why here

I discovered an interesting website today and I wanted to share some of the videos that I found there. The messages given are not new for me any more (after a year living close to American universities and Silicon Valley in general), but they might be useful for my family and friends to understand why I’m here.

• Passion for work (video)
• Persistence pays off (video)
• Experience is overrated (video)
• The strengths of Silicon Valley (video)
• Can entrepreneurship be taught? (video)
• Perseverance: sticking to your beliefs (video)
• A member of the CEO minority (video)
• Entrepreneurs: then and now (pre and post 2001) (video)

Anyone still doesn’t understand why I’m here? ;)

Update: Pepe was in fact the one who found this website and gave me the link and he is requesting a mention :)

“the sky is the limit”

These are some quotes from yesterday’s talk at Stanford (European Entrepreneurship) from Mariana Bozesan.

Mariana’s experience was certainly interesting: she was born in the communist Romania where she grew up at the border of starvation but with a great education and without knowing that women had ever been discriminated. I guess this is a mentality change that made her live, as she says, believing that “the sky is the limit“.

She studied Computer Sciences in Germany and went to an exchange program to Stanford. That changed her life. She worked for big companies (what she considers the “Learning Phase”), she started several companies (in her “Entrepreneurial Phase”), she became an Angel Investor (“Investor Phase”) and she’s now in what she calls the “Integration Phase”: building bridges and making meaning.

She shared experiences and advices on all of these phases. Being an women born in the 60s, entrepreneur, and coming from Europe, she’s a surprising exception. I hope we won’t be an exception for too long.

1. “People who risk might loose, but people who don’t have already lost”
2. “Problems are part of life, but suffering is a choice”
3. “You can study as much as you want, but you’ll never know it all” – “Build an integral team”
4. “ALWAYS put people (customers, employees, partners) first”
5. “Be a life-long learner”
6. “Invest in things you can be proud of”
7. “DARE to take risks”
8. “The world is flat indeed. To be successful you MUST understand it.”
9. “You are always in CHARGE, learn how to take responsibility”
10. “Finding good partners is key, but stay in charge and keep control” – “Become independent thought unique expertise”
11. “Spend 20% on the problem and 80% on the solution”
12. “What really matters is who you are as a person and who you become in the process”
13. Know WHAT you want, WHY you want it and HOW to make it sustainable”
14. “Success without happiness is failure”
15. “Science of Achievement; Art of Fulfillment. Success beyond success is the balance between the two”

entrepreneur at heart

Mike Cassidy explained some inspiring stories yesterday. One of the “wonders” of Silicon Valley is being so close to those “entrepreneurs at heart” that serve as role model and inspiration.

We were asking Mike to how he got there (having successfully created and sold 3 companies). He didn’t say new ideas, but he had the energy and the spirit to transmit the passion to all of us who were listening.

I summarized some of the learnings/comments/thoughts in 5 points:

1- Optimist at heart
One of the things he said is that he has always been incredibly optimistic. This might sound like a pretty common thing to be… But it’s easy to feel optimistic in good times. It’s now, in this “terrible crisis” kind of moments , when you realize that you, entrepreneur, think different than the people surrounding you, that you have a different way to look at life and a different way to evaluate opportunities and take decisions.

2- Hard problems
It was interesting when he mentioned some of the real problems he’s had during his life: corrupt people inside his company, sued by Yahoo!… All successful entrepreneurs say it’s not an easy path, but listening to specific examples and see how they are surmountable problems gives us a realistic view of the situation.

3- Success is in your mind
He told us a story:

During World War II people traveled thought the Atlantic. It was a dangerous choice and only 95% of the people made it alive. From those who lived, there were some that tried again.

They realized that the percentage of survival from those who did it a second time increased radically from 5% to 50%. How was that? They first thought that those were the physically strongest and toughest people, but they realized that in fact they were not, and that it was a question of mindset.

You’ve survived once, you know you can do it and therefore you face your problems differently.

4- When to pull the plug

Entrepreneurship, he also said, is about tenacity, about don’t giving up, but up to a point: you need to realize when an idea is not working and be able leave it die and change. Mike explained how in many, if not all of his companies, he had ended up doing something different than he thought.  To discard an idea you need to see if the problem comes from inside (good idea – bad execution) or form outside (the market simply doesn’t exist)

5- Other thoughts:

• You recognize a CEO because he’s making connections when there’s no need for them
• He considers himself unemployable, and he says that probably all the entrepreneurs are unemployable. He therefore had no choice but to start a company
• He really believes in the team spirit and he never refers anyone in his companies as “employee”
• He’s 100% pro-transparency in the finances inside the company, if you can’t justify why someone is earning more than someone else, maybe it shouldn’t be like that
• About press and “free” Public Relations: you can do a lot of work for them, have it ready, and you can cold call: they’ll probably listen an excited CEO talking about his product and sending interesting and ready to publish material

“Entrepreneur at heart”, he said. That’s also how I would define myself… it’s taking a while to materialize it thought! ;-)