Earnestness

Jessica and I have certain words that have special significance when we're talking about startups. The highest compliment we can pay to founders is…

If we imagine motives as vectors, it means both the direction and the magnitude are right. Though these are of course related: when people are…

Jessica Livingston's brain , that's what her x-ray vision is seeking out in founders. Earnestness! Who'd have guessed? Reporters literally can't…

We have no difficulty believing that people would be interested in history or math or even old bus tickets for their own sake. Why can't there be…

In preindustrial times it was never far from robbery, and some areas of business still retain that character, except using lawyers instead of…

This pattern suggests that earnestness is not one end of a continuum, but a target one can fall short of in multiple dimensions. Another thing I…

There's nothing morally wrong with starting a startup to make money. I just mean that those startups don't do as well. [ 3 ] The most powerful…