I basically apply with my teams the lean startup principles I used in the private sector - go into Silicon Valley mode, work at startup speed, and attack, doing things in short amounts of time with extremely limited resources.
I take a lean-startup approach: creating agile, interdisciplinary teams that get the minimum viable product to market as soon as possible. It's my job to be entrepreneur-in-residence, an internal change agent.
For a long time, I've ranted against naming your startup community 'Silicon Whatever.' Instead, I believe every startup community already has a name. The Boulder startup community is called Boulder. The L.A. startup community is called L.A. The Washington D.C. startup community is called Washington D.C.
Launching a successful product or startup has little to do with luck. Any business that gains traction on the market is the result of very careful strategizing and market analysis, not to mention the development of an original product or service.
We can't leave everything to the free market. In fact, climate change is, I would argue, the greatest single free-market failure. This is what happens when you don't regulate corporations and you allow them to treat the atmosphere as an open sewer.
The two big startup killers are when there's just no market for what you are doing, and team problems.
We must continue to liberalise the single market, cut red tape and basically create a digital single market. We have not completed the single market yet, there is not sufficient free movement of goods, labour, services and money. We have to keep on working at that against all the protectionist tendencies that we have right now.
With taxes, if they aren't working right, we can change them with a stroke of the pen. It's basically a market-type mechanism. People make their own choices. You run the taxes, and you get the results.
Not all startups are alike. One of the key ways they differ is in the relationship between a startup's new product and its market.
I've been very fortunate to be at the startup of a lot of different things. I was the startup of the Pancrase organization in Japan. Became a big figure over there. Then I was in the UFC and was at the startup of that, and I was a big figure in that. Twice. Not only in the beginning but also when it was taken over.
One reason for the primacy of the market in shaping the modern world is that it forces a reorganization of society in order to make the market work properly . When a market comes into existence, as Marx fully appreciated, it becomes a potent force driving social change.
A new DAO is like a startup. It requires a product/market fit, business model realization, and a lot of users/customers.
I love everything about being in Utah. I'll never change it. I don't need the big market to be happy.
Techstars is truly global; you'll see us continue to expand all our programs worldwide, including accelerators, our venture capital, as well as the UP Global programs including Startup Weekend, Startup Next, Startup Digest, etc.
If you have an idea that you can't get out of your head, do a startup. Otherwise join a startup.
When it comes to starting startups, in many ways, it's easier to start a hard startup than an easy startup.