Feld Thoughts - Failure Comes From Not Following Your Additive Rules
I read this and got to thinking - “what are my rules” for business? Not a complete list, but some rules I think every business (and person!) should follow:
- Don’t lie.
- Everyone involved deserves to profit.
- Work with people you like.
- Do business on a “people scale”. Business is not “just business” - business is people.
- Make money. It keeps people happy, and keeps you in business.
- Know when to quit.
- Understand everyone’s motivation (including your own).
- Have fun. Otherwise it is ust a job.
I’m sure I could come up with more. Chances are you can too. Share them in the comments!
Rob
The cliche “rules were meant to be broken” is a common one in the world of entrepreneurship. Paul Berberian – a great entrepreneur (and dear friend) almost died yesterday when flying his airplane because he broke three of his rules of flying in a row. Paul got lucky and I very glad he’s alive.
As an investor, I’ve developed some rules. These are not absolutes – I break individual rules on a regular basis. These are not “ethical”, “moral”, or “legal” rules; rather they are functional guidelines for helping create companies that I’ve developed over 20+ years of doing this with 100+ companies. If you are an entrepreneur or executive at a company that I’m an investor in (or a co-investor with me) and have ever had to listen to me blather on about a story of something that has happened at another company to illustrate one of my points, you understand what I mean by “a rule.”
While my rules evolve over time, the core principles don’t. Paul’s post illustrated a point that I hadn’t ever really thought about. When you have a set of rules, it’s ok to break one of them, but it’s probably not ok to break two in a row and it might be fatal to break three in a row. In some recursive parallel universe, I guess that’s a rule.
As a result there are two concepts in play: one of “rules” and one of “additive rules.” (Rule_1 or Rule_2 or Rule_3) is very different from (Rule_1 and Rule_2 and Rule_3). The second case is the one that will get you intro trouble.
Source: Feld Thoughts - Failure Comes From Not Following Your Additive Rules
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