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.