Comments on: Balancing interest and excitement

By: Lessons Learned – Casting the Net for Brilliant Idea “Show Stoppers” « Applied Entrepreneurship

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 13:14:49 +0000

[...] is exciting stuff. Part of this process, however, is Balancing interest and excitement, as mentioned by Jeffrey Kalmikoff, former chief creative officer at [...]

By: TechStars: Episode 12: The Beginning

TechStars: Episode 12: The Beginning — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 20:48:56 +0000

[...] / Investors: Fred Wilson, Todd Vernon, Matt Blumberg, Jeffrey Kalmikoff, Don Dodge, Chris DeVore, Mark Solon, Andrew Hyde, Brad [...]

By: Natty

Natty — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 19:50:44 +0000

Jeffrey –
Thanks so much for your involvement through the summer. Excited to keep working with you! Great post!

By: Mark O'Sullivan

Mark O'Sullivan — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 16:05:06 +0000

Focus is extremely difficult when you’re excited about your product. I have a running list of ideas I want to implement for my business, and I’m often forced to ditch ones that I think could be amazing simply because they don’t keep our business on focus.

This summer I had to learn the same lessons you describe here. I imagine it was just as challenging for you as it was for me – but an invaluable lesson to learn.

By: David Hoffman

David Hoffman — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 17:08:49 +0000

Awesome perspective on mentorship. Thankfully you (and our other mentors) did a great job balancing excitement/new ideas with helping us prioritize everything coming in. I’m excited to see how the balance between excitement/new ideas and staying focused evolves for us and the other teams over the next few months — both elements are so crucial, and I think striking the right balance between the two is where magic happens.

By: Nik Bauman

Nik Bauman — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 14:04:43 +0000

“coming up with new ideas, tangents of those ideas, and tangents of those tangents,”

I feel ya. Very good points. I can affirm that mentors that provided us with pointed guidance that we were able to weigh with our own thoughts and ideas were the ones that made the largest impact. Ideas are great, but there is definitely no shortage of them. Often a mentor’s value comes from their ability to distill and help prioritize. As, for me, prioritization is one of things to get right as first time entrepreneur.