Articles

A few weeks ago, I had the good fortune to get an early release of the book That Will Never Work: The Birth of Netflix and the Amazing Life of an Idea by Marc Randolph. Marc and I grew up about 2 miles away from each other and went to the same high school. He was a very good guy and while we were friends, by the time high school arrived and after, we traveled in different circles. I had heard he was a co-founder of Netflix but it was hard for me to visualize how that happened and while curious,…

It probably all begins with a desire to do more, be more, and connect with something bigger: that’s the common denominator that starts to connect those who enroll in the MITx Entrepreneurship courses on edX. These MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) are centered around Bill Aulet’s global bestseller ‘Disciplined Entrepreneurship’ and made available to prospective students worldwide through the open-source, non-profit platform known as edX.

This past week reminded me yet again of a common pattern in new ventures that is one of the most common killers of new ventures even if they get the 24 steps done well. It is what I call the “tree house mentality”. I call it this because I remember when we were young and growing up, we would build tree houses—which generally were platforms in trees. They could be more elaborate with walls and open windows and maybe even a roof. You had to climb to get to them but once you got to them, you felt…

This past week, a friend sent me a link to a video talking about how Roger Federer sleeps 12 hours per day. Turns out he is not the only athlete at all who does this. Lebron James, Usain Bolt, Steve Nash, Venus William are in the same boat. I know some entrepreneurs would say that “sleep is for the weak”. 

Teaching entrepreneurship well is really hard. I know this because when I first started teaching, I did a terrible job. As a former professional basketball player and an experienced entrepreneur, I fell back on convenient sports analogies: Work hard, be smart, stay up later, get up earlier. Be prepared.

Can entrepreneurship be taught? This question stirs quite the debate. Some will say entrepreneurs are born, not made. If I’m honest, I used to fall into this category. I believed entrepreneurship was all about hustle, tenacity and the relentless pursuit of your vision in the face and adversity and doubters...

As I run workshops for entrepreneurs, a key part of our training is that they have to focus. Entrepreneurs have to select a beachhead market and then actively deselect other markets. It is very common that students have resistance to this step from mild to actively and emotionally rejecting this concept as wrong.

Last month, from May 20-23, I had the honor of leading an intense four day workshop on Disciplined Entrepreneurship for about 80 participants who were either entrepreneurs, aspiring entrepreneurs or entrepreneurship amplifiers (i.e., educators, people running incubators/accelerators, government agencies supporting entrepreneurship). This is my third year doing it and I really enjoy it for many reasons.

As the Disciplined Entrepreneurship 24 step methodology has become more refined and robust from all the utilization it has gotten of the past five years, it has become clear to me that more and more the gating factor to success is the quality of the information utilized in executing the framework. This is Primary Market Research (PMR). If we put garbage PMR in, we will get garbage results out.

After spending three incredible sunny days in Rome, I could try to wax poetically about the history, culture, and people of this truly unique city but many books have been written about this topic by people far more qualified than I to comment on these topics, so I will not. I will focus on observations on the entrepreneurship dimension of the city.