Member-only story
“I told “Ray” not to screw it up,” I said to my friend, “Aric”, at dinner. My family and I were in town, visiting colleges for Avery, so we took the opportunity to have dinner with Aric.
Aric laughed. Four years earlier, Aric introduced me to Ray because he felt I could help Ray build his company. Now Ray’s company is worth $1.5 billion and counting.
The most successful entrepreneurs avoid taking any unnecessary risks.
My advice to Ray to not screw it up was me saying, “Don’t do anything stupid.” In other words, don’t take any unnecessary risks.
I wasn’t telling Ray to play it safe. I was telling Ray not to make any “kill the company” decisions because there was no need to do that.
Now, the start of Ray’s company was one big kill the company decision. Ray had a radical idea for how to upend the technology in a major market.
On paper, the idea looked really sound. More than sound, the idea was brilliantly elegant.
You want to systematically reduce risk as you go forward in your journey.
There’s no bigger compliment I can give a technologist then to say their design is elegant. That means the…
