Category: Entrepreneurship

A couple of months ago, I was speaking at a conference when it came time for the Q&A. Several people raised their hands, and one question after another came out. Interestingly, every question that was asked was something I had already written about in a blog post, sometimes many years earlier. Because I had already put my thoughts on paper, my answers were more thoughtful, more structured, and more relevant.

After that experience, it made me reflect on something that feels obvious but is rarely said: the more you write, the better you speak.

Writing forces you to slow down and think. When you write an idea, you have to work through the pros and cons, document the anecdotes, and clarify the lessons. That effort crystallizes your thinking and refines your word choice. Writing is one of the best mental exercises for improving how you think, which directly improves how you speak.

There is also a powerful bonus. Writing captures your ideas for posterity and helps you retain them far longer than simply thinking or hearing them.

My advice to entrepreneurs is simple: start writing. It does not have to be perfect. It does not have to be groundbreaking. It just has to be done. The more you write, the sharper your thinking becomes, and the stronger your speaking becomes. Writing and speaking reinforce each other, and entrepreneurs should invest in both.

Last week, I gave a presentation to a committee focused on improving the technology and innovation ecosystem in our state. I had been asked several months earlier to deliver this presentation, so I created a note on my iPhone where I regularly jotted down ideas, solicited input from others, and ran searches to see what other ecosystems had done successfully in the past. Over time, all of that research and thinking lived in one simple note.

When it was time to build the slides, everything I needed was already in one place. The next step was to turn those raw thoughts into a polished, professional presentation. To do that, I created a new note on my iPhone, tapped the microphone button, and talked through the presentation out loud. I covered the audience, my goals, the desired outcomes, and then walked through each slide in sequence. Because the research was already done and the ideas were well formed, this part was fast.

It took about five minutes to talk through the entire deck: an introduction, my background and experience, the major trends I’m seeing, five core ideas—each with its own slide—and a closing thank-you slide.

With the voice-to-text draft complete, I copied and pasted the resulting (and admittedly garbled) notes into ChatGPT. At the top, I included instructions about the audience, goals, and format, and asked ChatGPT to produce a structured slide outline. Almost instantly, it returned a clean framework for each slide, including the slide title, key visual concept, on-screen text, and behind-the-scenes talking points.

With the outline done, the final step was producing the actual slides. I opened Google Slides, created a new presentation, clicked the Gemini button, and selected the Nano Banana image visualization tool. For each slide, I copied and pasted ChatGPT’s output into the visualization prompt and hit “go.” After a couple of minutes, it generated polished, visually compelling slides complete with graphics, charts, and relevant contextual information.

I then inserted each generated image as a slide in Google Slides—and I was finished.

Fifteen minutes from start to finish, after a couple of months of research, I had a complete, professional-looking slide deck that was consistent, visually engaging, and ready to present.

Try it yourself. You’ll be blown away. We’re entering a new era, and this simple workflow is just one example of how dramatically the way we work is changing.

Last week, I had the opportunity to meet with a group of entrepreneurs building sports-related technology. They’ve created impressive tools for the high end of the market and have seen strong success over the past few years. Now they’re facing the big question: how do they expand the business? What direction should they pursue, which strategies should they prioritize, and how should they allocate resources?

After hearing their story and seeing the technology firsthand, I immediately thought about lessons we learned at Intown Golf Club. We spent the next 30 minutes discussing what has worked and what hasn’t on the technology side at Intown, especially how to make tech genuinely valuable for serious golfers while also keeping it fun and simple for beginners and kids who just want to enjoy the game.

That conversation was a useful deep dive into an adjacent industry and a reminder of how important it is to evaluate both hardware and software through the lens of the front-end experience. Some products manage to be powerful for advanced users while still feeling intuitive and enjoyable for casual users.

It also reinforced something I’ve come to appreciate: innovation from a different but loosely related market, especially one that’s a few years ahead, can be an excellent source of insight and inspiration. As entrepreneurs, we’re often at our best when we go deep and solve the most valuable customer problems. That usually requires intense focus and a willingness to ignore distractions while you deliver real value.

But if things go well, if the product works, customers are happy, and momentum builds, you eventually come up for air and start asking, “What’s next?” That’s the perfect time to look at nearby markets that may be further along, learn from their best practices, and bring those insights back to your own customers, either to improve what you offer today or to expand the market you can serve tomorrow.

The pattern is simple: go deep, solve the hard problems, and then make time to look around for lessons you can import from markets just ahead of you.

Last week, I was catching up with a group of entrepreneurs when one of them asked, “When was the last time each of us felt uncomfortable in our business?” This made me pause and reflect. “Uncomfortable,” in this context, meant doing something outside of our normal approach or comfort zone. Human nature tends to push us forward for a bit, then settle into a routine or style that works. We often hustle with minor adjustments, but rarely do we push ourselves in ways that truly make us uncomfortable.

As the group went around and shared their recent experiences, most examples fell into two categories.

The first was getting uncomfortable with team members. This included addressing personnel issues and making the hard call. For most entrepreneurs, having to fire someone or tell them they’re no longer the right fit is one of the most difficult and painful things to do. Entrepreneurs are typically optimistic, glass-half-full types who love dreaming and chasing a vision, not telling someone the company has outgrown them.

The second category was about risk-taking. While people often assume entrepreneurs are inherent risk seekers, I find many successful ones to be more risk averse in the sense that they value control and like betting on themselves. They often prefer doing their own thing, even if it has a lower chance of success, rather than choosing a safer, more conventional path. The theme of “uncomfortable risk” emerged repeatedly, referring to the shift from calculated, manageable risks to risks that actually create discomfort. Hiring a new team member may involve some personnel risk but little business risk if the company can afford it. Making a bigger bet that could jeopardize the whole business, yet might be necessary to reach the next level, is the kind of uncomfortable risk that keeps entrepreneurs up at night.

For entrepreneurs, my recommendation is to regularly ask yourself where you are on the comfort scale and when you last got truly uncomfortable in a healthy way. It is easy to coast once things are working and push only a little, but it is worth questioning whether you are pushing hard enough and whether there is an opportunity to get uncomfortable in a smart, productive way.

A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to speak at the Deloitte 500 event at the Atlanta Tech Village. At the event, the local winners were revealed and recognized. Incredibly, the fastest-growing tech company in the United States based on three-year revenue growth is a local Atlanta company called Impiricus.

Impiricus offers a text-messaging chatbot for healthcare professionals, allowing them to opt in to receive messages from pharmaceutical companies and to text questions directly to get information from pharma companies. After the event, the co-founder of the company, Dr. Hashmi, came up to me, introduced himself, and shared his excitement about the recognition. Naturally, I had to ask him about the company and about the honor of being named the fastest-growing tech company in the country by Deloitte.

I had heard of previous startups in the space focused on connecting pharmaceutical companies and doctors, and while those turned out fine, I was curious about the “aha moment” for Impiricus. How did they make it work so well that the vast majority of doctors in the United States opted into their text-messaging service?

The answer was simple yet profound: Impiricus was the first service to explicitly put the doctor in control and to focus on providing value first, not marketing first. In fact, many doctors receive only one or two marketing text messages per year. Doctors opt into the service through Impiricus, and Impiricus acts as a trusted middle layer that ensures pharmaceutical companies do not overwhelm them with promotions. At the same time, Impiricus ensures doctors can ask questions and get all the information they need related to drugs and treatments without receiving a barrage of marketing messages.

In earlier attempts by others, doctors would quickly become overwhelmed by too many messages and would opt out. By flipping the model and leading with value, simplicity, and respect for physicians’ time, Impiricus created a completely different relationship. Doctors get the ability to text questions into an AI chatbot and receive answers quickly, in exchange for receiving a very limited number of marketing messages. The value to the doctor comes first, and everything else is secondary.

For entrepreneurs, this is a powerful reminder: in industries where relationships or incentives are traditionally one-sided, there is often an opportunity to flip the dynamic by putting the customer first. Lead with value before trying to extract value.

Congratulations to Dr. Hashmi and his Atlanta team on winning this incredible award as the Deloitte 500 fastest-growing company in the United States.

Last week, I was at Atlanta Tech Village delivering short opening remarks for a large AgeTech Connect conference. AgeTech, as the name suggests, is a fast-growing sector focused on aging and the realities of our rapidly aging population.

As both a conference theme and an industry, AgeTech is one of those ideas that feels obvious now but has actually been building quietly for years. It’s a perfect example of what I love most about startup communities: there’s always something new, there’s always a hot trend emerging, and there are always passionate people working to invent the future.

After the conference, I had the chance to sit down with an economic development professional to discuss tech, startups, and startup ecosystems. As we spoke, with the AgeTech conference happening just down the hall, it prompted me to reflect on many other trends and communities we’ve seen come through these walls over the years.

When we first opened Atlanta Tech Village more than a decade ago, Bitcoin was just starting to gain traction among early-adopter tech circles, far from mainstream acceptance. For years afterward, we hosted numerous Bitcoin and blockchain companies, along with their events and conferences. That industry has since matured dramatically, riding multiple boom-and-bust cycles of its own.

The point isn’t to single out one or two trends like AgeTech or blockchain. Rather, it’s that startup communities, by their very nature, sit at the front edge of new technologies and nascent trends.

So if you’re an entrepreneur or aspiring founder looking for ideas, co-founders, or the next big opportunity, my recommendation is simple: spend time at your local startup hubs. Sign up for their events, subscribe to their newsletters, and follow them on social media. You’ll get a constant stream of both emerging and established ideas.

It’s one of the best ways to stay current on new trends and discover the next great market before it becomes obvious to everyone else.

Last week, a friend reached out asking for help evaluating a startup investment from the perspective of someone who hadn’t done it before. Normally, when thinking about a startup investment, the standard topics such as the quality of the founding team, the market opportunity, and the value delivered to the customer are the go-to attributes.

It’s fairly easy to talk to the founders, hear the pitch on how they’re going to change the world, and conduct an interview similar to any other potential professional relationship. Of course, the best founders are great at both selling themselves and selling the vision, but it’s often hard to know what’s real and what’s hopeful. People who are good at sales are good at selling themselves, so it can be difficult to truly evaluate them.

On the market opportunity front, there’s often a lot of talk about the total addressable market (TAM) and the serviceable available market within the TAM. The idea is that the market has some overall value (for example, cars) and the startup is going after a subset of that value (for example, electric cars). Most of the time TAM is presented as a large number, but in many cases it doesn’t represent the actual opportunity. The best opportunities are small, fast-growing markets that you believe will be big in five to seven years but are too small today for larger companies to care about.

Now consider one of my favorite factors: the value of the product to the customer. This is commonly overlooked because it’s easy to say, “This type of business will get value from this type of product.” In reality, it’s wildly different when comparing a must-have product, such as an accounting system, to a nice-to-have product like a small productivity widget. The challenge is that it’s hard to know how valuable a solution really is to a prospective customer.

So what should you do? Start with primary research. Read The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick. Study the techniques for assessing the quality of an idea via the market and how to interview prospects without leading the witness. Then use your own network to reach out to potential buyers and assess the quality of the idea and the potential market independently of the founders. If it’s promising, ask the founders for introductions to a couple of their customers and run through a similar set of questions to understand the value they are receiving.

While this might seem like overkill, the vast majority of startups fail, and the number one reason is that the product isn’t compelling enough for people to change their behavior. As a potential angel investor, if you can personally conclude that the startup’s product is incredibly valuable to the customer, the chance of a successful investment goes up considerably.

Most people are used to simpler forms of investing, such as using a Robinhood account to buy a share of Google. Angel investing is a hundred times harder to do well, and those willing to put in the effort will do much better.

Last week, I was talking with an entrepreneur who’s built an incredible business. Later in the conversation, I asked if the idea he started with was the same one that ultimately made him successful. I’ve asked this question many times before, knowing that most entrepreneurs pivot or iterate multiple times before finding what works.

In this case, the entrepreneur said his original idea was the one that worked, and that it had to be, because his goal from the start was to build a large, scaled business. Reflecting on this, I realized he had aligned his personal ambitions with the potential of his startup idea.

Many entrepreneurs are happy creating a company that provides freedom, flexibility, and financial stability for their families. For them, the size and scale beyond those needs aren’t really important. Others have a different drive, a bigger chip on their shoulder, and dream of building something much larger in scope and impact. Of course, there’s no right or wrong answer; everyone has their own aspirations.

Personally, when I started out, I just wanted to be an entrepreneur. I wanted to create something from nothing and build a business that worked, though I had no clear definition of what “success” meant. After some modest early wins developing a software product and landing a handful of customers, I set a new goal: to make the Inc. 500 list of the fastest-growing private companies in the United States.

After achieving that, my next goal became building a business with enough potential to raise venture capital and operate at scale in the software world. I still didn’t have a clear definition of success, but I figured that if investors were willing to back it, the idea must be big enough to matter.

I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this approach to other entrepreneurs, but it’s an example of how my thinking evolved over many years of introspection and experimentation. My advice to entrepreneurs, especially those early in their journey, is to align their ambition with their startup idea.

If your goal is a great lifestyle, there are countless opportunities to build a business that supports that. If your goal is to create something transformative with a major impact on your city or industry, the idea needs to be correspondingly more ambitious and scalable.

The best part is that none of this is fixed. Some entrepreneurs start with an idea that grows far beyond anything they could have imagined, and that’s the beauty of putting yourself in the arena.

A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to attend AdPipe’s annual user conference and hear a number of guest speakers share their thoughts on where the world is headed regarding authentic storytelling through video. Seeing so many employees and customers gathered in one place, this time in a large, vibrant music venue, brought back memories of our own user conferences over the years. Reflecting on the experience, several key takeaways came to mind:

1. In-person connection is incredibly valuable.
With so much of our interaction now happening over chat, email, and Zoom, it’s easy to forget that the most meaningful and memorable conversations happen face-to-face. A big annual conference provides the perfect opportunity to break bread with people you communicate with throughout the year and to build deeper, more genuine relationships.

2. Feedback is a gift.
One of my favorite questions to ask is, “How are we doing?” followed by, “How can we get better?” When you’re face-to-face with someone you have a real relationship with, the chances of receiving honest and thoughtful feedback, both positive and negative, are much higher. People can hear the sincerity in your voice and see it in your expression. Some will volunteer feedback naturally, but most won’t unless you ask. If you don’t, you’ll miss valuable insights.

3. A hard and fast deadline creates urgency.
When a user conference is scheduled months in advance and hundreds or even thousands of people are flying in, that date becomes a powerful forcing function inside the company. Whether it’s launching a new product, announcing a partnership, or onboarding new hires, an annual event provides the perfect opportunity to rally the team around achieving important outcomes by a fixed date.

4. Connecting users with each other.
Humans are tribal by nature, and it’s no different when it comes to software customers. They want to meet other users, share best practices, discuss what works and what doesn’t, and feel part of something bigger than themselves. While it’s easy to affiliate with a sports team or a cause, people also find meaning and belonging through the software products they use every day.

Entrepreneurs would do well to host an annual user conference, even in the early years when the customer base is still small. It’s an incredible opportunity to connect the entire community of employees, customers, partners, vendors, and everyone else who contributes to building a successful software company. Be intentional about the event, set ambitious goals, and align the team around making it a success.

Last week, I had the opportunity to talk with a successful tech entrepreneur about his journey. Deep into the conversation, we reflected on the boom years of 2020 and 2021 and then the lean years from 2022 to today. That transition, from growth at all costs to measured growth focused on capital efficiency and the quality of the business model, was incredibly difficult.

During that conversation, he used a phrase I hadn’t heard before but that must have been popular at the time: “grow, margin, burn.” It really resonated with me.

As COVID pulled forward a tremendous amount of demand early in the pandemic, the prevailing strategy was “grow, grow, grow.” But as the pandemic eased, interest rates shot up, and valuations fell off a cliff, the mantra shifted to “grow, margin, burn.”

Let’s take a look at each:

Grow is the easiest. We want to capture more market share, expand into new geographies, sign more partners, and grow the business as fast as possible. Growth is at the core of entrepreneurship.

Margin is a bit more complicated. Margins represent the revenue of the business minus its costs. Gross margin—the revenue less the costs required to service customers—is the most commonly discussed measure. For example, if you have a dollar of revenue and it costs 20 cents to deliver that revenue (due to hosting fees and support costs), your gross margin is 80%, which is very good.

During the boom times, it was easy to ignore margins and spend money on things that hurt them in an effort to grow faster. Some businesses were valued like software companies, but their gross margins showed they were anything but.

Finally, we have burn. Burn is the amount of money a startup loses each month and must be analyzed in the context of growth and scale. A popular metric is the burn multiple, which is the net new revenue divided by the net burn. The goal is to show how much new revenue is gained for every dollar burned.

When a startup spends one to two dollars to achieve one dollar of new revenue, it’s considered healthy.

We’ve been in the lean times for several years now, excluding the AI boom, and entrepreneurs in the current grow, margin, burn phase would do well to recognize that economic cycles always repeat. It’s worth doing the mental exercise: what might the next grow, grow, grow cycle do to your business? What changes would you make, if any? And vice versa, if you happen to be in a grow, grow, grow phase now, what lessons from grow, margin, burn would you carry forward?