Musings on the State of the Art

Paul Kedrosky – The tilt thing…

Entrepreneurship is and should be irrational. You are taking on huge risks, showing immense ego, and trying something with an absurdly high failure rate. But it at these moments when it feels like you’re nuts not to try being entrepreneurial — the Valley being on “tilt” — that we have an outside chance of resetting the base rate at which companies get created in this country. While I tease people about it on a regular basis, especially journalists-turned-entrepreneurs, I wouldn’t have it any other way. Other than maybe the Harvard MBAs. (I kid. Mostly )

Steve Blank at SXSW… to a roomful of future entrepreneurs. I’m paraphrasing.

You’re all insane. There are ten of you that will exit for about 10 MM Dollars. There’s 2 of you that will exit for more than 100 MM Dollars.

He paused for a beat, and then continued.

Right now, every one of you is feeling sorry for the other 385 people in this room.