We have heard from Spain. Today, we hear from Israel.
A week ago, I sent out an email to clients, friends, folks I know in: Chile, Japan, Ireland, India, England, Spain, Germany, Korea, Columbia, Dubai, Israel, Canada, Mexico, and California. I believe there are a total of sixteen. All of these persons are entrepreneurs, founders, CEOs, and brilliant persons.
There are no extraordinary men. There are ordinary men who are called to lead in extraordinary times. Today is such a time and Joe Biden has been called to lead.
The simple question is this — can he lead? Can he do what needs to be done?
Right now, the lingua franca is a besotted call for healing and unity, something as likely to happen as me turning dried up leaves on my lawn into gold leaf with a wave of my hand. But, can we hope to hear from our better angels?
A week ago, I sent out an email to clients, friends, folks I know in: Chile, Japan, Ireland, India, England, Spain, Germany, Korea, Columbia, Dubai, Israel, Canada, Mexico, and California. I believe there are a total of sixteen. All of these persons are entrepreneurs, founders, CEOs, and brilliant persons.
I asked them to give me their thoughts on the following topics:
1. How are you feeling — optimistic, pessimistic — about business, the world, your country in general?
2. What is the world’s biggest challenge from here on out?
3. Anything that you think I need to know?
The thoughts have begun to trickle in and today we start with the views of a 36-year old Spanish entrepreneur, founder, and CEO of a software company with operations in the US and Switzerland (did I imagine that?). He is married to a German woman, an American educated electrical engineer, who is the Chairwoman of the Board of an almost century old manufacturing business with global operations. He was a client and she is a client. They have lovely children.
You’re a startup on your way. You are at that magic 50+ employee level at which you start to pay attention to things like Performance Appraisal. With that level of staffing, you will find out that when the tide goes out, some folks have been swimming naked — meaning not everybody is a super star.
Sure, you remember this — click on to see larger:
I am struck by how sometimes in startup world we miss the obvious.
Suppose you are a startup founder with a subscription element of some type to your future unicorn business. Being an analytical person, you check to see how many total subscribers/customers you have. About nine (or fifty) times a day.
You undoubtedly want to know, “Why did you subscribe to my website/product/genius?”
Amazon has a warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama that employs 6,000 workers. The workers have petitioned for a vote to establish a union (a unit of the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union), something that Amazon does not want to happen.
Amazon last had a union vote in 2014 in which there were some alleged “irregularities.”
Due to the presence of the COVID19 pandemic, the workers are being allowed by the National Labor Relations Board to use “mail in” voting.
You will recall we had a recent election, a Presidential election if my memory serves me well, in which the same justification was used to allow a massive “mail in” vote.
This week I had the great pleasure of chatting with all the Austin Techstars new class members. As usual, the Austin Techstars team did a great job of assembling world class ideas and talent to accelerate them. Every single company with which I visited has an idea that can and should work.
Bravo!
I was invited because I often am a mentor to a company that my skill set fits. I am never looking for the work, but I will do what I can. I like the Techstars approach and it has really gotten traction in Austin. Very classy outfit and the guy who runs it is a brilliant guy who has assembled a brilliant staff.
Put your COVID fears at rest; this was a Zoom meet up.
Which got me thinking about how one describes an idea and communicates it to others.
We have the typical pitch deck introduction, but that is for an idea with some bulk on it, some maturity — post accelerator. I am talking about more raw ideas.
If you are a young woman in either high school or college and are competing in sports, President Biden just struck a blow against fairness in your sport.
It will revolutionize the way that sports for women are managed and how women athletes perform.
In an executive order, the President has taken action such that “gender” may be assigned as the individual desires.
Let me strip that down for you — biological men will be competing in your sports in accordance with the desires of this administration.
From a social perspective, the notion that you may “feel” a way that is inconsistent with your end of the gene pool is not really at contest, but what is at contest here is this:
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