At Venture for ,we've worked with hundreds of aspiring young entrepreneurs who want to build businesses and change things for the better.
Starting a business is similar to an athletic endeavor, like serving a tennis ball. Telling you how to do it is useless. You actually get better through a combination of practice, coaching, and repetitions with money on the line.
After getting a law degree, I spent five unhappy months as a corporate attorney.
The reason Donald Trump was elected was that we automated away four million manufacturing jobs in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. If you look at the voter data, it shows that the higher the level of concentration of manufacturing robots in a district, the more that district voted for Trump.
Income taxes are very poor at generating income from automation because the gains are realized by technology companies that are experts at not paying taxes.
We need people building companies all over the country to innovate in aviation, consumer products, education, health, cybersecurity, biotech, manufacturing, and everything in between.
Millennials get a bad rap sometimes about their grit and perseverance.
Venture for America operates in communities that could generally use more innovation: Detroit, New Orleans, Baltimore, and other U.S. cities. So I'm obviously a big believer in innovation and progress as key drivers of economic growth and prosperity.
In 2011, I started a nonprofit organization, Venture for America, to help bring talented young entrepreneurs to create thousands of jobs in Detroit, Cleveland, St. Louis, Birmingham, Baltimore and other cities around the country.
People love Twinkies, and everyone knows about them, yet Hostess went bankrupt. Attention and commercial success have an uncertain relationship in business.
Finding initial funds is the primary barrier most entrepreneurs face. Many people don't have three or six months' worth of savings to free themselves up to do months of unpaid legwork.
I'm a capitalist, and I believe that universal basic income is necessary for capitalism to continue.
In my experience, entrepreneurship tends to be kind of cumulative, like a layer cake. Taking some time away can make it hard to rev up.
One thing I disliked about being a lawyer was billing for my time.
Tell young girls they can be anything, including entrepreneurs and self-made billionaires. Encourage your friends/daughters/female students/yourself to take a shot.
If you can't pay your bills, it has a really tough effect on your mental state.
We're conditioned to let businesses fail, regardless of how much we like them. We believe that if the market doesn't want that bookstore to exist, then it shouldn't exist.
The first thing I do when I wake up in the morning is push my dog off of me. He likes to sleep on top of me. I think it's because I'm warm and breathing.
I had very little going for me as a kid except for the fact that I had demanding parents and was very good at filling out bubbles on standardized tests. I went to the Center for Talented Youth at Johns Hopkins University because I did well on the SAT. I went to Exeter because I did well on the SAT.
Organizations relying upon young, idealistic, and mission-driven people to work at below-market compensation over the long-term will burn them out and find the best people leaving over time.