Adil Wali's Blog and Bio

How hunger factors into success

adil — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 19:00:29 +0000

I was enjoying dinner recently with an investor friend of mine and we got to talking about the importance of hunger when building a team. It seemed to make sense to both of us that you want to find people who are hungry – who really want to do something good. It seems only too logical that the more someone wants something, the harder they’re willing to work to make it happen. Being smart, having → Read More

Sometimes entrepreneurs need to downshift

adil — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 17:33:31 +0000

Most entrepreneurs I talk to seem to think there are two speeds when it comes to their business: fast and faster. The reality is there’s an appropriate speed for each stage in an entrepreneur’s journey. You really can go too fast at times. The early stages of a business venture are usually times where entrepreneurs find themselves in what I call ‘fast-wheel drive’. It seems like you can never do things fast enough. The excitement → Read More

Why what’s best for the person is ALWAYS what’s best for the company

adil — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 15:19:29 +0000

I often get asked, “What do you do, what’s best for the person or what’s best for the company?” Or, “What happens when what’s best for the employee isn’t best for the company?” In my mind, doing what’s best for each individual person in an organization is what’s best for the company at large. At least today. Here’s why. Times have changed If you think back in the days before America was discovered, on through → Read More

Why we don't know what we want to be when we grow up

adil — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 15:16:20 +0000

Someone mentioned a research study to me that demonstrated people are terrible at predicting what makes them happy. If you survey them, they’ll list what they think would make them happy, but they don’t actually know. In fact, Daniel Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness, talks about his research into what he calls ‘affective forecasting’ and how humans are so bad at it: “People make mistakes when they try to predict what will make them → Read More

It’s a great time to start a company. Wrong!

adil — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 17:53:44 +0000

A lot of people liken the ability to raise money as a strong indicator of great timing to succeed as a startup. I can see the thinking behind that logic. At one time it was really hard to raise startup capital because the landscape was just so competitive. If you did succeed in getting funding, people thought, “Hey, you guys must be legit” because investors had their pick of the litter, so choosing you must → Read More

The solution to premature commitment bias starts with a K

adil — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 13:30:05 +0000

As you may have noticed, I have recently found myself consumed by the problems facing technology entrepreneurship today. In particular, it’s the amount of sheer waste that gets to me. As I’ve mentioned before, the real tragedy here is all of the time that is wasted by really talented entrepreneurs and early employees. Unlike money, time is non-renewable. You don’t know how much you actually have, and you can’t make any more of it when → Read More

Sweat parity and the success disequilibrium

adil — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 14:02:18 +0000

Startups are a funny thing. The amount you learn in the first 24 months after inception is enormous. You discover all the best kept secrets about entrepreneurship that no one teaches you about when you are first starting out. One of my favorites is a thing I call ‘sweat parity.’ While some of us understand the concept intuitively, few of us ever talk about it. So I’m setting out to change that. Here goes: Do you → Read More

So + Lo + Mo = LOL

adil — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 20:36:15 +0000

A lot of things are sort of funny right now with respect to technology entrepreneurship. One of those things is apparently called SoMoLo (or SoLoMo or MoSoLo, depending on who you talk to.) I was talking with a VC friend of mine who brought up the idea of SoMoLo. Oddly, I hadn’t heard of it and asked what it was. He explained it was the convergence between social, mobile and local and that it’s all → Read More

The (ir)rationality of entrepreneurship

adil — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 21:17:26 +0000

I am convinced that entrepreneurship is far from a rational pursuit. I am also pretty sure that I’m not the only person who thinks so. I’ll put it simply: the numbers are stacked WAY UP against you. the personal, professional, emotional, and financial commitments are borderline insane. the ‘expected value’ of the investment is well below zero. In short, there is not very much that’s rational about being an entrepreneur. While I am sure that entrepreneurship is → Read More

Empowerment is everything

adil — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 15:38:26 +0000

If I were to simplify the world into two types of teams, I’d have to say there are extraordinary teams and then there’s everybody else. If you want to build an extraordinary team, empowerment is a requirement, not an option. Ownership and empowerment Think about the most talented people you know – really high velocity people. Are those the kind of people who can operate in an environment where they have no sense of ownership? → Read More