Walter Knapp

"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

How do you know if an idea, product, team, or business 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

"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

It's the push and pull of creating anything remarkable.  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? Was your Judgement right,

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

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

I get to live and work in Boulder, CO.   Some have described Boulder as "25 square miles, surrounded by reality", and I don't think it's all that far off.  Boulder's a phenomenally beautiful place, quite literally surrounded by a 43,000 acre green-belt of permanent open space buffering it like

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,

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,

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 we help others succeed.