The Struggle is when you wonder why you started the company in the first place.

The Struggle is when people ask you why you don’t quit and you don’t know the answer.

The Struggle is when your employees think you are lying and you think they may be right.

The Struggle is when food loses its taste.

The Struggle is when you don’t believe you should be CEO of your company. The Struggle is when you know that you are in over your head and you know that you cannot be replaced. The Struggle is when everybody thinks you are an idiot, but nobody will fire you. The Struggle is where self-doubt becomes self-hatred.

The Struggle is when you are having a conversation with someone and you can’t hear a word that they are saying because all you can hear is The Struggle.

The Struggle is when you want the pain to stop. The Struggle is unhappiness.

The Struggle is when you go on vacation to feel better and you feel worse.

The Struggle is when you are surrounded by people and you are all alone. The Struggle has no mercy.

The Struggle is the land of broken promises and crushed dreams. The Struggle is a cold sweat. The Struggle is where your guts boil so much that you feel like you are going to spit blood.

The Struggle is not failure, but it causes failure. Especially if you are weak. Always if you are weak.

Most people are not strong enough.

Every great entrepreneur from Steve Jobs to Mark Zuckerberg went through The Struggle and struggle they did, so you are not alone. But that does not mean that you will make it. You may not make it. That is why it is The Struggle.

The Struggle is where greatness comes from.

the always inspiring Ben Horowitz on The Struggle
Yep… that’s me on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street”

Yep… that’s me on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street”

startupquote:

When something really shitty happens we try not to take it personally, figuring that tomorrow is another day.
- Mike Hudack

startupquote:

When something really shitty happens we try not to take it personally, figuring that tomorrow is another day.

- Mike Hudack

While I promised them I wouldn’t say here what they’re doing, I can tell you that it fits perfectly with what they’ve already done. They’re going to have an unfair advantage in building it because their current users already want it, it aligns with their brand, it matches their skill set as a team, and it fits the the general vision they sold to their investors. And yet, it’s not some trivial optimization. It’s a 15 degree pivot that allows them to leverage their earlier work for a much bigger opportunity. It’s a veer.
from Jason Freedman’s awesome article on pivots including Speakergram’s recent pivot veer. 

Very interesting advice from Eric Stromberg particularly “When I was searching for a startup job I got some good advice: Any startup job you find on a job board will be one you don’t want.

I particularly like the quote: “We see a lot of startups that feel as though the first taste of success is the finish line. In reality, that’s when the hard part begins!”

Markets develop for a complex set of factors that are often beyond all of our control. It is often the fortuitous mixture of new technologies, customer awareness and then acceptance of the technology and then the slow adoption into our daily lives that leads to markets exploding. Nascent startup markets are like fine wine, they take time to develop.
From Mark Suster’s excellent “9 women can’t make a baby in a month” article. 
People who build companies to flip are essentially base jumping without a parachute

Great talk about getting started and dealing with the Chicken-and-Egg adoption problem by Brian Chesky of AirBnB

I particularly like Paul Graham’s advice to AirBnB: “Go to your users!”.

As I was just lamenting with a fellow startup-focused MBA classmate, our Twitter streams are making us very envious of everyone at SXSW (particularly during a morning spent learning about multiple regression).

As I was just lamenting with a fellow startup-focused MBA classmate, our Twitter streams are making us very envious of everyone at SXSW (particularly during a morning spent learning about multiple regression).