Thursday, March 31, 2011

Your Sources of Information & Inspiration

Ben Horowitz, co-founder of the awesome VC firm Andressen Horowitz (investments include Twitter, Facebook, FourSquare and Zynga), often has thought-provoking comments on his blog and Twitter page.  Today, he got my mind working with two separate ones…

The first, from Twitter – “@bhorowitz: I definitely listen to other genres, but hip hop is the only popular music that is pro business and deals with business as a topic."

I enjoyed that comment because I love many types of music and had never thought of it in that context before.  If you follow Mr. Horowitz, you’ll note that he starts all posts with a quote from a song.  I used to do the same thing when I was an editorial writer for my college newspaper, albeit I never pulled from hip hop.

Horowitz’s second comment is much more relevant to this blog and came from his guest-appearance on TechCrunch.  The assertion is that the most difficult CEO skill is “managing your own psychology” and the post offers techniques for doing so.  I found it insightful and you can read it here.

I share Horowitz’s comments partly because I found them interesting and partly to make a bigger point: 

As an entrepreneur, my encouragement is to have vast horizons for where you search for and find your information (and inspiration).

Followers of this blog know that I often draw from TechCrunch, VC blogs and so forth.  I’ve been asked about it.  On the surface, the world of tech entrepreneurship has little relevance to being a golf entrepreneur.  However, the qualities that make a great entrepreneur are not industry specific – and venture capitalists are THE experts on entrepreneurship.  Thus, I read and learn from them.  They give me gems like this Horowitz post on a daily basis, whereas you’ll be hard pressed to find this type of information in a Golf Digest.

In my opinion, the road to happy entrepreneuring includes daily detours from our industry tunnel.  I wish you the best of luck finding your information and inspiration down these unpaved paths.

2 comments:

  1. I couldn't agree more... I find that a daily dose of interaction with sites related to Tech, Entrepreneurism, Strategic Innovation, etc... often offer strong parallels to the golf industry. Committing to one tangential experience per month has led to incredible ideas, resources, etc...

    I look forward to reading your posts Steve, right up my alley!

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  2. Thanks for the kind words, Brittany! Let me know if you come across any resources I should check out.

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