New Book: The Entrepreneur’s Weekly Nietzsche
With a small cameo from yours truly…
Whenever one gets a chance to read something from Brad Feld, like The Entrepreneur’s Weekly Nietzsche, about entrepreneurship, take it. His initial experiences as an entrepreneur and his subsequent 25+ years in venture capital give him a unique blend of on-the-ground intel coupled with thousands of entrepreneur examples in his portfolio. I’ve been building businesses for 25 years and I’ve never come across someone who has a greater capacity to process information, pattern match, pattern match accurately, and then storytell about that information than Brad. His insights are deep, varied, and helpful.
Add to that the mind of Dave Jilk and the results, in a book, are phenomenal. As Brad points out in a recent blog post, Dave was Brad’s older classmate who provided a grounding force as Brad entered MIT along with a lifelong friendship that is as deep as they get. Dave’s experiences have stayed on the entrepreneurial side of the ledger (no going over to the “dark side” of venture capital for Dave!), so the book benefits from the decades of lived experience Dave brings to the table. And, as you would likely guess, this MIT grad is no slouch when it comes to meaningful insights. After all, it was Dave who was reading a book “On Nietzsche” one day when the two were together and posed the sparking-question that became this book. You’ve probably met this person in your travels — the person who thinks deeply about everything, including the glass of water they’re drinking and where it might have sprung from, how many chemicals it might have in it, just how many life forms each molecule might have supported throughout its years-long journey, etc… That’s Dave.
Mix in some other entrepreneurs in their own voice(s) about the topic of the week and out comes something beautiful. A great mixture of real-life, real-world experiences as seen through the edited minds of Brad and Dave and as facilitated by their narration.
On the one hand starting and running a successful entrepreneurial business is trivially easy — as my dad the lawyer taught me at a very young age: “it’s all just supply and demand”. Give the thing that’s in high demand the best supply and it’s virtually impossible to fail. Except, on the other hand, it’s brutally difficult because first the analysis of the nature of the demand and the conceptualization of the best supply are opaque at best, hidden and buried at worst, and, second, there’s the “trivial” matter of execution: every aspect of that business — the culture, the product quality, the production engine, the go to market mechanisms… everything.
Because it’s so difficult (I’m on company #4 and still making crazy mistakes), the most valuable insights are those gleaned from those who have lived in the same shoes we’re living in. Spin those insights through the lens of people like Brad and David and you get invaluable.
If you’re an entrepreneur (or deeply connected to one) I’d highly recommend you read The Entrepeneur’s Weekly Nietzsche — and then read everything else with Brad’s name on it. You’ll be further ahead of the game than any other entrepreneur (except those who have already read — and re-read — all of Brad’s works!).
