NEW INC. MAGAZINE COLUMN FROM HOWARD TULLMAN

 

Open Your Mind: There Are Plenty of Good Ideas You Can Steal.

Operating within your own information bubble may be satisfying, but it's limiting. 

 

EXPERT OPINION BY HOWARD TULLMAN, GENERAL MANAGING PARTNER, G2T3V AND CHICAGO HIGH TECH INVESTORS @HOWARDTULLMAN1

APR 23, 2024

 

Much to the chagrin of some friends, relatives, and business associates, I'm an inveterate and shameless sharer of news, opinions and information. Lately, I've probably been overdoing things in terms of political commentary as opposed to entrepreneurial, change management and tech advice. But then again, even the most well-established and solid businesses - not to mention startups and new ventures - are likely to be adversely impacted by the end of democracy as we know if the Orange Monster returns to office.

So, to be smart and safe, it pays to pay at least some attention to what's going on around your business because you don't always know what you don't know, and you never know who's going to bring you your future. From time to time, you can actually learn important things from outside of your own bubble and even from people who you think aren't as smart as you. Ideas are like assholes.  Everyone has one.  But even assholes can have good ideas.

The most important thing to realize is that some great ideas need to be transplanted from the mind that may have created them into a mind which is capable of understanding, expanding, and executing upon them. You don't have to be at the beginning of the chain to bring the bacon home.  

One of the dangers of being somewhat successful is that you quickly forget what it took to get you to this point while at the same time you learn new things much more slowly. That's understandable, since you're reluctant to change what you think is working well for you. You instead need to develop a thick enough skin to understand and accept that -- from time to time--ideas will come along that are better than your own and which are likely to knock your precious little babies right off their pedestals unless you're sharp, smart, and swift enough to do it yourself. As Walt Disney CEO Bob Iger said a while ago, "if someone's gonna eat our digital lunch, it might as well be us".   

It would be a shame to miss the new opportunities or challenges because you were "too busy," too arrogant, or too complacent to spend some time looking and listening to what's out there in the wild.  We're all drowning in a flood of noise, news, and information, but strategic filtering is a much better bet than turning a blind eye or a deaf ear to what's out there.

My position is that most of my email recipients can take it or leave it and they're free to use their delete key. Upon request, I'll even remove people from the various distribution lists I use and - while I will generally forgive them their desire to remain uninformed - I won't forget that they chose ignorance over information. On the other hand, if it's one of our portfolio companies and I've taken the time to send them a reference, comparative studies, a relevant article, important rankings, some simple suggestion, or someone to contact, then I expect them to get on it - not to be offended or put off by the offering.

These aren't times for foolish pride, hurt feelings, grumbling about micro-management, or anything else. It's not gloating, complaining or rude to tell it like it is - especially if you're right -- whether people want to hear it or not. The truth only hurts when it ought to. If someone else is kicking your company's butt or doing things much better than you, then closing your eyes or trying to wish them away won't make it better. In the real world, you don't get to learn things the way you want to. Every day the world is changing around you and your job is to try to keep up. Facts and problems don't disappear because you ignore them.

Not everything comes in a clear package with appropriate warnings and a set of instructions, but the best entrepreneurs and new business builders make sure that they're always open to inputs, alternatives and options, and new approaches or solutions - whether it's good news or bad. No one has a monopoly on the best ideas, so no one should be reluctant to copy the smartest features and functions of their competitors' offerings, and everyone should understand that there's a whole world of bright people out there who don't happen to work for you.

The key idea is that you don't have to know everything, you just need to know how and where to find it and that's why having an ear to the ground and helpful friends and supporters outside of your day-to-day resources, team members, and traditional channels makes a lot of sense. To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to borrow from many is research. You don't have to come up with every new idea. You can just wait for someone else to launch a great idea and then copy every detail except their mistakes. And, to be clear, being open to ideas is much different than thinking for even a moment that all ideas are equally valid or valuable. Another important part of the job is learning to quickly say "No" to even good ideas which simply don't fit your business's needs or plans at the moment.  

The bottom line is to widen the input aperture so that you're regularly exposed to a broader range of thoughts, ideas, and approaches than simply your internal channels without becoming overwhelmed by the volume or - worse yet - adopting a cursory approach of rapid skimming that results in being a mile wide and an inch deep and effectively informs no one.

As challenging as the prospects may be, the key to continued success in a world of constant change is non-stop and lifelong learning. Information is the lifeblood of that process and, as painful as the thought may be, even too much is not enough.

 

TRUMP WORRIED ABOUT PECKER LEAKING

 

They Were Assaulted on Campus for Being Jews

 

They Were Assaulted on Campus for Being Jews At Yale, Sahar Tartak was stabbed in the eye. At Columbia, Jonathan Lederer’s Israeli flag was burned and he was hit in the face. BARI WEISS APR 22 For a second, imagine that black students at Columbia were taunted: Go back to Africa. Or imagine that a gay student was surrounded by homophobic protesters and hit with a stick at Yale University. Or imagine if a campus imam told Muslim students that they ought to head home for Ramadan because campus public safety could not guarantee their security. There would be relentless fury from our media and condemnation from our politicians. Just remember the righteous—and rightful—outrage over the white supremacist “Unite the Right” march in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, where neo-Nazis chanted “The Jews will not replace us.”  This weekend at Columbia and Yale, student demonstrators did all of the above—only it was directed at Jews. They told Columbia students to “go back to Poland.” A Jewish woman at Yale was assaulted with a Palestinian flag. And an Orthodox rabbi at Columbia told students to go home for their safety. Demonstrators on these campuses shouted more chic versions of “Jews will not replace us.” At Columbia they screamed: “Say it loud and say it clear, we don’t want no Zionists here.” At Yale they blasted bad rap with the following lyrics:  Fuck Israel, Israel a bitch / Bitch we out here mobbin’ on some Palestine shit / Free Palestine bitch, Israel gon’ die bitch / Nigga it’s they land why you out here tryna rob it / Bullshit prophets, y’all just want the profit These campus activists are not simply “pro-Palestine” protesters. They are people who are openly celebrating Hamas and physically intimidating identifiably Jewish students who came near. We are publishing the accounts of two of those students—Sahar Tartak and Jonathan Lederer—today. Students—all of us—have a right to protest. We have a right to protest for dumb causes and horrible causes. At The Free Press, we will always defend that right. (See here and here, for example.) It is not, however, a First Amendment right to physically attack another person. It is not a First Amendment right to detain another person as part of your protest. And while Americans are constitutionally protected when they say vile things, like wishing upon Jews a thousand October 7s, we are certainly free to criticize them and to condemn institutions dedicated to the pursuit of truth who stand by and do nothing meaningful to stop it. The students who support terror have given in to madness. Refusing to condemn them is madness. There are courageous students who see that madness clearly. Please read these essays by Jonathan Lederer and Sahar Tartak. At Columbia I Am Told: ‘Go Back to Poland’   JONATHAN LEDERER · 1:57 AM My Israeli flag was stolen and burned. I was hit. And the school is preventing the NYPD from protecting us.   Read full story   I Was Stabbed in the Eye at Yale   SAHAR TARTAK · 1:57 AM The school has allowed anti-Israel students to run roughshod over their most basic policies. Yesterday, I paid the price for their inaction.   Read full story

 

 

Trump is a Fat Flatulent Fraud

 Why do some British people not like Donald Trump?” Nate White, an articulate and witty writer from England wrote the following response:

A few things spring to mind. Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem. For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace – all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed. So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief. 

Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing – not once, ever. I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility – for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman. But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is – his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty. 

Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers. And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults – he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness. 

There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It’s all surface. Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront. Well, we don’t. We see it as having no inner world, no soul. And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist. Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that. He’s not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat. He’s more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege.

And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully. That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead. There are unspoken rules to this stuff – the Queensberry rules of basic decency – and he breaks them all. He punches downwards – which a gentleman should, would, could never do – and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless – and he kicks them when they are down.

So the fact that a significant minority – perhaps a third – of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think ‘Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy’ is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that:

• Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and mostly are.

• You don’t need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man. 

This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss. After all, it’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum. God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid. He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart. In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws – he would make a Trump.

And a remorseful Doctor Frankenstein would clutch out big clumpfuls of hair and scream in anguish: ‘My God… what… have… I… created?' If being a twat was a TV show, Trump would be the boxed set.

THE PROM

 

LOVE THY NEIGHBOR 

DANCE 1

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CINDERELLA

Odor in the Court