Really enjoyed the recent discussion with Reid Hoffman and Peter Theil. During the discussion on innovation in large companies, this quote really got me thinking: "You need someone who has a founder mindset and acts with moral authority." ~Reid Hoffman --- Anyone can have a "founder mindset", but not everyone has the "moral authority" of a founder. I wonder if that "moral authority" is really necessary though. When large companies struggle to innovate, I don't think it's because the leaders lack the moral authority of a founder. I think the challenge is more the "Innovator's Dilemma". Part of their job as a leader is to protect what exists and it's hard to prioritize things that have unproven returns when there are so many things that have a high probability of positive returns. As a long-time founder at HubSpot, now an 8,000+ company, I've been a student of this topic for a long time -- it's a fascinating one. Here are a few lessons I've learned: 1) You can't try and decide whether you should fund a specific innovation project. Instead, you have to decide that you're going to allocate *some* percentage of resources on innovation projects. *Then* you decide how best to allocate *that* pool of resources. Reason: When you look at individual innovation projects in isolation, very few (if any) projects will make the cut. 2) Don't measure new, innovation projects by your existing metrics -- at least not when you're starting. Just about every innovation project is going to look like a piddly rounding error when it starts. What you're looking for is not revenue, but *evidence*. Evidence that there is a potential large opportunity out there. 3) Know the difference between "experiments" (we're going to see whether this new thing has a there, there) and "imperatives" -- we're going to DO THIS NEW THING. Both are fine -- just know which bucket any particular project falls into. Example: We've run a lot of experiments at HubSpot. Some worked out, some did not. But, when we decided to build HubSpot CRM, we decided it was an *imperative*. We made it clear to the team that whether it took 2 years or 20, we *were* going to build a CRM. It was not an experiment. 4) Be prepared to double-down (or quintuple down) on the things that are working. Once you see the evidence, you have to get a large bet on the table. Without that, pretty much all experiments will eventually fail. Still learning, so I could be wrong about those -- it's just my personal experience.

Just the initiative I was looking for. I will match @balajis donation of $50/RT up to $100k to help India fight the COVID tragedy. Thank you. 🙏