Photo By: Mike Szxzepanski
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A life without 3’s

At Founder Institute, we often rate things on a scale of one to five; but without three's.

It is too easy for everything to be given a three without giving it much thought when three's are permitted.

A five would be good enough for an investor to write a check.

A four would be good enough to get a meeting.

A two is not meeting ready but seems like it could be fixed

And, a one, well either it is incoherent and isn't likely to be salvageable, or I don't understand it well enough to judge it. One of those cases where I hope I will be to later say, “Your idea is much stronger than your presentation” instead of repeatedly asking, “What business are you in??”

Some days I think that those are the only two things that I say. Seriously.

But today, I will a different question:

 
What would life be like if we eliminated 3s Photo By Alvin Lenin

What would a life without three's be like?

What if we drew a line and consciously asked whether something was really worth another hour of our life?

And what if as I write, we had a standard to not publish any ones or twos …

I think we all have the standard already.

But it is really tempting to publish threes. They seem sort of good enough. And when push comes to shove, a few of them may be four's, but the bulk of them are probably two's. )The ones and the obvious twos were already put aside.)

Written by Russell Brand

Entrepreneur in residence at Founder Institute, he has mentored, performed due diligence on and invested in numerous early stage companies. Hundreds of these early stage companies have described Russell’s insights and advice as the most useful thing in the history of their companies. He has always had an inborn ability to find more valuable uses of new ideas and faster ways to achieve results.

 

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