Lecture 13: How to Be a Great Founder
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Lecture 13: How to Be a Great Founder
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Re: Lecture 13: How to Be a Great Founder
#2Haven't watched this one yet, but all the lectures have had at least one really great insight to learn from. Thanks for uploading them so quickly, it's really nice.
Re: Lecture 13: How to Be a Great Founder
#3Haven't watched this one yet, but all the lectures have had at least one really great insight to learn from. Thanks for uploading them so quickly, it's really nice.
Cool - my favorite part of Reid's lecture in this video is his clarification of what a contrarian founder really means. Don't miss that one!
Re: Lecture 13: How to Be a Great Founder
#4This talk might have been brilliant, but I wasn't really able to take away any concrete lessons or advice from it. In my opinion it was far too vague. I've really enjoyed the other talks though.
Re: Lecture 13: How to Be a Great Founder
#5Did he say a panopticon of skills?
Re: Lecture 13: How to Be a Great Founder
#6I don't mean to be flippant but can someone separate out the concrete recommendations from the abstract motivational speaking?
All I hear is a series of "X or Y?" slides, which sort of imply there's a decisive answer on the way, but when you peer through the verbiage it ends up being some form of "Do both!"
Re: Lecture 13: How to Be a Great Founder
#7Did he say a panopticon of skills?
Don't you know? It's crucial for startup founders to have an 18th-century dystopian surveillance system of skills. In fact, if you play the video backward, you can actually hear Reid recite the entire text of Foucault's Discipline and Punish.
(Seriously, I'd guess he meant "panoply.")
Re: Lecture 13: How to Be a Great Founder
#8Some of my takeaways:
"Product distribution is more important than what the product is."
It's not enough to be contrarian. You should also be right.
"It's useful to be able to recognize whether you are on track or not. To have both that belief, but also paranoia, about am I tracking over my investment thesis."
You need to be able to articulate the vision well.
One of the founders needs to be able to build networks of people.
What is my distribution edge? What is the hack that I know that other people don't know?
Just as you spend 20+ hours with a possible CEO, go in depth in conversations with a potential co-founder to identify all the parameters and set expectations. Go over the parameters that might lead to a divorce.
Re: Lecture 13: How to Be a Great Founder
#9Did he say a panopticon of skills?
Don't you know? It's crucial for startup founders to have an 18th-century dystopian surveillance system of skills. In fact, if you play the video backward, you can actually hear Reid recite the entire text of Foucault's Discipline and Punish. (Seriously, I'd guess he meant "panoply.")
Great guess. I was trying to imagine what sort of metaphor he was evoking with Panopticon - as though the super-founder can see every task that is required of him - works, but it's a stretch. Panoply is much better.
Re: Lecture 13: How to Be a Great Founder
#10Great lecture - one of the best so far IMO.
From the comments, it looks like a lot of people are struggling with this one because Reid Hoffman was (absolutely) lacking in specific, concrete advice.
I think it's missing Reid's point -- everyone here is either (well, likely) thinking about founding something, or well on their way.
When he poses his questions, I think that he's trying to help us reflect on where we are, and how we can tackle the hazy questions (flexible v. persistent, short term v. long term, etc.) that will drive our decisions. This midway course lecture isn't about giving lessons -- it's about helping us to reflect.