firstname.lastname

More decisions, faster

I believe in being scrappy.  I believe in being market-driven.  I believe in making more decisions, faster. We each see the world through our own lens.  Everyone sits somewhere on a spectrum of comfort or discomfort with ambiguity & uncertainty. More conservative folks tend to want to tamp down uncertainty & ambiguity.

How to Organize

Organizations exist to coordinate efforts and output. This is always in order to achieve something greater than the sum of the parts.  Every business, group, or unit has an organizational structure.  Most often this is depicted in an “org chart” that mostly only shows the hierarchy of oversight or control.

The Path

Everyone wants to be successful, be happier, get what they want. There are many paths we can take. The choices are simple, and taking the best path is always hard. I’ve learned that the best path to choose is right there in front of me.  I’ve not always

One thing

"History is just one damn thing after another" I was a History major in college.  Basically that means that you read a ton, write a ton, and try to understand why certain events happened - and - what those events did to cause things to happen afterward. Much of what

Patience

How do you know if something is a good bet? In the short run it's always unclear. Probabilities suggest that evidence or proof is pretty thin in the beginning.  Good ideas can struggle.  Bad ideas can succeed.  If we focus too much on the short run performance we run the

Guess who?

"If you've been playing poker for a half an hour and you still don't know who the patsy is, you're the patsy" - Warren Buffet We've all spent time in large, recurring, intentionally important meetings.  The type of meeting where you get together with other busy people to cross-functionally address

Persistence

It's something every entrepreneur, investor, leader, or creator of remarkable things struggles with.  If they don't, they're either lying to you, or to themselves. Is your judgement right? Or did you miss something in your blind spot? Your judgement was right, but you didn't persist. It's a mind-f*ck struggle.

Retained Optimism

When we set out to do anything we form a mental picture or "forecast" of what can be achieved with proper focus and execution.  Forecasts, given their nature of predicting the future are often wrong.  Ideally they're wrong in a favorable sense, where we exceed our aim.  Obviously sometimes we

What matters

Note: I wrote the following in an internal email to the team here at Sovrn. A big perk of my job as CEO is I get to meet with all sorts of interesting people. Many of the people I meet are fellow entrepreneurs, CEOs, and aspiring company leaders. A few

Cycles

I get to live and work in Boulder, CO. Some have described Boulder as "25 square miles, surrounded by reality [https://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/30/style/tmagazine/30boulder.html]", and I don't think it's all that far off.  Boulder's a phenomenally beautiful place, quite literally surrounded by a

Values

Values are a reflection of what you want your behaviors to be.  Values are always aspirational, sometimes inspirational.  Values are what you believe. Your beliefs + your behaviors = who you are. Collective beliefs + behaviors of a group = the culture of the group. I've worked in different companies and cultures.  I've observed,

Probabilities

If we see things through probabilities & bets, we give ourselves a built-in opportunity to improve. Armed with this perspective, we can develop and then seek to improve our systems. Systems allow us to better evaluate probabilities, and place better bets. A revenue forecast, for example, (supported by existing customers, retention

(more than money)

Work on something that matters to you more than the monetary rewards you get for doing it. Create value for other people faster than you create value for yourself. We succeed when others succeed.

Competition

Our nature is to compete. Especially among motivated and high-performing people competition is always “on”. Its tempting to value collaboration over competition, but I think that misses the point. One is a consequence and the other is a cause of being successful. [https://www.firstnamedotlastname.com/content/images/wordpress/2011/

The audience

It turns out we are the audience.  We buy the toothpaste.  We take the vacations.  We check out the new ‘whatever’ it is we want to buy.  We are the people that get marketed to.  And we are the people that the entire advertising industry is based upon.  Basically, to

Machete

Great things happen when you’re on a roll. Coming up with a smart idea usually kicks off more smart ideas; more smart ideas lead to innovations. Being confident in what you know and what your doing has a positive reinforcement in making you feel more confident, more creative, more

What Matters

It turns out that I'm more interested in other stuff than I was in the stuff I was learning in school. That changed when I got to grad school. The difference was that I wanted to learn the material because I found it interesting; it mattered to me. I had

What's the purpose?

What’s the purpose of a company? Why do we do what we do? Peter Drucker [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Drucker] said: the purpose of a company is to create a customer. The purpose isn't to generate profit, nor make money. The purpose isn't to generate shareholder returns.

More rules

#901 – The simpler the idea the more likely it will succeed. #32 – Partnerships matter. #742 – Its more complicated than that. #49 – If I like you and I trust you, I will buy something from you. #1127 – The harder the job, the more lonely it will be.

What do sailing and running a business have in common?

Sailing isn’t all that hard.  Sailing faster and more efficiently than anyone else when everyone has all the exact same equipment is really really hard!  It turns out that sailing and running a business have a lot in common. 1. Boat size = company size [http://walterknapp.typepad.com/.a/

Walterville

[http://walterknapp.typepad.com/.a/6a00e54eff9e5388330120a76a2d85970b-pi]

Smart people can ratf*ck you

Good intentions. Sage advice. Clever insights.  All good and worthy goals of a conversation with a smart person, a successful person, an influential person.  The problem lies in the clarity of what you want out of it and your perspective on the situation or issue.  Smart people want (desperately) to

Even more rules

#73 Work is inextricably intertwined with life. If you don’t believe me you probably need to get a new one. #19 Saying you’ll do something and actually doing it is not the same thing.This is even worse if you’re a repeat offender.  This is somewhat to

Knapp?

Just got this from a good friend. Drove through the worst snow blizzard I've ever been to…was going so slow that I saw this sign, grabbed my phone, took it out of its cover, turned it on, made an espresso, drank it and took this picture that I hope

Innovating

Thomas Friedman has a short op-ed in the NYT today [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/22/opinion/22friedman.html].  I think he hits the mark on how we should be thinking about investments and bailouts in this country.  If we want to come out of this economic crisis in