Start Summit: Food for Thought
This years Start Summit gave me some good food for thought. Read more about it in this article.
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Start Summit St. Gallen
This years Start Summit in St. Gallen (Switzerland) gave me some good food for thought. If you are not yet familiar with the Start Summit: It's a startup conference run by students (chapeau for that). Every year, the team attracts numerous thought leaders and around 7000 visitors to the conference. For me, it's one of the best conferences in the German-speaking countries. And St. Gallen is a home game: I did my PhD in St. Gallen and geographically it's practically next door to me. So of course I went there.
I listened to numerous presentations and panels on both days of the conference. Surprisingly, a thought-provoking impulse came from one of the talks from which I had not expected it. That was on the first day, when Bryan Johnson spoke on the topic of "Don't Die! How to Live Forever". I was already familiar with Johnson from the media as the dude who made millions from an exit and is now using all his money to stop his own ageing process. Honestly, that didn't really matter to me. But his session was on the main stage and the contributions before and after his talk were interesting to me. So I stayed seated. And I have to say, Johnson surprised me.
I imagined him to be a very vain and superficial guy, but Johnson shared some interesting (and profound) thoughts in the talk. He explained that his life revolves around sleep and emphasises its importance. Sleep is something that a) I really enjoy doing, b) interests me as a subject, but c) often falls short during intense phases in my life (like the last months).
I read Matthew Walker's book "Why we Sleep" and some of his striking examples and quotes have stuck with me, like:
“If sleep does not serve an absolutely vital function, then it is the biggest mistake the evolution ever made!” - Matthew Walker
I am therefore well aware of the importance of sleep for health and cognitive functions. Nevertheless, I often don't manage to get to bed on time, mostly because I work late into the night. But in his talk at the Start Summit, Johnson gave me a good mind hack that I've been using for a week and that actually works for me, he said:
“Reframe your identity that you are a professional sleeper. In the same way that each one of us everyday shows up to our meetings on time and apologises if we are two minutes late. So set your bedtime and show up on time, and if you are two minutes late, apologise.” - Bryan Johnson
A simple hack, but it works for me. I'm always on time for meetings. And now also for my sleep meetings ;) I try to sleep 7-7.5 hours a night. I've managed to do this quite well over the last week and it feels like my cognitive functions have improved significantly after sleeping so much, I'm much more focussed and my mood is also better. Cutting back on sleep is definitely the wrong way to go. Try to get enough sleep too.
Bryan Johnson's talk was the only one of the talks I attended that was remote, he was unable to attend and therefore submitted a video contribution. The advantage is that you can now watch it if you are interested.
Below you will find a few more statements from talks at the Start Summit that made me think:
“Your job as a founder is to put the best team on the field“ - George Robson
“Startups are some of the most powerful vehicles we found to change the world” - Max Hodak
“With Startups, if you play the game long enough, interesting things happen” - Max Hodak
"The future of AI is going to be about real robots" - Jürgen Schmidhuber
"The Open Source AI Movement lags just a few months behind the major companies; the big players possess the advantage of having the resources to compute" - Jürgen Schmidhuber
„I have a baseline happiness that does not come from the company“ - Benjamin Bauer (with the advice for founders not to draw all their happiness only from their startup)
“Radically prioritize, take 30 mins each week on monday and think about what are the 3 things that are important this week, spend time on them, not on writing 5 more mails a day that maybe do not really matter… take the time to figure out what matters“ - Benjamin Bauer (could not agree more, wrote some thoughts on priorization here)
Sebastian Beetschen asked about competing with Apple: „big companies have the disadvantage that they have to go after the multi billion dollar market, startups can go after the multi million dollar market”
“Get references for your (potential) investors. Talk to founders whose startups have had difficulties or failed and in which the potential investor has invested” - Benedikt Ilg
And below you find a few more impressions of the Start Summit.
Being at the Start Summit and seeing so many founders pursuing their own ideas reminded me again how important it is to follow your own path in life, to realise your ideas and dreams. That's why I take the time every 1-2 years to watch Randy Pausch's "Last Lecture" again. As a professor facing terminal cancer, Pausch delivered an unforgettable message about life's beauty and the importance of pursuing one's dreams. If you haven't seen Pausch's talk yet, I highly recommend you take some time to watch it. It will give you good food for thought for your life...
A Personal update…
The last few weeks have been incredibly intense for me. On the one hand, I have given two very individual keynotes, one for first-time entrepreneurs on the topic of Survival Guide for Founders (more here) and one for managers on the topic of Technology Adoption (an article on this will follow). On the other hand, I offered a new blended learning course on Digital Business Models, which I accompany with a content series (first two articles see Why Business Models Matter & Digital Business Models: An Introduction). Then this week I had course on the topic of Disruptive Technologies, for which I prepared four days of content, e.g. on the theory of disruption, AI, blockchain/Web3 and Extended Reality/ the Metaverse. And last but not least, I also lectured a course on Entrepreneurial Thinking.
For this course, I invited a very experienced local entrepreneur, 75-year-old Egon, to discuss with the students. Egon has been an entrepreneur for 50 years 👀 He is currently in the process of setting up a new company. It seems that you can't simply switch off entrepreneurial thinking, even if you are officially retired 🔥 I was fascinated to hear about Egon's experiences, observations and learnings as an entrepreneur. Egon said a few things that got me thinking, for example:
As far as quality of life is concerned, in Egon's own perception, we were further ahead 30 years ago than we are today. Egon lives in a rural area and he said that although he now has super-fast internet at home, there is no longer a bakery in town and it's hard for him to get a roll out of a 3D printer 😉 Important (offline) communication and networking spaces have disappeared in his region ("People only meet at the cemetery"). I am a tech optimist, but Egon has now given me a few impulses to think in a more differentiated way about how technology (and global developments beyond that) affect different regions and people, thanks for that 🙏
Here are a few impressions from the courses I have held in recent weeks.
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Disclaimer: The thoughts published in this publication are my personal opinion and should not be considered as investment advice or a recommendation for any type of action. I am not a financial expert. The startups, organizations or corporates highlighted in this publication have caught my interest. This mention is not an endorsement or recommendation to engage with them. Readers should always do their own research.
again, interesting and inspiring, thx