“I have no desire to fit that old stereotype. I desire to live a life that is rich in relationships both in and outside of work. I desire to reap the many different rewards that are abundant in my job, working in this incredible start-up every day. I want to surround myself with a team, including investors, that challenges me and helps make me better. I want to live my life transparently, and if being a happy, successful Founder/CEO/Mom serves as a helpful example to anyone who wants to use me as such, great.”
—PREGNANT FOUNDER’S RESPONSE TO VC: “I’ve Never Heard Someone Say ‘An Expectant Father/CEO Will Fail’”
May 2011
99 posts
“When you sit there with a VC and he asks, ‘How can you prove to me that you’ll be committed to this project?’ I just say, ‘Dude, I climbed Mount Everest and helped pull my friend with a broken leg off the summit ridge. So yah, I can stick with a project, no problem.’”
—This Is The Best Answer To A VC’s Question We’ve Ever Heard
“For whatever reason, people believe that when they get to that spot, they have to know everything. They’ve got to be in total control, and you can never show weakness. I would say one of the underlying strengths of a great leader and a great C.E.O. — not all the time but when appropriate — is to demonstrate vulnerability, because that will bring people closer to you and show people the human side of you.”
—INSTANT MBA: Good CEOs Are Insecure And Know It
Louis C.K.
- LCK: You refine language. You've got to put things in a perfect way. You have to be economical, and yet you have to let shit string out. You have to know how to load a spring of tension and release it.
- Me and Chris try to study a lot of different kinds of people, not just comedians. We both love Bill Clinton — Clinton is America's headliner. One of the greatest things I ever saw was him at Coretta Scott King's funeral. Jimmy Carter, George Bush Senior, Hillary — all these people making speeches, and then Bill Clinton goes on and he says, "Let's all remember that that is a woman lying right there." And he points at her.
- It was audacious. "That is a woman who had her dreams and her pain and her passions," and I think he said "lust." He said really personal shit about her and you immediately heard the black people go, "Yes!"
- He says, "There's her family — think about what they're going through today, and everything that's happened to them since their daddy got shot. The burden that must have been hers."
- Holy shit. I hope to have any of that skill as a comic. He just found this short circuit. You try to have this nature the way water does — finds the lowest place and spreads the fuck out. That's what he did. [Louis checks a text on his phone.] Good. Okay.
“But wait: Isn’t the big house and the time to listen to the whole Dylan catalog worth something as well? Sure, researchers say, but not enough when it comes to the elusive metric of happiness. Given the choice between that cramped apartment and the big house, we focus on the tangible gains offered by the latter. We can see that extra bedroom. We want that extra bathtub. But we do not often use them. And we forget that additional time in the car is a constant, persistent, daily burden—if a relatively invisible one.”
—Long commutes cause obesity, neck pain, loneliness, divorce, stress, and insomnia. - By Annie Lowrey - Slate Magazine via EJ.
“
Barry Eisler announced today during his presentation at Publishers Launch Conference, an event held alongside BEA, that he has signed “within the hour” a deal with Thomas and Mercer, the new crime imprint at Amazon.
In response to the moderator’s question, Eisler also revealed he was receiving an advance “comparable to the one offered by Minotaur” which is widely rumored to be near $500,000.
” —Janet Reid, Literary Agent: BEA 2011 Day Three
“6. Don’t be afraid of failure.
Good comedians experiment constantly. Every time they test a new joke, they risk bombing. That’s why they’ll try out new material in smaller venues, polishing pieces in front of live audiences: they need to hear what’s working and what’s not working. Seinfeld admits that when he was starting out, “I was hitting 500. I would have a good show and a bad show, a good show and a bad show.” His very first show was bad. “But success wasn’t my objective.” He was desperate to simply be on stage, and was willing to risk failure every other night to get there. Designers take risks for the same reasons. Trying something new means not being sure of the outcome. But it’s the only way that anyone working in a creative field can hope to make progress. Ambition is a strong enough antidote to fear. Louis C.K. remembers how he idolized good comics: “I wanted to be one of them, and I didn’t care if I sucked at it.” —OBlog: Seven Things Designers Can Learn from Stand Up Comics: Observers Room: Design Observer
Good comedians experiment constantly. Every time they test a new joke, they risk bombing. That’s why they’ll try out new material in smaller venues, polishing pieces in front of live audiences: they need to hear what’s working and what’s not working. Seinfeld admits that when he was starting out, “I was hitting 500. I would have a good show and a bad show, a good show and a bad show.” His very first show was bad. “But success wasn’t my objective.” He was desperate to simply be on stage, and was willing to risk failure every other night to get there. Designers take risks for the same reasons. Trying something new means not being sure of the outcome. But it’s the only way that anyone working in a creative field can hope to make progress. Ambition is a strong enough antidote to fear. Louis C.K. remembers how he idolized good comics: “I wanted to be one of them, and I didn’t care if I sucked at it.” —OBlog: Seven Things Designers Can Learn from Stand Up Comics: Observers Room: Design Observer
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