Friends of Dave #66: Audacious G
Tenacity + Audacity = UNSTOPPABLE.
If you are a regular reader of VC Fred Wilson, you probably saw that he wrote a post this week on "Tenacity" and how he feels it is a factor that differentiates people. It's a very quick read -- check it out if you can.
It also got me thinking about a video I had recently seen by Gary Vaynerchuk where he ranted about a similar sounding topic that I think is actually a natural companion to tenacity: "audacity." And if you think my preambles are rants, you really need to watch GaryVee because once he gets wound up....fuhgeddaboudit.
See, I had never really thought about the importance of being audacious in business until I had joined my first startup back in 2005. During one of the first off sites we had, the acronym "BHAG" was written on white boards and mentioned in conversation and planning sessions over and over. The problem for me: I literally had no clue what that was.
Eventually I learned that BHAG stands for "big hairy audacious goal". Setting a BHAG (whether it be for a quarter or a year) is a way to try to rally and motivate a team to strive to achieve something most sane people would view as impossible -- simply because they have the sheer audacity to actually think they can make it happen.
At the time I remember thinking it was total Silicon Valley living, VC money spending bullshit. Seriously, who comes up with this crap? But now, with a bit of wisdom and experience under my belt, I totally buy it as a motivating tool. Being audacious with your goals means you have the guts to push yourself outside of your comfort zone, challenge conventional thinking, and be brazen about what you think you can accomplish. You put fear of failure aside and actually welcome the challenge to conquer the BHAG.
In the end, by pushing yourself and your team to be audacious (assuming you have assembled the right team), you can pretty much ensure you will likely achieve more than if you followed simple conventional thinking. And when you combine tenacity with audacity, fuhgeddaboudit. You can really be unstoppable.
So what is your BHAG right now? What are you being audacious about? I have a new idea I am working on that I will share more about next week -- some of you may have seen me mention it on LinkedIn this week. I'll even give some of the more detail oriented Friends a sneak peak here.
In the meantime, enjoy the long holiday weekend. Some good reading in this edition if you have the time -- nothing too long too. I promise.
XOXO
Dave
3 To Get You Thinking....
Why we are most gullible to ourselves — qz.com
To fall prey to another person you have to fall prey to your belief that you’re a good judge of character, that you know the situation, that you’re on solid ground as opposed to shifty ground.
In a world where we get bombarded with content, news and fake news, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that the person with the highest success rate of duping us is ourselves.
The Case Against Retweets — www.theatlantic.com
A modest proposal to improve social media — and perhaps the world.
Does my algorithm have a mental-health problem? — aeon.co
Is my car hallucinating? Is the algorithm that runs the police surveillance system in my city paranoid? Bots are trained on imperfect data by humans who are imperfect and biased. It's natural to see how this can impact the decisions they make.
4 For Your Day Job...
COUNTERPOINT: Data is NOT the new oil — techcrunch.com
The best data moats are tied to a particular problem domain, in which unique, fresh, data compounds in value as it solves problems for customers.
While there are an abundance of articles these days preaching the value of data, this reinforces that, as technology is being produced to quickly process the data, not all data is created equal. See "Does My Algo Have A Mental Health Problem" above...
The Old Content Marketing Playbook Doesn’t Work Anymore — bettereveryday.vc
At one point in time, banner ads, direct mail, Google ads and blog posts each were the customer acquisition du jour — now, they are oversaturated, expensive, and increasingly ineffective. Great points here on how increasing an emphasis on experimentation is important in order to stand out with your marketing strategy.
IoT devices are the next customer data frontier — techcrunch.com
As you read this, think less about big data and IoT and think more about customer experience. What are all of the touch points we can gain with our customer to learn to serve them better? IoT is really a gateway to answering that question.
Investors May Be Harming FinTech Lending Platforms
This study says savvy investors on peer-to-peer lending platforms are upsetting a delicate balance that make those systems work for borrowers.
Your Weekly Dose of Randomness...
Earth’s Wonders Like You’ve Never Seen Them Before — medium.com
Jokes aside, these are some pretty cool images.
'Orange snow' baffles eastern Europeans — www.bbc.com
Some occasional yellow snow? We are happy to eat that for breakfast. But ORANGE snow...WTF?
Here's Why You Shouldn't Take the DMV for Granted — www.atlasobscura.com
Because without it, we would have no benchmark for what hell might possibly be like.
And The Last Word....
'The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling' Is a Eulogy Worth Watching
Honestly, I started watching this two part doc and did not know what to expect. I was not a huge Garry Shandling fan by any stretch, but this was exceptionally done. His constant struggle to understand himself, life, and how we are shaped by the people and events from our lives that impact us was sensitive, riveting and insightful.