Day 19: Introducing our new paid community; we believe everybody is an entrepreneur
Plus thoughts from day 16, 17, and 18
Community: First things first, don’t forget to RSVP to my live-podcast happening on Tuesday, ‘What if Apple releases a headset?’
Premium: If you are a paying member, you’ll receive your first ‘premium’ article tomorrow. These are extremely dense with valuable content for the week ahead.
If I analyze the things I love to do most, it’s host. I absolutely love hosting events, hosting guest for panels or podcasts, and I espescially love hosting dinner parties. We’ve brought in some incredibly cool people over the years to our events.
Niko Bonatsos joined us at our VR/AR Founder Dinner in San Francisco in 2017 with General Catalyst
Cyan Bannister joined us at our AR Kitchen event in 2018 co-hosted with Betaworks and Shasta Ventures
Biz Stone joined us at our Social Entrepreneurship Festival which we hosted online as avatars inside of Teooh in 2020
Timoni West joined us to chat AR/VR and Unity at our AR event in 2018
Together, our community hosted nearly one event per month for 3 years while I was living in San Francisco (thank you all for coming), it was the best time of my career. Out of all 30+ of those events, I had never charged a dollar for anyone to attend, and everything was invite-only.
Nw that the industry has grown I would like to build an even better version of what I used to do, this time a premium community for entrepreneurs which is gated by a payment. The goal of this community is for you to grow you network with quality founders, that’s why we are pricing it at a point where only successful startups, VCs, angels, and SMBs should purchase.
This in turn allows us to pay for nicer venues, nicer dinners, and maintain in depth conversations about nuanced topics with world class leaders of general business, tech, metaverse, and investing.
Introducing the Builder Community.
We believe everybody is an entrepreneur
The thesis of this community is built around, ‘we believe everybody is an entrepreneur.’
So the logical next question is, “why isn’t everybody an entrepreneur then?”
Great question.
Three reasons.
Financial — everybody needs money to live, and more to live great. needing a “safe” job where you have a repeatable path to being promoted every 2 years, and bringing home a bi-weekly payment, is very demotivating to your inner entrepreneur.
Comfort — people who are comfortable are usually much happier than those who are uncomfortable. So why would you ever want to disrupt the comfort of having a paycheck that ensures your family and yourself has plenty to eat? Who would ever risk that?
Laziness — sometimes you’re just plain burned out. Sometimes the thought of starting, or going back to a fun filled ride with twists and turns is too much for your stomach to handle. You’ve already worked hard for years, why would you bother starting over again when you can just easily capitalize on hard work you’ve already done in the past?
So.. why do people become entrepreneurs?
The same three reasons.
Finance - they start businesses to create personal income for themselves and others around them. Both family, friends, and coworkers.
Comfort — they agree with the general statement, “people who are comfortable are usually much happier than those who are uncomfortable,” but then their mindset is to recognize the word “usually” and see themselves as that exception.
Laziness - A massive driver for new businesses are people saying, “I do NOT want to do that anymore…” Referring to a job they hate, a financial status they dread, or a work-life balance they don’t feel fit for. They’re inherently lazy about these type of tasks.
I have been chasing the dream for 8 straight years now, I’ve spoken with hundreds if not thousands of successful entrepreneurs across text, calls, zooms, teoohs, FTs, plus of course, my favorite, in person events and meetings. I’ve fought a lot of battles as a founder starting at the age of 22 when I incorporated my first fund. Frankly I didn’t have a clue what I was doing, but Larry Braitman.co picked me out of the Draper University crowd and taught me a thing or two about angel investing and startup building.
As a result of the Candela Partners opportunity, I was able to speak with up to 7 entrepreneurs building companies per day, for ~3 straight years. I learned a lot.
Not only did I learn a lot as a 22 year old watching these 30-50 year olds build companies, but I have remained in contact with A LOT of people. And if we haven’t remained in contact then I know there are a lot of people out there who knew if they really needed me I’d be there doing all I can to help. Just as I did back in the day, and just as so many of you have also done for me on many occasions.
I’m really fascinated by the concept that “everybody is an entrepreneur.” I’ve always believed that to be true in my life, and I would like to start a brand which proves it. I imagine a magical land where kids are taught tax accounting in 3rd grade math class, they’re taught graphic design and become Adobe certified by middle school. They don’t have a class specific for learning to code, rather every class from English to Chemistry requires you know coding just to be able to compete some of the assignments. This ensures students can integrate coding into their lives without sacrificing the ability to take a second language like Spanish/French/Italian! If global education educated our youth to that level of technical, creative, and critical thinking levels then I believe we would start to realize everyone truly is an entrepreneur. The goal of this community is to bring together great people who were lucky enough to develop those skillsets and now want to share with others.
I’ve found the missing ingredient for every business is either
The right micro - the right people, location, culture, processes, systems and admin, all that is micro.
The right macro - the right market conditions, trends, timing, global outcomes, those are macro. You unfortunately don’t control those. As Larry says, ‘the first and most important job of the entrepreneur is to pick a market.’
The right funding - the right funding speaks for itself. But access to funding is not evenly distributed across social economic classes nor even races. Not only that, but access to an “investor mindset” is even more of a rarity amongst those who weren’t lucky enough to be raised/educated in the proper manner.
I believe everyone is an entrepreneur, I mean seriously who wouldn’t want to work for themselves and make money out of it? Obviously that’s the dream, but “finance, comfort, laziness” are the reasons people give up on that dream. They think to themselves, “nope. Too risky! That’s not going to be me. But it sure looks nice!”
Squash that :)
Seriously.
Squash that!
It’s the worst mindset you can have.
My goal with Builder Journey is to explore the thesis, “everybody is an entrepreneur” by working with great builders to document their own findings about the topic.
Specifically, I will be publishing a long form article, podcast episode, and written interview on a weekly basis. These will all be behind a paywall. You can read the preview of our first pay article here. I want to prove beyond a doubt that successful business owners are just like you or I. They are everyday normal people who also happened to have built something amazing.
Their journeys will teach you a lot, just as I’ve been able to learn lessons from their various stories over the years. And getting to know them as kind and caring people will help inspire you to embark on your own journey as a business owner.
Get a journey in your inbox every week for the rest of 2023!
95 things included in your monthly membership
3 Builder Journey memberships — 1 for you, and 2 to give away to others in your company or friend group.
3 invitations to invite-only in-person dinners — we host group dinners at nice restaurants in London, California, and NYC. These are invite only, feature a special guests, and focus on introducing you to other members. Each dinner will also have multiple startups pitching their business.
9 invitations to invite-only online dinners — These events happen nearly once per month, they could include a live speaker, a special guest, and a live product demo of a new startup technology we find interesting. The full show happens over zoom, we bring the entertainment.. you bring your food and a beverage
30 podcast episodes — you’ll receive before they launch to the public (30+ episodes per year)
12 recordings of our private content — this ensures you’ll never miss the content from an interview, event, dinner, or panel
36 ‘premium’ articles on Substack — these are only for paying members, an provide you a weeks worth of content for podcasts, YouTube videos, and related articles. We pack these dense with hyperlinks of content we’ve already vetted and enjoyed. There’s a preview at the end of this article for this weeks.
1 private WhatsApp text group — built just for members who are actively paying for membership. This enables you to help shape this #builder community and become a vocal leader
1 complimentary membership to our VR/AR focused newsletter—Metaverse Monday — bringing Metaverse interviews and news to your inbox every Monday
As a 20 year old, I would have seen this price tag and ran the opposite direction. No way. Too much. But, as I begin my 30s, there’s nothing I’d love more than to have a miniaturized version of YPO. An intelligent affluent group of business savvy entrepreneurs who share interest for new tech, business ideas, and networking with other business owners. I feel this is a perfect purchase on your corporate card for the office since we gift you two memberships for team members with each purchase.
~Don Stein (linkedin)
p.s. We also offer scholarships. I’m looking for talented entrepreneurs who are technical and motivated to build their own company. You can apply here for a scholarship membership, this membership cost you nothing but we only hand out a few per year. Please include exactly why you deserve to come to our events in addition to what you want to build
