The Monk and the Riddle Quotes

“And then there is the most dangerous risk of all -- the risk of spending your life not doing what you want on the bet you can buy yourself the freedom to do it later.”
― Randy Komisar, The Monk and the Riddle: The Education of a Silicon Valley Entrepreneur

“In theory, the risk of business failure can be reduced to a number, the probability of failure multiplied by the cost of failure. Sure, this turns out to be a subjective analysis, but in the process your own attitudes toward financial risk and reward are revealed.

By contrast, personal risk usually defies quantification. It's a matter of values and priorities, an expression of who you are. "Playing it safe" may simply mean you do not weigh heavily the compromises inherent in the status quo. The financial rewards of the moment may fully compensate you for the loss of time and fulfillment. Or maybe you just don't think about it. On the other hand, if time and satisfaction are precious, truly priceless, you will find the cost of business failure, so long as it does not put in peril the well-being of you or your family, pales in comparison with the personal risks of no trying to live the life you want today.

Considering personal risk forces us to define personal success. We may well discover that the business failure we avoid and the business success we strive for do not lead us to personal success at all. Most of us have inherited notions of "success" from someone else or have arrived at these notions by facing a seemingly endless line of hurdles extending from grade school through college and into our careers. We constantly judge ourselves against criteria that others have set and rank ourselves against others in their game. Personal goals, on the other hand, leave us on our own, without this habit of useless measurement and comparison.

Only the Whole Life Plan leads to personal success. It has the greatest chance of providing satisfaction and contentment that one can take to the grave, tomorrow. In the Deferred Life Plan there will always be another prize to covet, another distraction, a new hunger to sate. You will forever come up short.”
― Randy Komisar, The Monk and the Riddle: The Education of a Silicon Valley Entrepreneur

“Passion and drive are not the same at all. 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 tell the difference. Once you gain a modicum of self-knowledge, you can express your passion.....It's not about jumping through someone else's hoops. That's drive.”
― Randy Komisar, The Monk and the Riddle: The Education of a Silicon Valley Entrepreneur

“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.”
― Randy Komisar, The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living

“WHEN ALL IS SAID AND DONE, the journey is the reward.”
― Randy Komisar, The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living

“in the long run we're all dead. Time is the only resource that matters.”
― Randy Komisar, The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living

“Work hard, work passionately, but apply your most precious asset—time—to what is most meaningful to you.”
― Randy Komisar, The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living

“Rather than working to the exclusion of everything else in order to flood our bank accounts in the hope that we can eventually buy back what we have missed along the way, we need to live life fully now with a sense of its fragility.”
― Randy Komisar, The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living

“And then there is the most dangerous risk of all - the risk of spending your life not doing what you want on the bet you can buy yourself the freedom to do it later.”
― Randy Komisar, The Monk and the Riddle: The Education of a Silicon Valley Entrepreneur

“it's the romance, not the finance that makes business worth pursuing.”
― Randy Komisar, The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living

“Management is a methodical process; its purpose is to produce the desired results on time and on budget. It complements and supports but cannot do without leadership, in which character and vision combine to empower someone to venture into uncertainty.”
― Randy Komisar, The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living

“ We may well discover that the business failure we avoid and the business success we strive for do not lead us to personal success at all. Most of us have inherited notions of "success" from someone else or have arrived at these notions by facing a seemingly endless line of hurdles extending from grade school through college and into our careers. We constantly judge ourselves against criteria that others have set and rank ourselves against others in their game. ”
― Randy Komisar, The Monk and the Riddle: The Education of a Silicon Valley Entrepreneur

“Every moment some form grows perfect in hand or face; some tone on the hills or the sea is choicer than the rest; some mood of passion or insight or intellectual excitement is irresistibly real and attractive to us—for that moment only. Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end. A counted number of pulses only is given to us of a variegated, dramatic life. How may we see in them all that is to be seen in them by the finest senses? How shall we pass most swiftly from point to point, and be present always at the focus where the greatest number of vital forces unite in their purest energy? To burn always with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life. —Walter Pater, Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873)”
― Randy Komisar, The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living

“you have to be able to survive mistakes in order to learn, and you have to learn in order to create sustainable success”
― RANDY KOMISAR , The Monk and the Riddle: The Education of a Silicon Valley Entrepreneur

“WHEN ALL IS SAID AND DONE, the journey is the reward. There is nothing else. Reaching the end is, well, the end. If the egg must fall three feet without a crack, simply extend the trip to four.”
― Randy Komisar, The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living

“Now I work with inventors, entrepreneurs, and others highly skilled in their own right but not necessarily capable of bringing their ideas to the commercial light of day or achieving the impact their ideas could and should have. This is the creative edge of business — startups, working with a blank canvas to challenge the status quo and make change happen. I work with brilliant entrepreneurs who have a vision for how things can be better and who can't resist doing the next great thing. I am their consigliere.”
― Randy Komisar, The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living

“Work hard, work passionately, but apply your most precious asset—time—to what is most meaningful to you. What are you willing to do for the rest of your life? does not mean, literally, what will you do for the rest of your life? That question would be absurd, given the inevitability of change. No, what the question really asks is, if your life were to end suddenly and unexpectedly tomorrow, would you be able to say you've been doing what you truly care about today? What would you be willing to do for the rest of your life? What would it take to do it right now?”
― Randy Komisar, The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living

“Playing it safe” may simply mean you do not weigh heavily the compromises inherent in the status quo.”
― Randy Komisar, The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living

“And then there is the most dangerous risk of all — the risk of spending your life not doing what you want on the bet you can buy yourself the freedom to do it later.”
― Randy Komisar, The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living

“Here's what I tell the founders in the companies I work with about business risk and success, and what Lenny needs to understand: If you're brilliant, 15 to 20 percent of the risk is removed. If you work twenty-four hours a day, another 15 to 20 percent of the risk is removed. The remaining 60 to 70 percent of business risk will be completely out of your control.”
― Randy Komisar, The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living

“Riding the highs and lows long enough, never being able to see beyond the next peak or the next valley, makes one realize there is only one element in life under our control—our own excellence.”
― Randy Komisar, The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living

“Silicon Valley does not punish business failure. It punishes stupidity, laziness, and dishonesty. Failure is inevitable if you are trying to invent the future. The Valley forgives business failures that arise from natural causes and acts of God: changes, for example, in the market, competition, or technology. The key question here is why a business failed.”
― Randy Komisar, The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living

“Lenny didn't understand how the Valley thinks about business risk and failure. Instead of managing business risk to minimize or avoid failure, the focus here is on maximizing success. The Valley recognizes that failure is an unavoidable part of the search for success.”
― Randy Komisar, The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living

“As my legs spun, my mind churned on the idea of risk. Everything in this Valley turns on risk. Lenny had been hedging, unwilling to expose the big idea, because he suspected it had a substantial chance of failing as a business. Cheaper caskets seemed straightforward as a moneymaker, and he wouldn't have to stretch hard to try it. Proposing a business with higher aspirations seemed too risky because it wasn't clear how that business, the one he and Allison first discussed, the one that had excited them, could work. So Lenny focused on the bottom line in an attempt to appeal to what he presumed to be Frank's greed. He underestimated Frank and the importance of vision, passion, and the big idea. The question he seemed to have answered was not, How can I make a difference? but, What's the least risky path to financial success? Ironically, he had assumed the biggest risk of all in Silicon Valley, the risk of mediocrity. He had dug his own grave.”
― Randy Komisar, The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living

“Management and leadership are related but not identical. Lenny's vantage point from the bowels of the Borg, though, had never given him an appreciation for the difference. Management is a methodical process; its purpose is to produce the desired results on time and on budget. It complements and supports but cannot do without leadership, in which character and vision combine to empower someone to venture into uncertainty. Leaders must suspend the disbelief of their constituents and move ahead even with very incomplete information.”
― Randy Komisar, The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living

“My Providence was this: What started as a way to fill time and pay my way while I figured out what career to pursue turned into something unexpectedly rich and fulfilling. But it wasn't any one single part of this life that excited me. It was the aggregate. All the pieces fitting together gave me satisfaction and energy. I was passionate about the whole: No one particular part attracted me to the exclusion of everything else. Each part excited me fully while I was doing it, for the moment I was doing it. My passion was for exploring everything.”
― Randy Komisar, The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living

“It comes down to my realization over the years that business isn't primarily a financial institution. It's a creative institution. Like painting and sculpting, business can be a venue for personal expression and artistry, at its heart more like a canvas than a spreadsheet. Why? Because business is about change. Nothing stands still. Markets change, products evolve, competitors move into the neighborhood, employees come and go.”
― Randy Komisar, The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living

“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. You have to be able to survive mistakes in order to learn, and you have to learn in order to create sustainable success. Once the market is understood and the product is fully developed, then move fast and hard.”
― Randy Komisar, The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living

“When too much money is pumped too fast into a startup, there's no room for mistakes. The initial product and the initial fix on the market have to be right. There's no way these companies can stop and reconsider what they're doing without a great deal of pain. They lose momentum, and that sense of momentum — in terms of market acceptance, financing opportunities, partnership interest, and the ability to attract talent—is crucial in the Valley. The dreaded “restart”—writing down a company's value and raising new money around a fresh direction for the business—means all the previous work was for naught. Everyone loses, especially the founders. More often the walking wounded are simply sold off for the value of their assets, or scuttled entirely.”
― Randy Komisar, The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living

“Some startups, Brave New World startups especially, need to proceed more gingerly, because there are no precedents to guide them. They need to feel their way for a while, operate by trial and error.”
― Randy Komisar, The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living