Notes #133: The Pioneer’s Trap
Stop rewarding the people who know how to build the slide deck. Back the people who solved the problem.
Notes #132: When Being Right Becomes the Hardest Thing to Notice You’ve Stopped Being
Which of your own convictions were earned in a world that’s already gone?
Who Gets to Build What’s Next?
Many companies that survive their first year have something working quietly in the background: an early check from a parent or a well-off friend. My guest today leads an organization for founders who never had that check..
Shawna Young is the CEO of Camelback Ventures, a New Orleans accelerator that puts fifty thousand dollars, and a community, behind early-stage founders whom traditional capital routinely overlooks. A chemist by training and a former science teacher, she thinks hard about who gets seen, who gets funded, and why the gap between the two is so wide.
And sometimes, the best way to understand who gets overlooked is to look at who had the idea first.
It’s Shawna Young, CEO of Camelback Ventures, on The Business of Giving.
The Secret Sauce is Love
Most mentoring programs ask for a year, maybe two, and rely on volunteers who come and go. My next guest built something almost radical by comparison: a paid, professional mentor for every child, for at least twelve years, no matter what.
Terri Sorensen leads Friends of the Children, which selects some of the most vulnerable four- to six-year-olds in the country—kids facing foster care, homelessness, and deep poverty—and pairs each one with a mentor who stays for their entire childhood, tested now by a twenty-year randomized controlled trial. But ask her what actually makes it work, and she doesn’t lead with the data.
We talk about keeping that promise for over a decade, scaling from one city to nearly fifty, and the young man who just graduated law school with his Friend still by his side.
It’s Terri Sorensen, CEO of Friends of the Children, on the Business of Giving.
Notes #131: The People Who Need Your Permission Will Eventually Learn to Want What You Want
Where in your organization has agreement stopped meaning what you think it means?