Neal Bloom won a million-dollar startup competition and spoke at Rice University about the entrepreneurial habit of breathing in problems and exhaling solutions. When that habit lapses, he says, you start exhaling excuses instead. His team at Newfund, including Tracy, Brian, and Hans, stays sharp by treating every broken thing as urgent.
speech once at Rice, and it was after my year of being in their competition, which was the biggest in the world. It still is, I think. It's like a million-dollar payout with my startup, right? Kathy's nodding yes. And the year after I competed, they asked me to come back and talk to 500 people in their auditorium, including all the 50 companies. And one of my takeaways to them— and they still have this on YouTube— was listen to your harshest critics the most carefully. Now Tracy has a very nice bedside manner, so So the feedback is delivered in a very generous way. But I will never— the day that you guys hear me respond to something being broken without trying to fix it immediately means I've lost my entrepreneurial edge. I no longer breathe in problems and exhale solutions. I breathe in problems and exhale excuses. And that's the day where you no longer are nice to me, Tracy. You slap me in the face, or Neal, or Brian, or Hans, or whatever, like whoever I'm with regularly. Yeah, that's when that— yeah, just put— yeah, 5 hands together. So in all seriousness, we're constantly trying to make Newfund better. You know, we can talk about that at some point. And it's that same principle of, you know, accepting and embracing your problems and trying to fix them.
