Lots of people want to start a business but don’t know where to begin. Their uncertainty prevents them from acting—they never get off square one. It’s more common than you’d think, but it doesn’t have to be that way.

There’s a simple hack aspiring entrepreneurs can use. This hack is helpful if you don’t know what kind of company you want to start or have a list of potential companies you could start.

Find another aspiring entrepreneur (someone who’s serious) and have regular accountability meetings. They don’t have to be super structured or long. Here are a few things they could cover:

• What problems have you evaluated since the last meeting?
• What’s the result of your analysis (i.e., do you kill the idea or move further in your evaluation)?
• What are the next steps in your process?
• What’s the deadline for completion of the next steps?

The goal of the meetings is to initiate momentum, keep the momentum going, and have a sounding board for your ideas and thoughts. Accountability meetings help accomplish all of that, and then some, in a simple format. 

Entrepreneurship is a tough journey that’s full of uncertainty. Founders are constantly trying to figure out what action they should take given the information at hand. You don’t have to travel alone. Find someone going the same way, and you’ll help each other get to the destination faster.

Louis Pasteur once said that “fortune favors the prepared mind.”

This quote is simple but powerful. The greatest outcomes are more likely to belong to those who have put in the work to prepare mentally. You can see it in founders. Those who have obsessed about a problem to the point where they understand it from all angles are more likely to create a superior solution that customers will pay for. Tons of paying customers equals a big company and accelerated value creation. You can see it in investors. Those who have gone deep into a company or sector or into developing a thesis are ready to deploy capital when the right investment opportunity presents itself. Even if it’s non-consensus and unpopular at the time. They can recognize that the opportunity is superior sooner than others and seize it before its window closes.

I’m a big fan of the prepared mind. I try to learn as much as I can about concepts, companies, and topics that interest me. This has helped me uncover unique insights and given me the conviction to do things I otherwise wouldn’t have done. I’ve made it a priority to make time regularly to do this. 

A prepared mind is something everyone can have—but few do. Most don’t make the effort. It’s a great life hack—a way to separate yourself from everyone else.

I recently talked to founders building an AI start-up. They shared with me that they’re raising capital, and I asked the normal questions about metrics, runway, etc. I learned they have a significant amount of capital in the bank from their raise less than 12 months ago. This made me ask, why are you raising again if you have ample runway for executing your strategy?

Their response was simple. They’re getting interest from VC firms looking to invest in AI start-ups, and they figured they should strike while the iron is hot.

It’s so interesting to hear how different the stories of founders raising in the market right now are. Some are grinding it out to get an opportunity to pitch an investor, while others are being sought out by investors. I’m really curious to see which companies successfully complete their fundraising rounds (i.e., have money in the bank) before the end of the year.

I had a conversation this past week with another investor, someone who invests broadly in various asset classes. He shared that when he’s considering an investment, liquidity is a priority. I think of liquidity as the ability to turn an asset into cash easily by selling it within a reasonable amount of time without having to discount it significantly. Liquidity usually means there’s a healthy market of buyers and sellers of an asset. Many investors consider public equities a liquid asset class because stock markets (e.g., NASDAQ and NYSE) bring buyers and sellers together regularly, so shares in public companies can easily be converted to cash.

I’ve been thinking about liquidity more since my conversation this week and wanted to get some different perspectives on the topic from seasoned investors who’ve had outsize success. I came across an interview of Seth Klarman, a billionaire investor, CEO of Baupost Group, and author of the hard-to-find investing classic Margin of Safety.

Klarman shares his views on liquidity after decades of investing. Two things jumped out to me. First, illiquidity comes with a cost, and investors need to be paid for giving up the right to change their mind. In other words, if you buy something that can’t be easily sold, you need to be compensated for being unable to change your mind and easily sell the asset. Second, assets in a seemingly illiquid form aren’t necessarily illiquid. For example, a stake in a building is thought of as an illiquid asset. However, if you own 100% of the building, you can decide when to sell it. Buildings get sold all the time, Klarman said, so this asset is in an illiquid form but is actually liquid.

Klarman made some good points about liquidity in this interview. If you want to hear the rest of his views on liquidity, check out that section of the interview here. 

A handful of books that I’ve read over the years were so insightful and full of wisdom that I marked them as books I must reread. This weekend, I revisited one of them. I read it a year ago and got immense value from it because it simplified concepts I’d been trying to make sense of.

Rereading parts of the book this weekend, I walked away with additional insights. I began wondering why I missed them the first time. The material in the book hadn’t changed, so it had to be something to do with me.

When I first read this book, my understanding of concepts discussed in it was nonexistent. I was green, with a massive knowledge gap that I was trying to fill. Since then, I’ve consumed lots of long-form content to better understand these concepts. Applying that understanding, I’ve reflected on my successes and failures. All of this has given me a better theoretical and practical understanding of these concepts, which I view as my foundation. 

With books that contain an abundance of wisdom, it’s not always possible to absorb all of it on first reading. The wisdom is layered, in a sense. Understanding one aspect of a concept unlocks your ability to understand something deeper about it. Your ability to understand deeply builds on itself.  

Recognizing how this layering effect works, I now I want to make it a priority to revisit books that I thought were packed with wisdom and that were written by people who’ve mastered concepts that I too want to master.

This is my one-hundred-eighty-fourth weekly reflection. Here are my takeaways from this week:

• Seeing the obvious – Sometimes I look at something many times. Then one day it clicks, and I see something I’d missed. Afterward, it seems so obvious that I wonder how I ever missed it. This week was a reminder that the obvious isn’t always obvious at first.
• Conviction – Having conviction in what you’re doing matters, especially when you’re doing things that are non-consensus. Doing the work to build that conviction is important.   
• Fundraising – Raising too much money too early can negatively impact a start-up. Some founders think the more money they have, the better, without thinking through the implications. I had this chat with a few founders this week.
• Investing edge – All investors need an edge to generate outsize returns. You can copy what another investor does but not generate the same returns because you don’t have the same edge. Finding the edge that’s unique to you is important—but not easy.  
• Reinventing the wheel – I want to lean more into getting exposed to great ideas and building on them instead of trying to create so many new ideas.

Week one hundred eighty-four was another week of learning. Looking forward to next week!

I read an article this week about Airbnb. My experience with marketplaces makes them an area of interest for me. I enjoy reading how publicly traded marketplace companies navigate the complexities of the business model at massive scale. In the article, Brian Chesky, CEO and cofounder of Airbnb, was very candid about his company. 

Chesky said the company isn’t on a solid foundation. In fact, he claims the company never built a solid foundation. The Airbnb system was intended to serve a much smaller company, but Airbnb ended up growing “like crazy.”

Chesky outlined a few things they need to do to get their house in order. The one that really caught my attention was a focus on reducing prices. Chesky said attractive pricing was what drew people to the service. It sounds like he wants to return the company to being known for affordability.

That makes sense, in a way. Lower price points usually lead to an increase in demand. On the other hand, there could be a limit to how low some hosts can go. Especially when you consider that some of them have leverage (i.e., debt) on their properties.

Those are just two of the many things I thought about after reading this article.

Marketplaces are hard. Keeping the customers (the demand side) and the merchants (the supply side) happy is no easy task. In my experience, when changes are made that materially affect how much revenue the supply side receives, a period of uneasiness and “adjustment” usually occurs.

Airbnb is massive, so I’m curious to see how this all unfolds and what the impact will be on Airbnb’s financials and on the entrepreneurs who make a living as hosts on the platform.

Today I had a long conversation with a friend who recently bought a business. After being in corporate America for many years, she took the leap to become an entrepreneur through acquisition. During our chat, she shared a few things I found interesting.

Transitioning from a structured world with established processes, systems, infrastructure, and support staff to the less structured entrepreneurial world has been a challenge. Simple things she never had to think about, such as email domains, cloud storage, and verifying invoice accuracy, she now has to navigate. It’s a bit overwhelming, but also exciting.

Her mindset has shifted from worker to owner. It hadn’t occurred to her that she had a worker mindset, but she realized that she thinks and acts differently now that she’s an owner.

She views entrepreneurship as the best vehicle for elevating her financial life and leaving a legacy for her children. The benefit of business cash flows and value appreciation is hard to find outside entrepreneurship.

She wants more flexibility. She views entrepreneurship as a way of ultimately (after the business is running smoothly) controlling her time. Flexibility is important because she doesn’t want to miss important family moments because of a work schedule she doesn’t control.

Entrepreneurship is powerful. It drastically changes an entrepreneur’s life. My friend realized this and decided it’s the path for her. I’m super happy for her and can’t wait to see her business flourish. 

Recently, a friend shared a quote from Steve Jobs, the legendary founder of Apple:

Picasso had a saying—“good artists copy; great artists steal”—and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas. 

I hadn’t heard this before and wanted more context about when Jobs said it. So, I did a little digging. I found this video clip.

Jobs’s point was that you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Instead, get exposure to great ideas that have already been tried. Then incorporate the best of them into what you’re trying to do.

Repeating (sometimes with a tweak) what’s already been proven to work is a great recipe for success.

One of the founders I work with recently kicked off his fundraise. He decided he wanted a well-run, tight process to boost his chances of completing his fundraise before the holidays. One of the things he’s doing is sending a weekly recap of the week’s activities to all his existing investors.

I really like this. My favorite part of the recap is that his fundraise process is displayed as a funnel, and he quantifies how many venture capital firms are in each stage. As an investor, I can quickly understand, looking at the funnel, where he is in his process and gauge the likelihood of it being successful as it progresses.

In addition to the funnel, he includes in his recap a few bulleted highlights and planned activities for the upcoming week. 

In a minute or two every week, I get a good idea of where he is, what he’s planning to do, and how I can help (if I know some of the investors he’s about to pitch or already has pitched).

I’m a fan of this fundraise update email. It’s a great tool to help founders focus, run a tight process, and keep stakeholders informed throughout the fundraise process.