How We StartUp
We love Cathie Wood. She’s a visionary ETF investor who is both contrarian and courageous. It was great to have her drop by the JetBridge office as she herself just made the move to Tampa Bay from New York. While Tampa Bay is nowhere near the intellectual density powerhouse that NY or SF are (the Tampa tech/investor scene is teeny tiny) it’s nice to have a ‘small town’ feel to our new home. And it was a great honor to be invited to her team’s Friday brainstorms – I look forward to it each week!
I was surprised the first one topped the news feed of the day – I’m hoping this means there’s a lot of interest around what’s going on in Ukraine given the Russian invasion this month.
A year later, KQED (NPR station for Northern California) interviewed me again regarding the situation in Ukraine and how we’re continuing to support our friends, family and employees there. I can not wait for this horror to end.
I’m a huge fan of the Atlantic Council think tank and their thought-provoking articles. Was honored to be interviewed for my perspectives on opening an IT business in Ukraine.
I’ve been given the privilege of getting old with some modicum of dignity and knowledge (born of a thousand mistakes), so one of the things I enjoy most is teaching the younger generation of would-be founders and leaders around the World.
But the most important thing I teach is this – “The World is not big enough for you to fuck people over and get away with it.” You break enough promises, oversell enough things and bounce enough paychecks – people will start talking until a scar forms on your face.
Reputations make us money or loses us money (often without us knowing it) while we sleep. It’s frankly amazing to me how many people in Silicon Valley and beyond forget this, or don’t believe it applies to them.
Time always proves them wrong.
