14 Jul July 15, 2019 – Passion & Initiative Joshua Spodek and Takeaways Brian Friedman
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Dr. Joshua Spodek – and Author of Initiative: A Proven Method to Bring Your Passions to Life (and Work)
To say you have to have a passion to start, and you know what it is,
and you know how to act on it, that’s a really big hurdle. I believe
everyone has passions, but I do not recommend waiting.
Joshua Spodek is a TEDX speaker, professor at NYU, host of the award-winning Leadership and the Environment podcast, a columnist for Inc. magazine, and author of the #1 bestselling book Leadership Step by Step. He holds five Ivy League degrees, including a PhD in astrophysics and an MBA from Columbia, where he studied under a Nobel laureate and helped build an X-ray observational satellite with the European Space Agency and NASA. Josh left academia to found a venture based on his invention that showed animated images to subway riders between stations. Today, he teaches and coaches leadership and entrepreneurship at NYU and at Columbia Business School, and has spoken at Harvard, Princeton, West Point, MIT, BCG, PwC, S&P, and IBM. He has appeared on every major network, and has been featured in New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and many other publications. In its “Genius” issue, Esquire listed him among the “best and brightest.” NBC has called him an “astrophysicist turned new media whiz,” and Forbes and ABC have called him a “rocket scientist.” Josh has done burpees daily since 2011 (129,000 and counting at the time of writing this book), takes 16 months to produce one load of garbage, and hasn’t flown (by choice) since March 2016. He blogs daily at www.joshuaspodek.com and makes his courses available online at www.spodekacademy.com.
Brian Friedman – Founder of Loopd and Author of Takeaways: Secret Truths from Leading a Startup
We made a target list of companies that we would love to acquired
by. We prioritized them by location, motivation, culture fit, size
and lastly what is the mission statement. We wanted to make sure
they care about the same things that we do.
Brian Friedman, the founder of Loopd (and now VP of Digital Innovation at Aventri). According to him making quick decisions in those hard moments is key to thriving in the madhouse of Silicon Valley. It’s how he secured over $2.5 million in angel and venture capital financing and went from a blank sheet of paper to multimillion-dollar exit in less than three years. He wrote his new book, Takeaways, to organize the entire startup process into 50 concrete rules to help any entrepreneur make faster and better decisions when they don’t know where to turn next. His ideas about analytics and business practices have been quoted in TechCrunch, Yahoo!, Forbes, and other leading publications. He started the largest Wearable Technology Startup meetup in the US and now serves as VP of digital innovation on the executive team at Aventri, a leading enterprise cloud-based, event management software company.