the form of guides that push our imagination. Nothing is out of our grasp. When we close our eyes, we can be anyone or anywhere we choose to be. As we keep moving forward in life, our dreams keep evolving. They are reflections of our subconscious, our hopes and our deepest fears and desires.

Translating these dreams is what separates the dreamers from the doers. Taking action goes hand in hand with the ability to close your eyes and imagine what it should be. It is too easy to blame circumstances. Nothing worth fighting for comes easily. Throwing in the towel when the going gets tough is the easy way out. Getting up after falling repeatedly, is what makes us stronger and our journey definitive.

In the end, it all comes down to taking responsibility for your dreams. Matching the ambition to the effort is essential to help make your dreams come true. When taking and making these hard decisions and sacrifices, you need to…

“Look in the mirror and ask, ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?”

Steve Jobs

 

 

Inspiring Visions

I just finished watching the latest and perhaps last episode of Kevin Roses’s Foundation series. It is a series of interviews with some of the biggest internet/technology entrepreneurs. If you are starting up or in the process of building your company I would highly recommend queuing all the interviews and watching them.

The last interview was with David Morin of Path. A mobile application which is building a personal network for our closest real world connections. What I find fascinating about entrepreneurs which are going after large goals is their view of the future. The ability to paint a distant future with a great detail of clarity is what makes visions inspiring.

In this video David does a great job of this and even though he isn’t bouncing off the walls talking about how great his product is and is going to be, there is subtle passionate and authentic undertone. This undertone connects with people who share similar visions of the future and values. It makes you want to take another look at the application and see what you have been missing.

In the end it comes down to….inspiring action through authentic visions.