Adrian Blake's presentation at MWEC 2014
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Three Big Things Adrian Blake April 4, 2014 Midwest Entrepreneurship Conference
description
I tell stories about the personal costs and benefits of the startup journey-- finding a business model, getting to execution, and managing yourself.
Transcript of Adrian Blake's presentation at MWEC 2014
Three Big Things
Adrian BlakeApril 4, 2014
Midwest Entrepreneurship Conference
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The Three Problems to Solve
1. The Quest for a Business Model
2. The Quest for Execution
3. The Quest for Balance
The Quest for a Business Model
Steve Blank
• A startup is a temporary organization in search of a repeatable, scalable business model.
• A corporation, by contrast, is a permanent organization designed to execute a repeatable, scalable business model.
You Don’t Know Where You’re Going and You Don’t Know How to Get There
• When a great team meets a lousy market, market wins
• When a lousy team meets a great market, market wins.
• When a great team meets a great market, something special happens.
The Quest for Execution
Good to Great
The Quest for Balance
No One Cares About Your Stupid Little Startup
People say they want to be in risky environments and do all kinds of exciting stuff. But they don't actually know what risk means, that risk actually does bring failure and mistakes.
Part of being the successful Pixar is that we will take risks on teams and ideas, and some of them won't work out. We only lose from this if we don't respond to the failures. If we respond, and we think it through and figure out how to move ahead, then we're learning from it. That's what Pixar is.
--Ed Catmull
“The first rule of the CEO psychological meltdown is don’t talk about the psychological meltdown.”
--Ben Horowitz
Company
1. Clarity about why you are doing this
2. Commitment to Intellectual Integrity
3. Ability to Improvise
Don’t aim at success — the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself.
Thank you very much
• Twitter: @adrianblake• Blog: adrianblake.me
Appendix
Follow these guys
• Mark Suster• Steve Blank• Eric Ries• Hunter Walk• Andrew Chen
