This site is very intermittently updated now. But the the links and especially my delicious bookmarks are upodated and may point you to fresh interesting material if you share my tastes.
The key lessons I’ve learnt are the importance of being persistent and flexible in your mindset. It’s inevitable that you will go through tough times, and that your idea will evolve a lot, but what differentiates you as a startup founder is the determination you have to stick with it, and your ability to adapt.
Persistence and flexibility – two things that often seem to people like opposites. Either you are fully committed and let nothing derail you, stubbornly ploughing on oblivious to setbacks and failures, or you learn from experience, and when something is going very very badly, bite the bullet and give up.
Like a lot of important traits, what is important is learning to work with seeming opposites, and that is something that can’t be taught by just telling someone “be persistent”, “be flexible”, or even “be persistent and yet flexible”. It’s something that must be learned experientally.
Other such opposites, at least for entrepreneurs, are described in the book Smart Luck.
I described another pair of paradoxical qualities in my post on Patient Energy.
That is once again topical, as the Northern Ireland peace process reaches another huge milestone. Many people deserve great credit for that, including Tony Blair who has demonstrated incredible patience, energy and resilience in that area over ten years.
As you probably know, Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize this year.
The text of his lecture at the awards ceremony is available here. The video of the lecture is currently not working, but footage of the ceremonial parts of the event can be found in the YouTube videos below. Note that these give a flavour of the celebrations, with a lot of music and dance, as well as discussion of Yunus’ work and thought. Yunus’ own lecture starts 16 minutes and 45 seconds into Part 2, but is incomplete.
Ceremony Part 1 (Approx 40 min)
Ceremony Part 2 (Approx 30 min)
. . .
It turns out that there is also a website devoted to Muhammad Yunus, founder of Grameen Bank. This site appears to be something like a fans and supporters site, rather than Yunus’ own doing, but it has lots of useful information, and it seems he was willing to cut the ribbon for its launch, so is presumably happy with it.
An official site seems to be planned, and “coming soon” here.
Meanwhile buried in the very professional fan site – as I hope I can call it without offending anyone! – there are links to a number of videos by Ashoka.
I haven’t had time to view them yet, as they are each about 40 minutes long, but they appear very interesting. Although they definitely have a promotional spin, rather than being independent documentaries.
The one on Yunus’ life (“Banker to the Poor”) looks especially interesting as it gives a real insight into the making of the man.
The world is changing. And one way that it’s changing fast is that the likes of venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki are nowadays as engaged by making a difference as making money.
He says the most inspiring tale of entrepreneurship he’s heard in 2006 is not the one about a few young guys in a garage starting YouTube and making a billion dollars, but the story of a female entrepreneur in Afghanistan, who employs 260 women making leather goods.
For me, this story highlights many themes that are important:
The power of the entrepreneurial spirit, especially compared to the way that many traditional charities and non-profits operate
The shift in business consciousness, as more and more people are at least as interested in fulfillment and making a difference as making a pile of money
The rise of global partnerships and the increasing solidarity between the rich and the poor
These are things to celebrate, take heart from, and work to expand.
