Problem Solving
On April 1, 2016, I was excited and full of optimism. After months of negotiation, we were about to sign a purchase agreement to sell our company. Although I had mentally braced myself for the buyer saying the deal was off in an attempt at an April fool’s joke, we closed the deal that day. Three yea
The best way to develop ideas for new services or products is to consider your own problems. What do you find tedious, annoying, or inconvenient? How could you solve that problem or minimize the irritation?
To build something new requires you get good at solving problems, and you need every advantage to solve them. Clearly defining the problem is always the first step in the process. Tease apart the problem and break it down into smaller pieces to recognize the type of problem you are facing. We freque
I want to share one of my favorite mental models called inversion. Mental models provide shortcuts to higher-level thinking, forcing your brain to think about a problem or decision from different perspectives. Inversion helps you flip a problem around and approach it from the opposite end of the nat
Mental models help startup founders avoid bias and blind spots, thus making decisions less risky. A mental model is an idea that helps you better understand the reality of the world around you. They provide shortcuts to higher-level thinking by forcing your brain to think about a problem or decision
Following a process helps you improve the quality of your decisions. Too often we let thoughts bang around in our heads and never apply a process to structure our thinking.