Where Should We Put Our Money?

(...)

Place your bets on young people who are building real products and
services that solve real problems and delight real customers. Heck,
even if they're old people with young energy, I say invest in them
too! (Note: my stance on entrepreneurship being a "young man's game"
is inversely proportional to my actual age).

Encourage young people going into the work force to forgo the promise
of unearned and absurd compensation on Wall Street for the more
appropriate and soulful option that comes from creating real value at
a startup company. When you meet a young person who wants to go to
Wall Street scold them. Tell them how sad it is that they are going to
waste their talents trying to manipulate money instead of creating
value. Explain to them that when they look back on their career, even
if they are successful, they will see a bunch of transactions and
models (they've dated and built), but they will never know the
satisfaction of having built something real. Something tangible that
they can be proud of.

(...)

(...) we need to find and support these entrepreneurs. Develop
the ones who think big, work hard, are resilient, honest, resourceful
and who are willing to take reasonable chances with our investments.
Also, we should only invest in the people whose prior products haven't
left  huge craters of unemployment and financial pain when they
imploded--but I digress.


Jason Calacanis
My blog: www.calacanis.com
My company: www.mahalo.com