After eBay acquired PayPal, the members of the PayPal executive team each moved on to new projects but stayed connected, investing in one another’s companies, hiring one another, sharing office space, and the like. There are no membership dues, no secret handshakes, no monthly meetings; just informal collaboration. Yet these connections have spawned some…
Careers, like start-ups, are punctuated with breakouts. On a typical résumé—and even on a LinkedIn profile—there’s a reverse chronological listing of jobs held, all presented in the same size type and font. But on its face this is misleading. Our professional lives are not a sequence of equally important jobs. There are always breakout projects,…
Relationships are living, breathing things. Feed, nurture, and care about them: they grow. Neglect them: they die. This goes for any type of relationship on any level of intimacy. The best way to strengthen a relationship is to jump-start the long-term process of give-and-take. Do something for another person. Help him or her. But how?…
All human beings are entrepreneurs. When we were in the caves, we were all self-employed… finding our food, feeding ourselves. That’s where human history began. As civilization came, we suppressed it. We became “labor” because they stamped us, “You are labor.” We forgot that we are entrepreneurs. That’s the quote from Nobel Peace Prize-winner Muhammad…
A billboard that sat along the 101 Highway in the Bay Area in 2009 put it bluntly: “1,000,000 people overseas can do your job. What makes you so special? For anything desirable, there’s competition. Good entrepreneurs build and brand products that are differentiated from the competition. They are able to answer the question, “Our customers…
Matt Cohler isn’t necessarily a name many would recognize as someone at the forefront of social networking, but Cohler, who is now a partner at Benchmark Capital, carved out a specific professional niche by making choices that differentiated him from the smart people around him. From Chapter 3: Plan to Adapt: Cohler spent six years…
We are thrilled to let you know that Ogilvy Notes created a great illustration of Reid and Ben’s talk at SXSW 2012 (click on the image for a larger version). Sacha Chua has also created a set of sketches based on the book (click for a larger version).
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Fortune magazine has an excerpt from The Start-Up of You online and in the magazine. There’s also a brief introduction of Reid by Jessi Hempel. The excerpt is an abbreviated and condensed version of Chapter 4: “It Takes a Network.” We’ve included some excerpts of the excerpt below, but we encourage you to read the full article at…
The subtitle of the book is “Adapt to the Future, Invest In Yourself, and Transform Your Career.” And virtually every day, there’s a headline that reminds us why “adapting to the future” is so important. Whether it’s companies that fail to keep up with technological change, or workers who find themselves with antiquated (or offshorable)…