The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living

by Randy Komisar

I can't muster the energy for a company whose founders never hope to accomplish anything more than making some bucks.

By setting your expectations low, you almost guarantee mediocrity.”

“Lenny, you're selling known products to an existing market. Your competitors—at least your brick-and-mortar competitors—are identifiable. That all says you're probably a Better-Faster-Cheaper startup, and your goal is to unseat the brick-and-mortar incumbents. Your biggest bet is that people will buy these things on-line. A big bet indeed, but there is no brain surgery in it. So the rocket ship model is probably the right one for Funerals.com. You should get on and go as far and as fast as possible.”

Ultimately being right, or better positioned, may be more important than being first.

“Your second hurdle,” I told Lenny, “is that, in spite of all that's known about your products and market, you still face some big unanswered questions.”

How many people will buy funeral goods on the Web?

can you do without human contact?

What's the market segment that will respond on the Net, and what are the specific products and...

What's the best way to attrac...

How will you w...

local funeral homes to ensure a satisfactory experien...

Brave New World startups especially, need to proceed more gingerly, because there are no precedents to guide them.

operate by trial and error.

Stay small and remain flexible for the time being, so we can keep close to the market, learn from prospective customers, and afford to take some missteps.

Once the market is understood and the product is fully developed, then move fast and hard.

there's no market after all, we won't have wasted truckloads of money.

I responded. “I only said business at its heart has the potential for creative expression and positive change.”

What looks like a cloud to one person is a chance to sell umbrellas to the next.

Figure out what you care about and do that. If you can do it in the

context of Funerals.com, do it from the start.

What would it take for you to be willing to spend the rest of your life on Funerals.com?

So why were they doing this? Why was it worth their time?

knowing what we require to be willing to do something lifelong provides invaluable self-knowledge.

why not do hard work because it is meaningful, not simply to get it over with in order to move on to the next thing?

Passion pulls you toward something you cannot resist.

Drive pushes you toward something you feel compelled or obligated to do.

If you know nothing about yourself, you can't tel...

I had become captivated

alarm bells began clanging in my head. Crystal couldn't deliver on the plan.

It was my plan, and my fix-it-later attitude had been naïve.

Crystal had tried to instantly become a full-service developer and publisher

before it had produced a reliable pipeline of successful products.

Crystal had tried to do too much too fast.

Focus all our resources on developing a small number of high-quality games. Sell these games through outside publishers.

rebuild Crystal's own sales organization,

I began to recognize a fundamental flaw in my relationship with the company.

If I understood the problem and the solution, why didn't I act on it?

Without a grander vision, and some prospect of realizing it, Crystal was not a place I could see myself working the rest of my life. That meant I needed to get out, now.

It's about what things you would consider worth doing today if it were your last day.

Passion pulls you. It's the sense of connection you feel when the work you do expresses who you are.

Only passion will get you through the tough times.

it's the romance, not the finance that makes business worth pursuing.

If they focused on the boxes, I told them, “your legacy may be that you sowed the seeds of a huge market, which the consumer electronics giants and service providers ultimately reaped.” Pioneer new territory, I cautioned, but don't end up with arrows in your backs.

but if they're completely deaf and completely blind—and many are—they're unlikely to learn enough from the market and their advisors to make their vision a reality.

they had evolved the business from a hardware-based model to a service-based strategy. The gist of their big idea was what they called “personalized television.”

How would they make money when each box was priced below cost? Volume—that is, a volume of viewers sufficient to fund a money-making service based on subscriptions, advertising, and commerce.

expense would disappear as televisions and other set-top boxes provided the power and digital storage necessary for personalized television. Then TiVo would be a service provider only, with a much stronger financial model.

They did not waste any time speaking to me about exit strategies. Personalized television would be their legacy.

we saw it as a way to help people who are struggling with loss and grief.

But personally? I'm not interested in simply being an e-tailer.