Blake Jennelle has blog

This is the final post in a five-part series on missioneurs, a new community of startup and social entrepreneurs.

The premise is that startup entrepreneurs and social entrepreneurs need each other. Alone, too many of their great ideas are struggling and failing. Together, they can fill in each other’s blind spots, build stronger companies and make greater change.

A new post in this series will be published every day this week. Blog subscribers will receive them one day early by email or RSS.

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In this series, I’ve been talking a lot about bringing startup and social entrepreneurs together. Now it’s time to do it.

We’ve talked about how our startups and non-profits are dying needless deaths. Our startups are masters of execution. Our non-profits are masters of mission. Each is focusing on one at the expense of the other.

Alone they are struggling. Together, they can become unstoppable mission-driven entrepreneurs (or missioneurs for short).

They run their companies like causes and their causes like companies. They know exactly why they exist, and they execute like hell.

They each have almost everything they need to change the world. Everything except each other.

That’s why we so desperately need to bring them together. Read more…

This is the fourth post in a five-part series on missioneurs, a new community of startup and social entrepreneurs.

The premise is that startup entrepreneurs and social entrepreneurs need each other. Alone, too many of their great ideas are struggling and failing. Together, they can fill in each other’s blind spots, build stronger companies and make greater change.

A new post in this series will be published every day this week. Blog subscribers will receive them one day early by email or RSS.

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Entrepreneurs become unstoppable when they see the world through both eyes. That is, when they become more than a startup entrepreneur and more than a social entrepreneur.

This is the premise of missioneurship.

Earlier in this series, we talked about the social entrepreneur’s obsession with mission at the expense of execution. We also talked about the startup entrepreneur’s obsession with execution at the expense of mission.

The results are often fatal. We lose startups and social causes that don’t have to die.

That is, unless we do something about it. Read more…

This is the third post in a five-part series on missioneurs, a new community of startup and social entrepreneurs.

The premise is that startup entrepreneurs and social entrepreneurs need each other. Alone, too many of their great ideas are struggling and failing. Together, they can fill in each other’s blind spots, build stronger companies and make greater change.

A new post in this series will be published every day this week. Blog subscribers will receive them one day early by email or RSS.

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Yesterday, we discussed the startup entrepreneur’s obsession with execution at the expense of ideas and the crippling effect this has on their marketing, sales and HR.

Now let’s talk about social entrepreneurs, who have the opposite problem:

Social entrepreneurs are obsessed with mission at the expense of execution.

This is a blessing and a curse.

It’s a blessing because their mission can be a very faithful guide. It defines what services they provide, how they make decisions, how they communicate to donors and constituents and how they build their teams. Read more…

This is the second post in a five-part series on missioneurs, a new community of startup and social entrepreneurs.

The premise is that startup entrepreneurs and social entrepreneurs need each other. Alone, too many of their great ideas are struggling and failing. Together, they can fill in each other’s blind spots, build stronger companies and make greater change.

A new post in this series will be published every day this week. Blog subscribers will receive them one day early by email or RSS.

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Yesterday, we discussed the epidemic of startups and non-profits dying needlessly – and why it’s time to do something about it.

Now let’s talk about the startup half of the epidemic, beginning with the single biggest reason why so many promising startups end up in the deadpool: the obsession with execution at the expense of ideas.

Ted Leonsis, former Vice Chairman of AOL, said it best in a speech at the 2007 Wharton Entrepreneurship Conference.

“Ideas are a dime a dozen. It’s all about execution.”

The same advice could just as easily have come from dozens of the most respected thinkers on startup entrepreneurship. Read more…

This is the first post in a five-part series on missioneurs, a new community of startup and social entrepreneurs.

The premise is that startup entrepreneurs and social entrepreneurs need each other. Alone, too many of their great ideas are struggling and failing. Together, they can fill in each other’s blind spots, build stronger companies and make greater change.

A new post in this series will be published every day this week. Blog subscribers will receive them one day early by email or RSS.

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Great startups and non-profits are dying needlessly, and it’s time for those of us who care to do something about it.

The obituaries look so familiar that they start to run together.

Here lies Anthillz, a tech startup that failed for lack of traction, inability to attract investors and too much time and money spent building the right tech team.

Here lies Great Intentions, a (barely) fictitious non-profit that died the non-profit version of this same death. It lost its foundation funding, laid off most of its staff, sought help in vain from its indifferent board – most of whom missed that board meeting, just like the ones before it – and forced its founders to look for other work because they couldn’t afford to pay themselves a salary, not even the peanuts they were making before.

If you’re a startup or social entrepreneur, one of these two stories should sound familiar. You probably hear versions of them again and again. Read more…

Great cities have a soul. They have a set of dominant values and priorities that shape conversations, influence ambitions and attract like-minded people to live and work there.

New York’s soul is, without a doubt, capitalism. It’s flavored by a countercurrent of artistic and creative ambition, but it’s capitalism’s influence that you feel everywhere.

L.A.’s soul is entertainment, with all the vanity, opportunism and dazzling innovation that comes with it. Las Vegas, its neighbor to the east, is built around indulgence, with simple vices made digestible and nonthreatening for everyone from fraternity brothers to their grandparents.

Philly’s soul is harder to capture. I have some thoughts on it but they are still too murky to share.

Last weekend, with all this in mind, I went to Washington DC to get to know the soul of its startup scene. Startups there are immersed in a city of advocacy, where idealists flock to make change and cynics flock to take advantage of things as they are.

So what does this climate of advocacy mean for startups and innovators in Washington DC?

The short answer is, I don’t know. I spent just one short weekend there, which is long enough to notice a few things but not long enough to be confident in any of them.

So why write at all? Read more…

What would happen if you gave up the one thing in your life that’s most important to you?

Think about it for a minute. Imagine ending your marriage. Leaving your job. Closing your business. Abandoning your labor of love.

Would the next chapter in your life be better or worse than this one?

It’s a terrifying question. So terrifying that most of the time, we’ll do anything to avoid it.

It’s also one of the most powerful predictors of our future.

Because when we believe that whatever we have now is as good as it gets, we draw the boundaries of our future. Nothing better can happen to us when we don’t believe there’s anything better out there – when we accept what we have and tell ourselves to be grateful for it.

Great negotiators understand this. They know that what makes for strength at the negotiating table has nothing to do with the money in our wallets, the strength of our resume, our influence over others or our family name. Read more…

UPDATE (1/25/2010 @ 4:30pm): Rumor has it that Philadelphia is now going to be included in the Fast Company list of top startup cities! Here’s what Brad Feld writes below in the comments:

“I predict you will see Philly in the Fast Company series. I’ve already made intos for them there for an interview. They’ve expanded the list of cities beyond the original five (Boulder, NY, Seattle, Boston, and Austin). Philly is in the next batch.”

This is an amazing conclusion: You spoke and, with Brad’s help, Fast Company listened!

Most entrepreneurs have no idea about the magical things happening in Philadelphia.

Fast Company is doing a five-part series on great startup cities outside of Silicon Valley. It’s likely that Philadelphia is not one of them.

They have already featured New York City and Boulder, and Fred Wilson says Seattle is also on the list. That leaves two more, and I haven’t heard about them interviewing anyone from Philly.

Let’s change that.

If you were interviewed by Fast Company, how would you answer the question, “Why should you start a company in Philly?” Read more…

Entrepreneurship is too big for the box we’ve trapped it in.

What is an entrepreneur today? Someone who starts businesses. If you are really progressive, it’s someone who starts socially conscious businesses.

I hope this is simply a historical accident. Because there is nothing about innovating, finding unmet needs, building teams, bootstrapping, taking risks, competing, creating value and scaling a model that’s specific to business.

Imagine a world in which business had a monopoly on these practices. We would not have many of our most successful communities, social causes, political movements, service organizations, universities and religions.

Entrepreneurship has nothing to do with business or commerce. It’s a methodology for solving problems – perhaps one of the most versatile ever made. It is a way for a few small people to bring about massive, scalable change with little or no resources.

The problem is that business has seized the entrepreneurial brand and most of the entrepreneurial-minded talent. Read more…

As I announced earlier this week, I quit a great job at TicketLeap, one of Philadelphia’s most promising young companies, without any idea of what I would do next. I hadn’t even started the search.

It’s either brave or foolish, depending on who you ask. It’s also hard to understand, especially for my mother. I think she worries that I’m too proud to move in with her — that she will see me on the news one day holding a sign that says, “Will bring you customers for food.”

So I want to share the story of why I left and why I did it without a parachute. I also want to give you some ammunition in case you find yourself in a similar situation. After all, it’s hard to explain your apparent insanity to everyone you know. It’s also hard to ignore that voice inside your head that will say anything to talk you out of it.

The million dollar question

Before we go any further, let’s acknowledge the elephant in the room: it seems insane to jump without a parachute, especially in a recession. It seems insane for one simple reason. Read more…