The biggest mistake I constantly see new founders make is misjudging the matrix that almost everyone goes through when making a career (and most often life) changing decision. I certainly didn’t appreciate this as much as I should have when I was a founder and I urge anyone reading this post to deeply consider aspects highlighted in this post.

A few years ago — just before Xmas Eve — I was travelling from the United States back to Australia for Xmas with Air New Zealand. I ran into a few hiccups along the way and decided to pen this open letter to Air New Zealand management team while I sat on a cold hard airport floor waiting for my flight to depart which had been delayed many hours. It was written with definite sarcasm in mind at the time.

Supportive confrontation is a methodology adopted by respectful and highly constructive individuals and teams to ultimately push the boundaries of self-improvement. David Bradford (Stanford) and Allen Cohen ultimately coined the termed in their book Power Up and David utilizes this in his class on High Performance Leadership.

Here is a list of data that I have compiled which I providing freely. I ask that any updates are sent back to me for the benefit of everyone else.

A Nation’s Greatness Depends on its Leader and a the words written by Suzy Kassem capture that better than any.

Things like bombings make you loose all faith in humanity. Senseless destruction by someone with such minute intelligence that they believe the greatest effect on life is inflicted by hiding in the shadows. Hasn’t humanity shown time and time again that shadows do nothing but strengthen the collective resolve ? Good will always triumph evil because humans are fundamentally good, fundamentally kind, and fundamentally caring.

Doing something different is hard. Attempting to make other people believe in what you’re doing is even harder. It’s hard to recruit new people to any business. Most people opt to stay safe, to go into large organizations, to earn their salary and do their work.

Can a person be both a great entrepreneur and a great hacker? Its a common question that startup founders ask themselves.