At Imvu, We Opened Up Our Board

Science And Vision Are Not Opposites Or Even At Odds. They Need Each Other. I Sometimes Hear Other Startup Folks Say Something Along The Lines Of: 'if Entrepreneurship Was A Science, Then Anyone Could Do It.' I'd Like To Point Out That Even Science Is A Science, And Still Very Few People Can Do It, Let Alone Do It Well.

The Biggest Start-up Successes - From Henry Ford To Bill Gates To Mark Zuckerberg - Were Pioneered By People From Solidly Middle-class Backgrounds. These Founders Were Not Wealthy When They Began. They Were Hungry For Success, But Knew They Had A Solid Support System To Fall Back On If They Failed.

Except In Very Narrow Cases, Where There's Breakthrough Science That Needs Patent Production, Worrying About Competitors Is A Waste Of Time. If You Can't Out Iterate Someone Who Is Trying To Copy You, You're Toast Anyway.

At Imvu, The Cost Of Customer Acquisition Through Our Five-dollar-a-day Adwords Campaign Was Less Than Twenty-five Cents. Our Revenue From Those Same Customers Was More Than A Dollar.

Leadership Requires Creating Conditions That Enable Employees To Do The Kinds Of Experimentation That Entrepreneurship Requires.