The answer to this question lies in a question of itself. How do you get people to pay attention to you? How do you get to be honored? How do you get to be respected?

In the eyes of Adam Smiths, the economist, there are two ways.

(1) Be famous, wealthy and powerful. (2) Be virtuous and wise.

One of these is easier, but it won't make you happy.

A startup is a multi-year adventure and you really want to ask yourself - Why are you doing this? Choose carefully.

Also, demand is the most important thing when you are starting out. Validate fast. Don't even worry about building anything. Pick up the phone and call people.

When it comes time to find investors, prioritize those that have founder empathy.

In the earliest weeks of Covid19, sometimes around March 2020, Bryan saw their user base in Europe started to shrink, an event that had not happened in the history of the company. That same week, big sports events started to get cancelled. That's when Brian new they were heading in a bad direction.

As an M&A consultant at Google, David immediately knew he was most interested in the technology, and not the spreadsheets behind it. He quickly switched to the "Innovation Consulting" group in his firm, and started getting a fantastic exposure into a multitude of interesting tech projects.

Yearning to be hands on with the technology he was advising, David Woodland joined Pebble.

According to USPS marketing, affordable targeting advertising is available to promote your small business to local community. EDDM can help you sell mail and flyers to the right customers. Using US Census data, you can use postal office tools to segment customers based on zip code, neighborhoods, age, income, and household size.

In dire time, you win by focusing your entire team around one focal point. Explain that survival comes from a certain objective, and focus everyone on it.

Wart-time management isn't the same as your day-to-day management. Set the objective, explain what everyone is to do to achieve it, and crucially important, outline exactly how success and failure is going to be measured.

You may not win, but you can put your team in charge of their own destiny.

Selling "early" can enable the founding team to take some future risk off the table, as well as give some money back to the entire team, propelling each individual employee forward.

In the best acquisition, 1+1=3, meaning that both the acquirer and the company being acquired benefit from being with each other.

For example, a startup might gain immediate access to global scale, while an incumbent gains a leg up in technology.

Matt shares what he would tell Matt from many years ago after Spruce Metrics was shut down. He's critics his intentions on getting into a business he didn't really enjoy or care about.

The best leaders who have had to lead through uncertain times had continued to have hope and optimism about the future, while confronting the difficult reality.

Talk straight and be transparent about it with your people. Always tell the truth, and bring the right expertise and knowledge to get through the problems.

Your credibility is your asset, the trust that people have in you, is your currency. Spend it wisely.

The best organizations reward not just outstanding individual contributors, but people who also contribute to the organization as a whole, to the team, to shared goals and values.

There are, of course, a lot of takers who are good fakers - people who will pretend to contribute to organization but really want everything for themselves.

To avoid being taken advantage of by them, you should build boundaries and learn to say No, as well as to cultivate your own value which you want to protect from others.

A challenge coin is a token given to someone who's contributed to the organization in a meaningful way. It recognizes the achievement and encourages others.

Jeff talks about some of the existing investment areas that the coronavirus pandemic is accelerating and some new ones that are emerging.

He loves them, and he will always be there with them, and that they can do anything if they put in the effort, and do the work.

If you are able to help promote your business by being the face of your company, then by all means it's something you should be investing in.

On other hand, if you want to be the face of your company in order to boost your own ego, but your efforts are not translating into company's bottom line, then you need to treat your public involvement as a hobby.

Hiring a data analyst could be very tricky, as it's not a role with a well defined criteria, like a job of a designer or developer would be.

Hiten suggests that instead of looking for an analyst, first find a very good off-shelf software that can do analytics for you, and if you need more capabilities, simply reach out to that company, and see if their own team can help you.

Setup a partnership program and attract multiple partners to work with you. To start, figure out who is the best growth partner for your company, and who is not, and then go after them just like you would go after your potential customers.

Often times, companies that have already reached out and tried to partner with you are the ones you could consider first. After all, they have already expressed some interest.

Take a look at Close.io Partner Program for an example of how to setup your own program.

In case of an already profitable business, profit sharing based on profit alone only incentivizes the business to remain the same.

If your business can profit share based on growth in profit, then your employees will be incentivized to actually grow the business to get their bonus.

Here is an example. You are a founder selling a product, and your prospect is asking you to send them three proposals, what does it mean?

They are not giving you enough context to understand their real needs. Why three, what are you they going to do with those proposals, what are they trying to accomplish, and who are going to look at those. Are they going to compare them with your competitors. ..etc?

Just doing the proposals is not going to make you successful until you understand in details what those proposals are going to do for the prospects, then you can craft just the right ones.

To get the details, you have to ask questions, dig in, and listen to everything you are told. Only then will you know enough to sell what you've got.

Whether you believe you can or cannot, you are right.

The only way to get really good at being creative is by creating a lot. If you think you are not able, that something is holding you back, then you are most likely not going to create anything. But if you believe in yourself and keep working at it, you will eventually get really good.

Sahil started by learning design and code for the web, with a simple goal to make enough money to buy some games. Soon thereafter, he took a free online course from Stanford on developing for the iPhone, doing it while he was still a high-school student. He then started to experiment, making more apps. Eventually, Sahil went to college at USC, and only lasted for four months before he dropped out and joined Pinterest to work on their iPhone app full time.

To avoid feeling like you are not doing enough you have to first define what that means for you, instead of trying to compare your accomplishments to those of other people.

Big vs. Small is subjective, until you find a way to quantify it.

YES. Fear is the compass, and there is always something valuable in the end.

Of course, if it's the matter of life and death, then it's a good idea to listen to your body and run away from the fear, but as far as our modern life is concerned, fear is good.

Matt believes that blogging is larger than WordPress and includes places like Twitter and Instagram, so by having WP focus on one section of blogging doesn't mean they are going to completely dominate the space.

Founders have more things in their heads, and so much more to worry about. They are constantly worried about uncertainty, about raising money and running out of money, about their employees; their minds are always "on."

Furthermore, founders are constantly bombarded by communications from the rest of the company. It is not uncommon for many founders to go to sleep and wake up with their phones, which impacts their quality of sleep.

In fact, founders are under such high pressure, they feel guilty for sleeping too much. They almost never sleep for the full 8 hours, very likely more like 5-6 hours at most.

Once TED conference ordered a matching paint for their branded red color, MyPerfectColor folks created a "Ted Red" which is now driving them customers looking for a similar color.

If blogging isn’t something you like, then simply don’t do it. It will not prevent you from moving forward in your career. But if you like writing, write at your own pace and do whatever you want.