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Articles by Pascal Finette
Taste Is the Last Moat
Earlier this week, I spoke to a young designer who works in UI and UX. He asked me for some career advice as he has a hard time finding his footing in today’s world. It was a lovely conversation; he is easygoing and articulate. In the middle of the conversation, I asked him to show me his portfolio. He sent me a link to his website – and everything on there could have been generated by a sophisticated AI model (and possibly better).
Lindsay Stevenson, CPA, CGMA
2023 Most Powerful Women in Accounting Chief Transformation OfficerWhat is your favorite part of being a member of the accounting profession? How have you personally seen the roles of women evolve in the accounting profession? My favorite part of being a member of the accounting profession is the lifelong friends I have made through my work.
Welcome
Jan 2nd, 2023 Share: ’Tis the season… The year ended, and we muddled through and swore everything would be better next year. More organized. Better aligned. Less chaotic. 2023 will be the year we finally get our KPIs in order. KPIs – the perfect world of Key Performance Indicators. “You can’t change what you can’t measure” and all that good jazz. Apparently, you can even get certified as a KPI Professional. Who knew? Maybe we should add this to our list of KPIs for the year.
Vanessa Liu – VP, SAP.io Foundries North America
Vanessa is a business builder, digital media entrepreneur and technology innovator. She has been building, launching and re-launching six businesses over a span of 20 years and heads up SAP.io today, where she is investing in women and diverse-led B2B intelligent enterprise start-ups.
Don’t Hide Behind Fancy Language
The other day I came across Unsuck It, a wonderful little dictionary of office jargon and what it really means. Like an example? How many times have you sat in a meeting where someone told you that your company’s core competency is to curate an ecosystem of rock stars with a strong culture fit.
Book Jeremiah Owyang for Speaking, Events and Appearances | APB Speakers
Silicon Valley’s Jeremiah Owyang takes you beyond spotting the latest trends, disruptions, and technological advances. As an industry leader on corporate innovation in the face of emerging and disruptive technologies, he shows you how to leverage these forces to shift your business model, transform your customer’s brand experience and create in-demand product offerings.
Culture Happens No Matter What – The Heretic
Culture Happens No Matter What Once you’re out of the weeds of building the first iterations of your product or service, once you are over the adrenaline rush of your first release, once you’re putting yourself onto better financial footing — culture becomes often a question entrepreneurs start to think more and more about. How do you conserve (and evolve) the culture you have in your organization as you grow and bring on new employees?
Business failure has become a pursuit worthy in and of itself-and it has to stop
We have been swept away in a fever to fetishize failure. We immortalize our losses in blog posts, lament our undoings at community events such as Fuckup Nights, and turn them into keynotes at full-blown conferences like FailCon. By learning to accept failure as part of the creative process, we have gone into overdrive and have come to worship failure as something worthy of pursuit in and of itself. Ironically, in the process, failure has become good business.
Why Startups Must Break the Failure Fetish and Focus on What Works
There is something curious going on in startup land: From learning to accept failure as part of the creative process we seem to have gone into overdrive and fetishized failure as something which is worthy of pursuit in and of itself. From FailCon to Fuckup Night—talking about failure seems to have become not only cool but also good business. A . It sucks. I have yet to find someone who enjoys failing (and prefers it over succeeding). B.
What Eleos Foundation Looks for in Startups
The Eleos Foundation funds early-stage companies that empower people living in poverty to improve their lives. We invest in health, education, sanitation, safe drinking water, energy, and rural livelihoods. We help startups cross the so-called “Pioneer Gap” (from seed or pilot stage, through Series A or Series B rounds) with a combination of risk capital and advisory support, both of which are critical to success.
When Entrepreneurs Should Say “No” To Investors - UNREASONABLE
Impact investors, venture capitalists, foundations, family offices, government agencies, development organizations, grants, and PRIs. It’s great to have so many funding options, right, entrepreneurs? There are many sources of funding for entrepreneurs these days—I’m thankful for that, both as an entrepreneur and as an investor.
Why Entrepreneurs Need To Remain Humble (in fewer than 200 words) - UNREASONABLE
In a world filled with hubris and ego-maniacs, it is the humble leader that has the greatest influence. Read on to discover the true meaning of humility and why it’s so important to building a great organization. The author of this post, Seth Levine, is a Boulder, CO based technology investor and managing director at Foundry Group. This advice would seem obvious, if only more people followed it.
The Ultimate Guide to Building Your Pitch Deck
This post goes over the team, advisor, finance, and business model, and the ask slides of a pitch deck as well as design and flow tips. our pitch deck MUST start with a description of what it is that you’re doing. Your second slide (after the cover slide) is titled “What is NAME-OF-YOUR-COMPANY” (e.g. “What is eBay”). Explain in simple English what you’re doing.
The Veil of "Energy Poverty" -- Holding Corporations Accountable
It’s flattering to be asked to be a poster child for a major international campaign. The language was veiled but the implication clear: Would I help a big company undertake a campaign to end energy poverty? The client? Peabody Coal, the largest private-sector coal company in the world. I told the caller that I wanted nothing to do with his client or his campaign. The logic didn’t work. Yes, energy poverty is real, and no, coal is not an answer to it. I’ve been in the Central Highlands of Afghanistan.
How to Unleash the Founder Magic - UNREASONABLE
There’s a common start-up fable that goes like this: Entrepreneurs start company. Company becomes successful and attracts investment. Investors become board members and advise entrepreneurs to hire “experienced” managers with big CVs to take on functional roles like “marketing.” Company becomes “corporatized,” and entrepreneurs feel like outsiders in their own company. Entrepreneurs see the writing on the wall, become defensive, and try to hold onto control.
A proven way to meet busy people | AlphaGamma
Here is another practical tip (after my last post which covered todos): Something I learned the hard way being on both sides of the equation — How to meet with busy people. This is how it plays out: Someone sends me a nice email telling me that they are in the area; that they like what I am doing; would love to learn more and ask if I have time for coffee sometime soon (often suggesting some specific dates). So far so good� Sadly (or luckily) I do have a lot to do.
Never Walk: 12 Essential Rules for Life and Entrepreneurship
This is one of the most inspired moments in the history of athletics: Roger Bannister crossing the finish line on 6 May 1954 during a meet between British AAA and Oxford University at Iffley Road Track in Oxford, United Kingdom, where he became the first human to run the mile in less than four minutes. An extraordinary achievement which was, at the time, considered impossible. Seeing the picture of Roger crossing the line gives me goose bumps. Every time.
The 2 ways to build a company | AlphaGamma
Lately, I have been thinking quite a bit about the ways to build a company — more specifically the question of how do you find the problem you want to solve? I see too many companies struggle with finding product/market fit, building solutions for problems which are pretty obviously too small to justify the existence of a company singularly focussed on solving them or creating imaginary problems to fit a hypothesis the founders have.
You Aren't the Hero in Your Story
ou know Joseph Campbell’s “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”– a seminal work that dissects the fabric of every good story. It is an incredibly powerful tool, not only for storytelling, but also for pitching and selling. The challenge is this: I often see entrepreneurs confuse who the hero in their story actually is.
The Metrics Myth-Why Quantitative Presentation of Qualitative Value Matters
Since at least the early ‘90s, those involved in the generation of more than money have been on a quest to capture the right balance between documentation of impact and claims to same. For me personally, I have been a reluctant crusader in this quest for coming on thirty years. As a social worker in San Francisco’s Tenderloin District, operating a multi-service center for homeless youth, justification of our funding was often tied to service counts.
The Next Generation of Rural Infrastructure: Q&A With Altaeros Energies
n the twenty-first century, having internet connection is nearly synonymous with participating in the global economy. Yet many people who live in rural areas, especially in developing countries, remain beyond the reach of the infrastructure required for modern communication. By the end of 2016, mobile-broadband networks – 3G or above – reached 84 percent of the global population, but only 67 percent of the rural population. Just over half of the world’s population is still not using the internet.
How to Solve the World’s Biggest Problems
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the fabled idea of “moonshots:” The crazy ambitious projects which aim to solve the world’s biggest problems once and for all, using breakthrough technologies. I’m starting to believe we have the process largely backwards.
Words of Wisdom from Mentors at Project Literacy Lab
Over the past week, 16 entrepreneurs and over 50 mentors and specialists have gathered at Project Literacy Lab to solve key challenges related to illiteracy. During the program, experts in design thinking, marketing/branding, investment, rapid-prototyping, and social impact share their insights and perspectives in the collective goal of closing the global literacy gap by 2030.
This is the most important trait every entrepreneur needs to have
As you grow your business you will be faced with lots of potential, exciting opportunities. New customer segments, new markets, new product options. Surely one would say that this is a good thing. And, of course, it is. Typically when you start out, life is simple. You identified a problem and target market (and if you’re careful about truly understanding the problem, it will be a highly targeted solution). You start delivering your product and hopefully get to product/market fit quickly.
Global Entrepreneurs Visit Silicon Valley with Solutions to Real Problems
A version of this post was co-written by David Bank and Dennis Price and originally appeared on ImpactAlpha. For all of the disruptions wrought by the global digital revolution, “Silicon Valley” has sometimes turned its back on the rest of the world. The melding of Silicon Valley’s tech-fueled growth model and the explosion of entrepreneurial activity around the world is long overdue. Tweet This Quote This week, the rest of the world is coming to Silicon Valley.
Debunking a Myth: Why and How To Do Business With Friends
If I’ve learned anything over the years, it’s that you should only do business with friends: with people you trust, admire, enjoy being around, and with people who make you laugh. Of course, there are good ways and there are bad ways of going about working with friends. Below I’ve included four major things I’ve learned from trial and error about diving into working relationships and partnerships with those I consider to be my closest friends.
Competing Asymmetrically Against the Well-Established Giants
A classic problem and common thread in many of my conversations with founders is the perceived threat posed by large, well-established incumbents. Of course Google, Apple, Facebook and you-name-it have more resources, more talent, better access to the market, and basically every other advantage in the world going for them. You can’t compete, nor should you—at least not symmetrically. That is, you probably can’t beat them at their own game.
Build to Last | TheHeretic.org
Not the book by Jim Collins. Although – it’s a great book and worth the read. No. The notion of building a company for the long haul is what I want to talk about. Building a company which lasts. Not your “nine days’ wonder” but something which endures the trials and tribulations of time. There is a lot which goes into building a long lasting company. In the initial stages all startups are messy, chaotic and disorganized. As your organization grows up, you are faced with decisions all along the way.
This Ecotourism Company Succeeds When Indigenous Communities Prosper
Mayan culture last grabbed major headlines in 2012. The Mayan calendar marked the end of a 5,200-year era, and fanatics hyped up an approaching doomsday. The end of time did not come, though, and the fanciful speculation by non-Mayans ceased. What endures within the Mayan culture is discrimination and exploitation. There is no spotlight on this silent plight. Despite a rich inheritance of natural resources and a culture steeped in history, many modern Mayans live at, or below, the poverty level.
Why You Can't Motivate Your Team-UNREASONABLE
Go to any bookstore (yeah, I know, they don’t exist anymore), browse the management section and you’ll find tons of books talking about how to best motivate your team. Peter Drucker once said, “We know nothing about motivation. All we can do is write books about it.” In all the time I’ve spent building and leading teams, the one thing I learned is this: You can’t really motivate anyone to do anything (at least not in the long run).
Why Good Leadership Begins With You
A few weeks ago, I had lunch with a dear friend and incredible entrepreneur. Over food we talked about the progress she made with her company, which has grown from a few people to a team of nine with a product in market and solid financial backing. In the process, she had to adapt from being the person always contributing to each and every aspect of building the product and company to being the one who’s role and responsibility it is to manage others.
Why Every Startup Needs Operators
Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about what it takes to succeed. Not the initial success of getting a product or service out into the world or even getting to product-market fit. I mean the daily grind of ongoing success. The ugly underbelly of building lasting success. The inglorious part of entrepreneurship: When the initial sizzle has worn off, the world starts to turn its attention to the next big thing and you’re left with the gargantuan task of making it work day-to-day.
5 Lessons For Using Open Innovation To Maximize The Wisdom Of The Crow
Whether you like it or not, competition today is fierce. And it’s only going to get fiercer. Where the old battleground was price and efficiency, the new one will be innovation and time to market. The tech startup world has Eric Ries’s Lean Startup movement, which teaches us how to be fast (and iteratively build a product which consumers love, the fabled “market fit”). But it doesn’t tell us a lot about innovation.
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