Passion

All Entrepreneurs Have It

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 ~ I've been accused at times, to my astonishment, of lacking evident passion for my startup venture. Somehow, apparently, during investor presentations, I focus too much on the factual details and fail to offer (say some) a higher level of dynamism at the podium.

Does this really matter? Do investors truly demand a theatrical exhibition of passionate enthusiasm? Or a concise and complete enumeration of the relevant criteria for evaluating a prospective investment?

A sober presentation is better:

From now let’s all agree that we’ll only use the word passion when it’s followed by the word fruit. Ideally then followed by the word daiquiri.

Passion is implied. Passion is why you are reading this article. Passion is why you don’t work for Deutsche Post or a big bank. It’s why you believe that in the face of all the advice that tells you not to do it, to stick to your nice, safe, salaried day job, you’re doing it anyway. Passion is no longer a differentiator, it’s a prerequisite. It’s why you’re at the race, but it’s not the reason you’ll win.

No passion, no chance. I wouldn't be doing what I do (rather than a safer, easier and likely more immediately remunerative alternative) unless I was deeply passionate, not just about the startup, but about the difference I intend it to make in the world. Nor would any entrepreneur.

Only the passionless could possibly be confused on this point.

So, Do You Feel Lucky?

Or Are You Too Tired to Tell?

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 ~ We entrepreneurs are a notoriously optimistic (if paranoid) bunch.

Ask most why they are optimistic and you'll usually hear about the unique and compelling virtues of their latest startup, the enormous market opportunity, the great team, the many sustainable competitive advantages, how much traction it already has, etc. Heck, I've said these things myself. Recently.

There's another oft-stated reason: hard work. As Thomas Edison memorably observed, many miss opportunity because it comes dressed in overalls and looks like work. Not entrepreneurs. We expect to work hard. We may even be proud of it.

Some count on hard work so much they come to believe that they succeed (and others don't) solely because of hard work.

It's not true.

The Overview Effect

"An Incredible Aesthetic Impact"

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 ~ Reflections of astronauts on how space travel changed their perspective:



Why do we explore? Push boundaries? Innovate?

To learn about ourselves.

Never Give Up

The Entrepreneur Credo

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 ~ I like this infographic:

The dip, as in the graphic, looks, and especially when you are in it, feels, more like a yawning chasm, even an abyss. True to the optimism of entrepreneurs, however, when you are there, things are looking up!

And it's still better than working for the Man.

More Regulatory Evils

Gun Control Stands Alone

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 ~ Where else do we choose to have our civilization out of control?

Even though we regulate all of these things, we neither ban them, nor confiscate them from those owning and using them responsibly.

Control is not confiscation. Regulation is not a ban.

Guns and Arms

Unanswered Questions

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 ~ Could we as a nation, at long last, really be taking a hard look at our gun laws? It's long overdue.

Perhaps at some later point I'll write at greater length on the subject, but for now I have just three questions.

First, here is the text of the Second Amendment, as ratified by the states:

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

Questions, only partly rhetorical:

1. Why do gun advocates frequently only mention the part after the comma, and ignore the first part of the sentence?
2. The amendment itself states that regulating well is necessary, so why is there such an hysterical response to the common-sense notion of regulating guns?
3. Anti-aircraft missiles, tanks and nuclear weapons are all "arms" yet no one squawks about restrictions on their ownership. Why then the apoplexy about regulating assault weapons or such things as high-capacity magazines?

Debt Favors

The Method of Impoverishment

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 ~ We will soon suffer the endless Kabuki of sham fiscal cliff politics. It will be frustrating and feckless in appearance to most of us, but the wealthy and powerful will be well-served. We are in the midst of an economic struggle for survival which Warren Buffet famously characterized so:

There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning.

And how are they doing that?

Load economies (governments, companies and families) with debt, siphon off their income as debt service and then foreclose when debtors lack the means to pay. Indebting government gives creditors a lever to pry away land, public infrastructure and other property in the public domain... The aim of financial warfare is not merely to acquire land, natural resources and key infrastructure rents as in military warfare; it is to centralize creditor control over society.

The Purpose of Art

To Provoke

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 ~ The manufactured and fictitious crisis of the so-called fiscal cliff has provoked a lot of people. Time to provoke a broader audience about the real crisis, and to replace the bogus framing of the problem.

We're not broke—we're being looted.

More from Artstrike, including this evocative poem:

Proverbs 22:16
by Elizabeth Conall

what do they care
if we can’t pay
the bills run up
to keep us alive?
to save our kids?
why bother with
expensive care
we don’t deserve?
plenty more
where we came from

Plenty more serfs out there. Read the whole thing.

Neoliberalism and Plutocracy

They're the Same Thing

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 ~ The always stimulating George Monbiot's recent blog post examines the need to fight plutocracy in order to address climate change.

Humankind’s greatest crisis coincides with the rise of an ideology that makes it impossible to address. By the late 1980s, when it became clear that manmade climate change endangered the living planet and its people, the world was in the grip of an extreme political doctrine, whose tenets forbid the kind of intervention required to arrest it.

Neoliberalism, also known as market fundamentalism or laissez-faire economics, purports to liberate the market from political interference. The state, it asserts, should do little but defend the realm, protect private property and remove barriers to business. In practice it looks nothing like this. What neoliberal theorists call shrinking the state looks more like shrinking democracy: reducing the means by which citizens can restrain the power of the elite. What they call “the market” looks more like the interests of corporations and the ultra-rich. Neoliberalism appears to be little more than a justification for plutocracy.

All Hail Our Benevolent Overlords

Do Unions Do Any Good?

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 ~ Certainly not! Why, who would want any of these things?

Thankful

Counting Blessings

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 ~ Even though the last several years have been very hard on very many people, and tough for my family and me as well, I remain grateful for a great many things. I'm thankful first and foremost for my wife, who has put up with me for more than 15 years now. I'm thankful for my kids, both sired and acquired, who have certainly taught me plenty all the while I was thinking I was the teacher. I'm thankful for my colleagues, my readers and my friends, some of whom have joined us in celebration today. I'm thankful for my friends in Rotary and the powerfully positive good we do in the community together. I'm thankful for my venture consulting clients of Fingo for sharing their passion and excitement for their businesses and letting me be a small part of their vision and their success. I'm thankful for my co-founders at Phytelligence and especially their brilliance and enthusiasm for how we are changing the fruit tree industry. I'm thankful for our investors and partners without whom we would not be able to make the progress we have.

I'm thankful that I can still take joy in life with inspiring people and do work that lifts me up and maybe, some day, will have the lasting impact that lifts up others as well.

Thanks for reading; contact me any time I can help you move your vision forward to a more blessed, prosperous, and meaningful place.

Chris Leyerle

The Invisibility of Knowledge

Ignorance Abounds

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 ~ My first philosophy teacher insisted humankind was growing more ignorant. Quite apart from us dim-witted students in front of him, he had a simple explanation.

He would first draw a circle on the board. (He had a remarkable ability, much enjoyed by his students, to stand with his back to the board and whirl his arm about to create a perfect circle without once looking at what he was drawing.) The inside of the circle represents all that we know. Outside is all that we do not. The boundary represents our awareness of what we don't know. As the circle expands in the course of growing human knowledge, so does that boundary. The more we learn, the greater the realization of our own ignorance.

Perhaps we're not getting more ignorant, but just more aware of how little we know. Ignorance certainly abounds these days, and especially during our election season, but that's a subject for another post.

Instead, here is a great TED talk on what we don't know; it's a bit sprawling, but amusing and thought-provoking:

Protection Racket

The Allocation of Social and Financial Risk

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 ~ What they don't tell you about capitalism (as currently practiced):

Gore Vidal, the recently demised American writer, once famously quipped that the US economic system is "free enterprise for the poor and socialism for the rich".

Since the outbreak of the global financial crisis in 2008, not only has the US lived up to Vidal's caricature but the whole of the rich capitalist world has become more "American". The poor are increasingly exposed to market forces, with tougher conditions on the diminishing state protection they get, while the rich have unprecedented levels of protection from the state, with virtually no strings attached.

Vidal had it right, but it is more pernicious, since the rich don't just get to socialize their losses, they are actively protected from the corrective market forces that make capitalism theoretically efficient. As one wag put it:

Free-market capitalism is for the poor. Job creators prefer market-free capitalism.

Fostering Entrepreneurship—III

Greater Regulatory Simplicity

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 ~ Early stage startup companies have too high a regulatory burden. The recent Pacific Northwest Innovation Summit examined ways to promote a more vigorous entrepreneurial ecosystem, but this issue was explored mostly by participants rather than as part of the official program. As a state, we could improve here, as I've posted before, but what should we change?

We Must Pay For What We Buy

"It is a Moral Issue; It is an Economic Issue"

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 ~ Only in the bizarro world of Washington do we get what we don't pay for.

This socialist makes a lot more sense than the latest crop of economic fabulists:



Sure, economic performance lags policy, and one can fairly argue about how to apportion blame for economic performance based on policies and conditions from prior presidential administrations and Congresses. Pointing fingers does not, however, solve the problem.

One cannot fairly argue that the current deficit and debt hysteria has reached a febrile pitch for any reason other than politics. Sanders notes the verifiable fact that much of our current deficit and debt are the direct result of not paying for historically massive expenditures, specifically the wars, the tax cuts and Medicare Part D. If anyone is serious about not leaving this problem to "our children and grandchildren" (and maybe their progeny as well) then it will be necessary to actually pay for those things.

Defending Ourselves

Should We Fear Terrorists?

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 ~ The last two years on this Day of Remembrance I have written of fear, and of courage. Rereading those posts, the words still ring true to me.

Yet I am fearful now.

I won't call them terrorists, but our country is still under great threat, not so much from outside our borders, as from within, and by one of our institutions. The Republican Party has become so unhinged, so delusional, that it poses a threat to itself and to others—to all of us. If it were a person, society would have it committed.

Weasels and Their Words

Who Said That, Exactly?

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 ~ Probably talking heads talking to other talking heads:



It's similar to an argumentum ad populum. Why do some people say that? Here's one NSFW explanation.

h/t Upworthy

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Update:

The Incredibly Shrinking Middle Class

Watch Them Disappear!

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 ~ From the Pew Research Center:

When you consider how the ranks of the poor are swelling, their per-capita income looks even worse. Our country is having an identity crisis—is this who we want to be?

Alien Redux

Probing Thoughts

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 ~ We might be embarrassed if aliens showed up.

We should be embarrassed anyway:

Free Speech

Free in What Sense?

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 ~ There are just under 3 months until the November elections. Many are spending freely, but what are you hearing? Mostly a lot of hooey:

An analysis by the Annenberg Public Policy Center conducted for the Center for Responsive Politics found that from December 1, 2011 through June 1, 2012, 85% of the dollars spent on presidential ads by four top-spending third-party groups known as 501(c)(4)s were spent on ads containing at least one claim ruled deceptive by fact-checkers at FactCheck.org, PolitiFact.com, the Fact Checker at the Washington Post or the Associated Press.

These "top" 4 groups are the American Energy Alliance, Americans for Prosperity, the American Future Fund and Crossroads GPS. All are closely aligned with the most reactionary faction of the GOP and all are hostile to renewable energy. Despite persistent efforts to equate corporate and union spending, the numbers show clearly the dominance of corporate speech on our political debate. Big money is free to buy megaphones, but we are not free to learn who's doing the buying.