The Only Way To Win Is To

Here In Silicon Valley, I Have Taken Part In Hundreds Of Conversations Trying To Convince People To Dive In And Become Entrepreneurs. All Too Often, Innovators With Good, Safe, Jobs Are Unwilling To Put Their Family's Access To Health Care At Risk By Walking Away From Company-backed Medical Insurance.

If The Plan Is To See What Happens, A Team Is Guaranteed To Succeed - At Seeing What Happens - But Won't Necessarily Gain Validated Learning - If You Cannot Fail, You Cannot Learn.

The Grim Reality Is That Most Start-ups Fail. Most New Products Are Not Successful. Yet The Story Of Perseverance, Creative Genius, And Hard Work Persists.

If Your Goal Is To Make Money, Becoming An Entrepreneur Is A Sucker's Bet. Sure, Some Entrepreneurs Make A Lot Of Money, But If You Calculate The Amount Of Stress-inducing Work And Time It Takes And Multiply That By The Low Likelihood Of Success And Eventual Payoff, It Is Not A Great Way To Get Rich.

The Attributes For Entrepreneurs Cut Both Ways. You Need The Ability To Ignore Inconvenient Facts And See The World As It Should Be And Not As It Is. This Inspires People To Take Huge Leaps Of Faith. But This Blindness To Facts Can Be A Liability, Too. The Characteristics That Help Entrepreneurs Succeed Can Also Lead To Their Failure.