1. HOWARD A. TULLMAN
CEO – OCTOBER 2014

3. 280 DIGITAL TECH STARTUPS
75,000 SQ FOOT FACILITY
1000 PEOPLE A DAY

4. Entrepreneurs
Entrepreneurs are Visionaries
with a Poorly Developed Sense
of Fear and No Concept of the
Odds Against Them.
They Make the Impossible
Happen.

5. Ignorance is a Competitive Edge
NOT KNOWING THE
CONVENTIONS OF THE GAME
TURNS OUT TO BE AN
ADVANTAGE IN MANY CASES
(AS LONG AS YOU’RE WILLING TO
ALSO BE UNPOPULAR)

6. Don’t Sell Your Dreams Short
I Always Ask for the Best
Seat in the House.
Someone’s Going to Sit in
It.
It’s O.K. if It’s not Me, but
It’s not O.K. for Me not to Try
to Get It.

7. Entrepreneurs
Entrepreneurs See
What Everyone Else
has Seen, and Think
What Nobody Else has
Thought.

8. SUCH A DEAL !
Pretty Cool Collateral
One Week’s
Interest on
the Loan was
$6.10

9. Entrepreneurs Are Realistic
Expecting the World to
Treat You Fairly Because
You are a Good Person is
Like Expecting a Lion not to
Eat You Because You are a
Vegetarian.

10. WORK - Not Wishful Thinking
YOU GET WHAT
YOU WORK FOR,
NOT WHAT YOU
WISH FOR.

11. WORK - Not Wishful Thinking
We Tell Ourselves that Skill is the
Precious Resource and that Effort
is the Commodity.
It’s Actually the Other Way Around.
Effort Can Trump Talent & Ability.

13. Entrepreneurs Don’t Take “No” Well
We Don’t Allow Others’
Limitations to Define Us.
“It’s Only a ‘No’ for
Now.”

14. Experience Can Be Your Worst Enemy
Experience is like the
taillights on a boat which
illuminate where we have
been when we should be
focusing on where we should
be going. (J.F.K.)

15. When Times are Toughest
When Great Entrepreneurs Meet
Resistance…They All Do One Thing
You Deliberately Raise the
THEY PUT THEIR HEADS
Ante of Effort and
DOWN … AND JUST
WORK THAT MUCH
Concentration in Order to
Clear Your Mind of Trivialities.
HARDER

16. Entrepreneurs Look “Inside”
People are Always Blaming their
Circumstances for What They are.
The People Who Get on in this World are
the People who Get Up and Look for the
Circumstances They Want.
If They Can’t Find Them, They Make ‘Em

17. We Avoid the Blame Game
When You Blame
Others, You Give Up
Your Power to Make
Things Change

18. The Truth Only Hurts When It Should
Good Managers Challenge their
People,
Poor Ones Comfort Them
If I Accept You as You Are, I Don’t Help You.
If I Treat You as Who You Can Become, I
Make You Better.

19. Sympathy is Like Junk Food
IT HAS NO REAL NOURISHMENT. THE
EMPTINESS COMES BACK VERY QUICKLY AND
NOTHING GETS ACCOMPLISHED IN THE
MEANTIME.
THERE IS NEVER, REALLY, ANY RELEASE FROM
THE CONSEQUENCES OF ADVERSITY UNTIL
YOU DECIDE TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT
THEM.

20. Entrepreneurs Don’t Settle
There’s No Such Thing as a Good Excuse
It May Be Necessary Temporarily to Accept A
Lesser Evil, But You Should Never Even
Pretend that A Necessary Evil is Good.
When You Settle for Less than You
Deserve, You Get Less than You
Settled For.

21. No Excuses – No Place to Hide
Yesterday: “I Don’t Know” = You Were Ignorant
Today: “I Don’t Know” = You’re Lazy or
You Don’t Care
THE ANSWERS ARE OUT THERE – WHAT IS
OFTEN MISSING IS THE WILLINGNESS TO
TAKE THE TIME AND TO DO THE HARD
WORK OF SEEKING THEM OUT.

22. Some Good News
Old: Cheap, Fast or Good …… Pick 2
New: Cheap + Fast = Good Enough
“TRADE-OFFS ARE A
WE ARE NO LONGER
REQUIRED TO EVALUATE
“EITHER/OR” EQUATIONS
FAILURE OF
CREATIVITY”

23. Five Concepts
TELL A SIMPLE STORY – WHO, WHAT, WHY
KEEP RAISING THE BAR – EXPECTATIONS WILL GROW
START WITH WHAT YOU HAVE – ITERATE CONSTANTLY
DON’T STICK TO THE “PLAN” TOO LONG, BUT STICK TO
YOUR GUNS
MAKE ROOM FOR ALL KINDS OF PEOPLE

24. Tell A Simple Story
A Simple Story
Who are We? Where are We Going? Why?
People Don’t Always Know Where They’re
Going; They Just Know They Don’t Want to Go
There Alone.
Business is Personal. People Commit to Other
People and Ideas, Not Institutions

25. Tell A Simple Story
The Ability to Succinctly Express an Idea Is
Virtually as Important as the Idea Itself
If You Can’t Write Your Idea on the Back of
Your Business Card, You Don’t Have a
Business
Don’t Mistake a Clear View for a Short
Distance

26. Tell The Truth
Being Honest is the Best Technique.
Right Up Front, You Tell the People What
You’re Trying to Accomplish & What You’re
Willing to Sacrifice to Accomplish It
If You Can’t Commit to Something Big,
Commit to Something Small
Everything’s Not “Either/Or”

27. It Couldn’t Be Easier
SAY EXACTLY
WHAT YOU THINK
DO EXACTLY WHAT
YOU SAY

28. Five Concepts
TELL A SIMPLE STORY – WHO, WHAT, WHY
KEEP RAISING THE BAR – EXPECTATIONS WILL GROW
START WITH WHAT YOU HAVE – ITERATE CONSTANTLY
DON’T STICK TO THE “PLAN” TOO LONG, BUT STICK TO
YOUR GUNS
MAKE ROOM FOR ALL KINDS OF PEOPLE

29. Keep Raising the Bar
What’s the Best We Can Possibly Be?
What’s the Test?
When You Look Around and Discover that No One is
Doing It Better.
You Need to Constantly Outmode
Yourself and Cannibalize Your
Business

30. Keep Raising the Bar
What You’re Doing Today May Be
Meaningless Tomorrow
Disruptive Change and Radical
Obsolescence
Not Evolutionary Development

31. Five Concepts
TELL A SIMPLE STORY – WHO, WHAT, WHY
KEEP RAISING THE BAR – EXPECTATIONS WILL GROW
START WITH WHAT YOU HAVE – ITERATE CONSTANTLY
DON’T STICK TO THE “PLAN” TOO LONG, BUT STICK TO
YOUR GUNS
MAKE ROOM FOR ALL KINDS OF PEOPLE

32. Start with What You Have
A Good Plan Violently Executed Today Beats A Perfect Plan
Next Week
Nothing Will Ever be Attempted if All Possible Objections
Must First be Overcome
It’s Easier to Ask for Forgiveness than Permission
Only the Winners Decide What were War Crimes

33. Start with What You Have
The Time will Never be “Just Right”
Start Where You Stand and Work with Whatever Tools
You Have at Your Command. Better Tools Will be
Found as You Go Along.
You Can’t Rush It. It’s Like Pushing a Rope.
Nine Women can’t Make a Baby in One Month

34. Start Now with What You Have
Waiting Doesn’t Necessarily Get You to a Better
Answer
Elaboration and Detail Saps Critical Energy and
Momentum
“It Isn’t Always the Movie
that Gets Made, But It’s
Always What Gets the
Movie Made.”

35. No One Has Ever Said:
“Let’s Go See that
Movie – It Came in
on Budget.”
(Not Even the Ernst & Young Guys)

36. Start with What You Have
Feasibility Will Compromise You Soon Enough
(There are always plenty of people to tell you why a good idea won’t work)
“Don’t Leave before You Leave” ( Sheryl Sandberg)
Successive Approximation
versus
Postponed Perfection
Errors of Enthusiasm
versus
Wisdom of Complacency

37. Start with What You Have
The “Successive Approximation” Process is Just
Like Ironing – The Key is Forward Progress
You Move Forward a Few Steps and then Go
Back and Smooth Things Out – Over and Over

38. Start with What You Have
Develop Your Business Incrementally
Experiment
Measure
Modify
React
Start the Process Again

39. Five Concepts
TELL A SIMPLE STORY – WHO, WHAT, WHY
KEEP RAISING THE BAR – EXPECTATIONS WILL GROW
START WITH WHAT YOU HAVE – ITERATE CONSTANTLY
DON’T STICK TO THE “PLAN” TOO LONG, BUT STICK TO
YOUR GUNS
MAKE ROOM FOR ALL KINDS OF PEOPLE

40. Don’t Be A Slave to Your Model or Your
Business Plan
Use a Business Plan to Recognize & Measure
Change as It Occurs – Not to Run Your Business
The Future is Where We Have the Greatest
Leverage
Building a Business is Evolving a Central Idea
Through Continually Changing Circumstances.

41. Don’t Be A Slave to Your Model or Your
Business
IT’S AN ART – NOT A SCIENCE
A Model or Business Plan Doesn’t Necessarily Get You
to the Truth.
Eventually even the Best Math Stalls out and Something
More Human – Intuition, Experience, Wisdom – Has to
Take Over.
Don’t Become So Reliant on the Numbers that You Lose
Sight of the Facts.

42. Two Critical Rules
Don’t Try to Make the
Circumstances Fit the Plan
Change the Plan
Consistency Requires You to
Be as Ignorant Today as You
Were a Year Ago

43. The Best Approach
WE ARE STUBBORN
ON VISION
WE ARE FLEXIBLE
ON DETAILS

44. Five Concepts
TELL A SIMPLE STORY – WHO, WHAT, WHY
KEEP RAISING THE BAR – EXPECTATIONS WILL GROW
START WITH WHAT YOU HAVE – ITERATE CONSTANTLY
DON’T STICK TO THE “PLAN” TOO LONG, BUT STICK TO
YOUR GUNS
MAKE ROOM FOR ALL KINDS OF PEOPLE

45. Protect Your Pioneers
People want talent, which is in itself
something out of the ordinary. But
when it comes to the other oddities
that are always associated with it,
and perhaps are essential to it, they
will have none of them and refuse
them all understanding.

46. It’s A Business, Not A Romance
“NOT EVERYONE CAN LOVE RAYMOND”
“I Used to Rob Banks and the Trick
Is – It’s not Important that
Everybody in the Car Likes Each
Other. It’s Just Important that
They Each Know How to Do Their
Jobs and that They Do Them Well
When the Time Comes.”

47. Technology Won’t Save You
There are No Sustainable
Competitive Advantages
except Well-Trained,
Passionate and Dedicated
People.

48. People Are the Only Sustainable Edge

50. Opportunity International
BUILDING NEW
BUSINESSES TODAY ISN’T
SIMPLY ABOUT MAKING
MONEY.
IT’S ABSOLUTELY ABOUT
MAKING A DIFFERENCE.

51. Opportunity International
No One Can Really Lead
Other People Except by
Showing Them a Future
and a Path to Reach It.
You need to make them part of the process and the
solution – partners in the act of creation

52. Opportunity International
If you motivate your
people without giving
them the proper tools and
the necessary education
to be effective, you simply
breed frustration and bad
numbers.

53. Opportunity International
1. Financial Services
2. Job Creation
3. Training and Education
4. Mentoring
5. Community

54. Opportunity International
METRICS MATTER
TRANSPARENCY
AND EFFICACY

55. We act as though
comfort and luxury
were the chief
requirements of life,
when all that we need
to make us really happy
is something to be
enthusiastic about.

57. Two Game Changers to Think About
Experiences Will Be Far More
Important than Ownership
HIGH END: EXPERIENCIES ARE
THE NEW LUXURY GOODS
LOW Utility END: Will THINK Be Far DIVVY
More
Valuable than Possession

58. Kickstarter Film Investor
“I did not contribute to the film for
a cut of the profits. I contributed to
be a part of the creation process,
to see how it’s made, and to see
Zach’s pure vision come to fruition.
II ppaaiidd ffoorr aann eexxppeerriieennccee.”.”

59. Lipstick on a Pig

60. Haptic Fork

61. Haptic WALLET – B of A
AS THE MONTH GOES BY AND YOU BEGIN TO
REACH YOUR BUDGET LIMITS, THE WALLET
GETS PROGRESSIVELY HARDER TO OPEN

62. • 9-29-14 11pM