Wednesday, April 24, 2024
Tuesday, April 23, 2024
NEW INC. MAGAZINE COLUMN FROM HOWARD TULLMAN
Open Your Mind: There Are Plenty of Good Ideas You Can
Steal.
Operating within your
own information bubble may be satisfying, but it's limiting.
EXPERT OPINION BY HOWARD
TULLMAN, GENERAL MANAGING PARTNER, G2T3V AND CHICAGO HIGH TECH
INVESTORS @HOWARDTULLMAN1
APR 23, 2024
Much to the chagrin of
some friends, relatives, and business associates, I'm an inveterate and
shameless sharer of news, opinions and information. Lately, I've probably been
overdoing things in terms of political commentary as opposed to
entrepreneurial, change management and tech advice. But then again, even the
most well-established and solid businesses - not to mention startups and new
ventures - are likely to be adversely impacted by the end of democracy as we
know if the Orange Monster returns to office.
So, to be smart and
safe, it pays to pay at least some attention to what's going on around your
business because you don't always know what you don't know, and you never know
who's going to bring you your future. From time to time, you can actually
learn important things from outside of your own bubble and even from people who
you think aren't as smart as you. Ideas are like assholes. Everyone has
one. But even assholes can have good ideas.
The most important thing
to realize is that some great ideas need to be transplanted from the mind that
may have created them into a mind which is capable of understanding, expanding,
and executing upon them. You don't have to be at the beginning of the chain to
bring the bacon home.
One of the dangers of
being somewhat successful is that you quickly forget what it took to get you to
this point while at the same time you learn new things much more slowly. That's
understandable, since you're reluctant to change what you think is working well
for you. You instead need to develop a thick enough skin to understand and
accept that -- from time to time--ideas will come along that are better than
your own and which are likely to knock your precious little babies right off
their pedestals unless you're sharp, smart, and swift enough to do it yourself.
As Walt Disney CEO Bob Iger said a while ago, "if someone's gonna eat our
digital lunch, it might as well be us".
It would be a shame to
miss the new opportunities or challenges because you were "too busy,"
too arrogant, or too complacent to spend some time looking and listening to
what's out there in the wild. We're all drowning in a flood of noise,
news, and information, but strategic filtering is a much better bet than turning a blind eye or a deaf ear to what's out there.
My position is that most
of my email recipients can take it or leave it and they're free to use their
delete key. Upon request, I'll even remove people from the various distribution
lists I use and - while I will generally forgive them their desire to remain
uninformed - I won't forget that they chose ignorance over information. On the
other hand, if it's one of our portfolio companies and I've taken the time to
send them a reference, comparative studies, a relevant article, important
rankings, some simple suggestion, or someone to contact, then I expect them to
get on it - not to be offended or put off by the offering.
These aren't times for
foolish pride, hurt feelings, grumbling about micro-management, or anything
else. It's not gloating, complaining or rude to tell it like it is - especially
if you're right -- whether people want to hear it or not. The truth only
hurts when it ought to. If someone else is kicking your company's butt or doing
things much better than you, then closing your eyes or trying to wish them away
won't make it better. In the real world, you don't get to learn things the way
you want to. Every day the world is changing around you and your job is to try
to keep up. Facts and problems don't disappear because you ignore them.
Not everything comes in
a clear package with appropriate warnings and a set of instructions, but the
best entrepreneurs and new business builders make sure that they're always open
to inputs, alternatives and options, and new approaches or solutions - whether
it's good news or bad. No one has a monopoly on the best ideas, so no one
should be reluctant to copy the smartest features and functions of their
competitors' offerings, and everyone should understand that there's a whole
world of bright people out there who don't happen to work for you.
The key idea is that you
don't have to know everything, you just need to know how and where to find it
and that's why having an ear to the ground and helpful friends and supporters
outside of your day-to-day resources, team members, and traditional channels
makes a lot of sense. To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to borrow
from many is research. You don't have to come up with every new idea. You can
just wait for someone else to launch a great idea and then copy every detail
except their mistakes. And, to be clear, being open to ideas is much different
than thinking for even a moment that all ideas are equally valid or valuable.
Another important part of the job is learning to quickly say "No" to
even good ideas which simply don't fit your business's needs or plans at the
moment.
The bottom line is to
widen the input aperture so that you're regularly exposed to a broader range of
thoughts, ideas, and approaches than simply your internal channels without
becoming overwhelmed by the volume or - worse yet - adopting a cursory approach
of rapid skimming that results in being a mile wide and an inch deep and
effectively informs no one.
As challenging as the
prospects may be, the key to continued success in a world of constant change is
non-stop and lifelong learning. Information is the lifeblood of that process
and, as painful as the thought may be, even too much is not enough.
Monday, April 22, 2024
They Were Assaulted on Campus for Being Jews
They Were Assaulted
on Campus for Being Jews At Yale, Sahar Tartak was stabbed in the eye. At
Columbia, Jonathan Lederer’s Israeli flag was burned and he was hit in the
face.
For a second, imagine that black students at Columbia were taunted: Go back to Africa. Or imagine that a gay student was surrounded by homophobic protesters and hit with a stick at Yale University. Or imagine if a campus imam told Muslim students that they ought to head home for Ramadan because campus public safety could not guarantee their security. There would be
relentless fury from our media and condemnation from our politicians. Just remember the
righteous—and rightful—outrage over the white supremacist “Unite the Right”
march in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, where neo-Nazis chanted “The
Jews will not replace us.” This weekend at
Columbia and Yale, student demonstrators did all of the above—only it was
directed at Jews. They told Columbia students to “go back to Poland.” A
Jewish woman at Yale was assaulted with a Palestinian flag. And an Orthodox
rabbi at Columbia told students to go home for their safety. Demonstrators on these
campuses shouted more chic versions of “Jews will not replace us.” At
Columbia they screamed: “Say it loud and say it clear, we don’t want no
Zionists here.” At Yale they blasted bad rap with the following lyrics: Fuck Israel, Israel a
bitch / Bitch we out here mobbin’ on some Palestine
shit / Free Palestine bitch, Israel gon’ die
bitch / Nigga it’s they land why you out here tryna rob
it / Bullshit prophets, y’all just want the profit These campus activists
are not simply “pro-Palestine” protesters. They are people who are openly
celebrating Hamas and physically intimidating identifiably Jewish students
who came near. We are publishing the accounts of two of those students—Sahar
Tartak and Jonathan Lederer—today. Students—all of us—have a right to protest. We have a right to protest for dumb causes and horrible causes. At The Free Press, we will always defend that right. (See here and here, for example.) It is not, however, a
First Amendment right to physically attack another person. It is not a First
Amendment right to detain another person as part of your protest. And while
Americans are constitutionally protected when they say vile things, like
wishing upon Jews a thousand October 7s, we are certainly free to criticize
them and to condemn institutions dedicated to the pursuit of truth who stand
by and do nothing meaningful to stop it. The students who
support terror have given in to madness. Refusing to condemn them is madness. There are courageous
students who see that madness clearly. Please read these essays by Jonathan
Lederer and Sahar Tartak.
|
Sunday, April 21, 2024
Trump is a Fat Flatulent Fraud
Why do some British people not like Donald Trump?” Nate White, an articulate and witty writer from England wrote the following response:
Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing – not once, ever. I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility – for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman. But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is – his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty.
Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers. And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults – he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness.
There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It’s all surface. Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront. Well, we don’t. We see it as having no inner world, no soul. And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist. Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that. He’s not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat. He’s more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege.
And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully. That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead. There are unspoken rules to this stuff – the Queensberry rules of basic decency – and he breaks them all. He punches downwards – which a gentleman should, would, could never do – and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless – and he kicks them when they are down.
So the fact that a significant minority – perhaps a third – of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think ‘Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy’ is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that:
• Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and mostly are.
• You don’t need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man.
This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss. After all, it’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum. God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid. He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart. In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws – he would make a Trump.
And a remorseful Doctor Frankenstein would clutch out big clumpfuls of hair and scream in anguish: ‘My God… what… have… I… created?' If being a twat was a TV show, Trump would be the boxed set.
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- RARING TO GO - TIME FOR HIS MORNING NAP
- NEW INC. MAGAZINE COLUMN FROM HOWARD TULLMAN
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- They Were Assaulted on Campus for Being Jews
- Trump is a Fat Flatulent Fraud
- THE PROM
- CINDERELLA
- Odor in the Court
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