I’m reading All I Want to Know Is Where I'm Going to Die So I'll Never Go There: Buffett & Munger—A Study in Simplicity and Uncommon, Common Sense by Peter Bevelin. I’ve never read a book structured like this one. It takes old quotes from various letters and interviews that Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett gave and structures the quotes as if they were part of a conversation with someone seeking their wisdom.

I’m not done with the book yet, but one quote from Charlie Munger caught my attention today:

I have what I call an ‘iron prescription’ that helps me keep sane when I naturally drift toward preferring one ideology over another. I feel that I’m not entitled to have an opinion unless I can state the arguments against my position better than the people who are in opposition. I think that I am qualified to speak only when I’ve reached that state.

A few days ago, I shared that Henry Ford had a similar view of the importance of understanding other people’s perspectives. Ford and Munger are two credible people who achieved outsize business success. Ford died in 1947; Munger, in 2023. Since they reached the same conclusion although their professional careers occurred at different times, it’s probably timeless wisdom. I want to work toward mastering it.

The more I read about the history of capitalism and the great entrepreneurs who came long before us, I more I see a pattern: the best companies of all time were built by entrepreneurs who understood human psychology—mainly that people are more easily influenced by stories than by logic or facts. People find stories more relatable. Facts and logic can feel cold and impersonal. It makes sense that history’s greatest companies were built by entrepreneurs who were gifted in storytelling.

Mother Nature wired me to communicate with facts and logic. My natural storytelling abilities are average on my best day. For a long time, I’ve recognized the power of storytelling and wanted to be a better storyteller. But I’ve never put in the practice to improve this skill, so I’m still average. This year I want to change that. I’m going to seek out creative ways to publicly practice and improve my storytelling in 2024.

I read a quote today from Henry Ford that stuck with me:

If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from his angle as well as from your own.

I try to see things from other people’s perspectives, and I’ve gotten better at it, but I’m not where I want to be. The Ford quote was a good nudge; it reminded me of the importance of mastering this skill. I’m committed to working on this until I’ve mastered it.

I’ve been discussing the topic of company vision with a few founders. These conversations reinforced to me that some founders aren’t clear on what vision means. They talk about how much revenue they’ll generate in five or ten years, what they plan to build, etc. It’s good to be clear on your aims, but that’s not vision. Those responses are too tactical.

I believe the root of why these founders are missing the mark isn’t a lack of ability or intelligence. It’s simpler than that: it’s a terminology mix-up and maybe not enough practice in thinking non-tactically.

Vision is painting a picture of what you think the world could look like. It’s painting a picture of how you want the world to look. It has nothing to do with your company.

Even when the term is defined, I’ve noticed that it’s hard for some founders to understand vision without an example. This week I spent time searching and found what I think is a good example.  

In a talk, Brian Armstrong, CEO and cofounder of Coinbase, detailed not only the company’s thinking behind its vision but also its mission and strategy. Here’s how Brian expressed the company’s vision and mission:

• Vision: Create more economic freedom for every person and business in the world over the next ten years.
• Mission: Create an open financial system for the world.

The vision is big. It will materially change the world if it becomes reality. The mission is what Armstrong’s company plans to do to accomplish its vision. I like how Armstrong explains the logic behind each statement, how they differ, and how they support one another.

At the end of the video, Armstrong ties the vision and mission together: “Our vision is to have a billion people in, say, five to ten years accessing an open financial system, through our products, every day. When we’ve done that, we will have materially changed the economic freedom of the world and we will have bent the shape of that curve.”

In a different video, Armstrong clearly explains his vision of the world: “I imagined a world where anybody with a smartphone could have access to sound money and financial services; where every payment could be as fast, cheap, and global as sending an email.”

Coming up with a vision isn’t easy. It requires zooming out and thinking about the future of the world and what’s possible. Hopefully, the example above is useful and helps founders articulate how the world will be transformed if their company achieves its mission.

This week I caught up with a founder and chatted about his fundraise. He recently kicked it off (again), and it’s going well this time. A few bank wires have cleared and he has significant interest from various funds for the remainder of the round.

This is starkly different from his efforts to fundraise last fall, so I wondered why he’s having more success this time around. Is something materially different about his company (or pitch)? When I asked, he said the company is still progressing at the same rate as a few months ago. He sees a difference in venture capital investors. More investors are receptive to his pitch, which is essentially the same as a few months ago.

In March, we’ll see start-up fundraising kick into high gear: more pitch competitions, demo days, etc. Lots of founders will “officially” kick off their raise and begin pitching investors. Fundraising wasn’t great last year. How will it go this year? I’m curious about whether this founder’s fundraising experience will be the exception, the norm, or somewhere between the two.

One of the books I reread periodically and recommend to idea-stage founders is The Mom Test. It’s a short read and can add tremendous value to founders who are thinking about what solution they should build or what problem they want to solve. Every founder I’ve recommended the book to, and who read it, loved it.

The book focuses on a single topic: customer discovery. It outlines a simple, effective methodology for talking with customers. The book details how to ask the right questions (that aren’t leading questions) so conversations yield valuable insights about customer pain and its severity. The book does a good job of laying out an approach that helps founders better understand what (if anything) they should build, which can prevent founders from wasting time, energy, and money. Another reason I like this book for idea-stage founders is that it helps them avoid the common solution-in-search-of-a-problem trap.

If you’re an early-stage founder who hasn’t found product–market fit yet, consider giving the book a read.

I’ve been learning about Jack Ma recently. He’s the founder of Alibaba, the China-based e‑commerce behemoth. As of this writing, the company has a market capitalization (i.e., valuation) of roughly $188 billion. Alibaba has a variety of successful business lines, including a marketplace, cloud computing, and financial services.

Jack is an impressive founder, but one fact surprised me. Alibaba is a technology company, but Jack Ma isn’t technical at all. He doesn’t write code and doesn’t have a deep understanding of tech. Yet he was able to found and scale a wildly successful technology company that changed commerce in his country.

If ever a nontechnical founder building a technology company needed inspiration, Jack Ma was the one. For nontechnical founders, his journey is worth studying.

This week an entrepreneur told me about a new business he’s trying. He’d met a gifted creative whose work caught his eye. The creative wants the freedom to create what inspires him and thinks that a business that sells what he makes will give him that freedom. But he hasn’t had much luck getting the business off the ground. The entrepreneur got to know the creative and realized that he’s gifted in his craft, but not in business. He doesn’t understand or know how to apply business concepts.

This entrepreneur and creative have decided to test going into business together. If the test phase works out, they’ll continue. Each is responsible for his strengths: the entrepreneur for administration, marketing, and finances; the creative for creating the pieces and networking with other creatives.

When I heard about these two starting a business together, I was excited. Last month, I shared that I think a practitioner could be a good cofounder when paired with a business-minded hustler. I think a partnership like that could be a great, complementary founding team. The entrepreneurial experiment these two are running is exactly that. If successful, it could turn into something big.

I’m excited to follow the journey of this experiment and hear about what they learn along the way.

Today I got to watch serendipitous interactions between several entrepreneurs who didn’t know each other before today. The inevitable “What are you working on?” question came up in most of these conversations. After sharing, these entrepreneurs were able to add value to what the others were working on in some way.

My takeaway from today was that entrepreneurs have more to gain than lose from sharing their ideas and what they’re working on. The more you share, the more opportunities you provide for others to help you and the more feedback (positive and negative) you get. Both will improve your idea or project.

As an early-stage founder, I was part of an entrepreneurial group that taught new founders about key business functions. Each quarter we went deep into a specific business function: marketing, finances, HR, marketing, etc. At the end of each of those sessions, I better understood functions that didn’t come naturally to me (e.g., marketing). I felt educated. But I still had a problem: What do I do with this new knowledge? How do I use it in my business? I’d learned what I needed to do, but I still had no idea how to do it.

This experience highlighted the difference between knowledge and wisdom.

Knowledge is acquired by learning new information or being made aware of something. Learning about marketing is an example of acquiring knowledge. Knowledge acquisition doesn’t always equate to adding value. There’s another step.

Wisdom is the ability to apply knowledge in a manner that aligns with the outcome you desire. Wisdom means changed behavior and improved decision-making—knowing what to do and when to do it. Wisdom is acquired from experience (yours or someone else’s). Growing your company through marketing execution is the result of wisdom.

Through trial and error and talking with other successful entrepreneurs (who shared their experiences), I learned how to apply the concepts I learned in those sessions to grow my business. My problem was solved.

This experience showed me that knowledge is important. You can’t apply something if you aren’t aware of it, which is why continuous learning is so important. But wisdom is what I value most because applying knowledge well is how I achieve the outcomes I desire.