Lessons about Creating an Event and Human Nature
I hope you all saw about the Seattle 2.0 Awards that the team at Seattle 2.0 is putting together. I learned a lot on the last two weeks about many people that I’ve come to know for years, about human nature in general and about myself.
First, I hate asking people to sponsor the event. I’m not a great sales guy and the whole process is hard. If I don’t tell personal friends about the sponsorship they might ask “why didn’t you told me about it”, but if I do, they might think “he wasn’t my friend, he just wanted my company sponsorship money”. Any way out of that?
More important than anything is what I learned about Human Nature…
I remember a talk by Tom Huseby (SeaPoint Ventures) a few years ago where he said “startups are all about bursting the next resistance bubble” and he made gestures as if he was inside a balloon and pushing out for it to burst. It did resonate with me.
My take on, not only startups, but anything you do in life is that there are forces pushing you forward and there are forces pushing you backwards. For you to achieve success you have to add energy into the forces that are pushing you forward and suck the energy out of the forces working against you.
Make no mistake, I’m talking about people here. The Seattle 2.0 Awards has brought the best on some people that I’ve known for years and some that I never thought they even knew I existed. And they are putting a lot of energy to help me. The flip side is to find the people you thought were your friends, or at least acquaintances, working against you. Even if in a subtle way.
It really boils down to selfishness and egocentrism. Usually this people have a hard time doing anything that doesn’t bring a personal gain to them. Sad. Very sad.
But I don’t want to end this post on a down tone. I want to say that you learn more (and faster) by doing things that are outside your comfort zone and that stretch you on many directions. This event has been like that in many fronts. I’m happy and we are very close to finalizing the best Startup event Seattle has ever seen.
