March 14, 2010
In my “New Year’s Resolution” post I promised to write more…that hasn’t really happened as most of my writing time is committed to Greenhorn Connect related content. However, I’ve just had an inspiration for a post and so I’d like to share it here.
Since I really dove into entrepreneurship a few years ago, I’ve found I have an insatiable thirst for learning anything and everything related to the topic. All this time though, I’ve been thinking about what that really means, “to learn.” I think that in life there are many that seek to learn, but often it’s merely to amass knowledge; I know this fact or that statistic. I’m well-read on this subject. That’s all well and good, but if they’re just facts and merely someone else’s ideas…how much has been gained?
My goal is not to just amass facts. I’m not looking to be an encyclopedia. I want to understand. I have so many questions about so many things. And yes, studying and reading always helps, but I always consider it in the context of greater understanding. I think this analogy may help:
You have a farm. On this farm all kinds of fruits and vegetables grow. Those that are merely amassing knowledge would look at what they have and say that they have hundreds of broccoli heads and thousands of ears of corn. Those building understanding look deeper and understand how they can take the vegetables and make salads and juices and other unique dishes; each item grown on the farm represents an ingredient, not an end result. When they file this knowledge away of the farm and its produce, those with understanding are thinking of it from the perspective of how the different dishes were made from the farm, while those amassing knowledge only see it in the narrow verticals of each fruit or vegetable produced Those with understanding are also more easily able to transport the concepts created from the dishes from the farm into other areas; everything around them is a small piece to a bigger picture…one that is not necessarily completely clear, but is larger and better than before because of what’s been added.
I think that it’s as important what the question you’re asking is as the means to which you’re going about your learning. For example, I’ve recently become very interested in user experience. The questions I have are related to better understanding people. I want to be able to better step out of what I think (and all the biases and preconceived notions distorting it) and be able to understand others. My impressions when I come to a website are not the same as someone else’s. To accomplish this, I could go straight to a bunch of UI/UX web books, but I think it’s important to go broader than that, so I’m going to try to cast a wider net to truly understand people. Incidentally, as I work towards this goal, I believe I will be able to apply this new understanding to other areas of my life in human interaction.
How thoughtful are you with your learning? Are you amassing knowledge or creating understanding?
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Posted by Jason Evanish
March 7, 2010
Last night, Dart and Greenhorn teamed up to organize a #flashparty to try to get all the young entrepreneurs out for a night of socializing. About 20 young entrepreneurs and friends came by Clery’s to share a few drinks and catch up.
A few random thoughts:
1) Strengthening connections:
I had the chance to catch up with quite a few friends I hadn’t seen in a while, which was great. It was also really fun to spend a few minutes talking to friends in the community and not have it be entrepreneur related. Things like Wingman’s straws puzzle, talking about sports and beers was a welcome break from the daily entrepreneur game.
2) Making new connections:
I met Matt Lauzon from what was Paragon Lake, but is now Gemvara. It was really interesting to talk to him about some of the things they’re doing with their designer community and the Highland Capital program he went through. Quite a few of the others that came out met people they didn’t know very well.
3) Can’t help but be productive:
I walked away with a number of solid entrepreneur-related business items that are going to be very helpful in the next few weeks. As Laura Fitton said at her birthday party and Jennie White reported on at BostInnovation, Boston needs to have more parties. As relaxing and fun as last night was, everybody was still talking about business at times and making some valuable, actionable connections.
4) Lessons Learned:
- Being the broke, bootstrapping entrepreneurs we are, we got some pitchers thinking it would save us some money. Of course, when the end of the night came, sorting out who drank what and a few people had left was a bit of a pain to coordinate. Definitely going to have everyone get and pay for drinks individually next time.
- Much like the general community, except for a couple girlfriends and wives, it was a very male-dominated gathering. Future iterations will work harder to address this.
- Most people didn’t come out until 9pm…we thought we’d start hanging out earlier with GreenhornTV, but that didn’t really come together.
5) There will be a next time…
There were definitely plenty of good results from the event last night and so we’ll definitely try to continue to do these likely about once a month. If you have any ideas or feedback on how to make the next one better, let us know. Until then…stay tuned to dartboston.com, @greenhornboston and @dartboston for announcements of future events like this.
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Posted by Jason Evanish
March 5, 2010
January 18th, 2010 5:27am
That’s the time I got the most random, huge inspiration to ever hit Greenhorn Connect. That’s the timestamp on the email to Ashkan, my cofounder. It’s amazing, because I wasn’t working on Greenhorn at the time, but I lost my train of thought on what I was working on and this explosion of ideas just suddenly took over. Very cool moment. I’m glad I’ve got the time marked.
I can’t tell you yet what it was I thought of at that moment, but hopefully soon enough you will all be as excited by it as I was/am/will be.
Stay tuned.
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Posted by Jason Evanish
February 16, 2010
As I’ve been out in the community going to events and spreading the word about Greenhorn Connect, I’ve seen my share of panel discussions. One lesson I’ve learned from all those panels is that regardless of how the panel itself went or if you think you have a great idea, question or thought to share with a panelist, you generally don’t gain much by approaching panelists after events.
Every conversation with a panelist has generally gone the same. They’re tired. They just want to go home/run and catch their plane/get a drink. They’ve heard a million pitches thanks to all the other panels they’ve been on and so they’re usually on autopilot in the conversation trying to just find the quickest way to the exit. I totally understand this and respect this.
So what do I recommend you do instead? If you have a great thought…make sure you share it during the Q&A. If you didn’t get to…use it as a conversation topic with other members of the audience. Anyone who doesn’t run up to approach the panelist is also likely to be more interested in making meaningful networking connections and share good conversation.
Please don’t take this as a jab at panelists. In fact, this is more of a recognition of the difficulties of being a panelist. It is rightfully tiring to be on a panel and usually if you’re part of the panel, it’s because you’re an influential/important person in the area of discussion, which likely means you’re insanely busy. I also know that many people are dying to talk to you just so they can say they did or to dump their pitch on you or push their business card down your throat. I never want to be that person and so I generally now make it a rule not to bother approaching panelists I don’t already know well. I’d rather talk to a few more of the people in the audience that obviously shared my interest in the topic of the panel and make those meaningful connections that won’t just lead to the awkward “I’ll contact you in a month or two” and “sorry, I forgot my business cards” kind of discussions.
**Disclaimer #1** If you have something exceptionally relevant to discuss with a panelist and this is the only chance you’ll ever have to talk to them, then by all means, approach them. I think in general though, you’re better off working through your network to get an introduction to the person; this qualifies you and gives more context than “another eager audience member that wants to give me their card…”
**Disclaimer #2** If I’m ever on a panel, please don’t think this post means I don’t want to talk to you. Just realize that you should have more to say than “you should hear my pitch” or ”I’d like to meet you.” Is there something related to what I’m working on or something I talked about in the panel that’s particularly relevant to what you’re doing or a question you have?
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Posted by Jason Evanish
January 27, 2010
The name of your business is everything. It’s the first impression of your business. It tells people what you’re about and sets the expectations. You only name your business once, so you have to love the idea. And yet…in the world of domain camping, millions of social media accounts to reserve and a never ending battle for customer mind-space, there’s a lot of factors to satisfy.
Naming Greenhorn Connect took many weeks of thinking about what the name should be and then suddenly just came to mind and we ran with it. We’re now in that “nothing sounds right and we can’t think of anything good” phase for Doodlebugging. Much like with Greenhorn, bounties offered to others isn’t yielding anything great either (if you’d like to suggest a name, and we use it…we’ll give you $50.) Still, I’m sure we’ll end up with something…it’s just annoying and feels like a waste of mind space and productive time to think about it.
I’ve read all the tips about making it memorable, getting the dot com of your name and what makes the best choice from a trademark perspective, but does anyone have any real tips for coming up with a name after you remember those basics?
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Posted by Jason Evanish
