Connecting The Dots

Welcome to?The?Art?of?The?Impossible, a weekly newsletter where I unearth five pieces?of?content which I hope will both inspire?and?embolden you.

Before we get started, here is a quick ad from my friends at IdeaApe...

Know Exactly What Your Customers Need in 2 Minutes!

IdeaApe is the only AI market research tool designed to identify and address unmet needs within target markets. By using IdeaApe, you can develop groundbreaking products that deeply resonate with customers, creating strong market differentiation and fostering loyalty.

Get Started with IdeaApe

With IdeaApe, you can:

? Identify the real problems your target market faces.

? Tailor your content strategy to address your clients' unmet pain points.

? Understand your target market's willingness to pay.

? Develop a proven go-to-market strategy, backed by real insights into pain points.

? Gain insights into how your target audience views your competitors.

? Move beyond guessing in product development, packaging, pricing, and distribution.

Get Started with IdeaApe

And back to the newsletter…

PODCAST

This week’s guest on the podcast is founder and VC Brett Martin who I first started following ten years ago when we were both in the mobile space.

Brett is currently Co-Founder of Kumospace and co-founder of?Charge Ventures. Kumospace is a venture backed virtual office space platform that provides immersive and interactive virtual spaces for hosting team meetings, and social gatherings. Charge Ventures is a venture capital firm based in New York that invests in pre-seed to seed early stage tech startups.

In this episode of the podcast, we discuss Brett’s first taste of business as a kid, what lessons he learned about entrepreneurship from sailing 6,000 miles on a 50 year old, 30 foot sailboat which involved dodging water spouts, pirates and drug runners, what it felt like to shut down his first proper startup, and what he looks for in the founders he invests in.

Listen here or on YouTube.

QUOTE

You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something—your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

Steve Jobs

READ

She Built a Microcomputer Empire From Her Suburban Home - The untold story of Lore Harp McGovern

If history is written by the victors, Lore Harp McGovern should have volumes devoted to her contributions to the personal computing industry. In the mid-1970s, from her suburban California home, Harp McGovern—a housewife and mother of two—began assembling memory boards and other computer expansions to sell to the growing hobbyist and business markets. With her friend Carole Ely, she grew their company, Vector Graphic, into a major manufacturer of microcomputers, eventually taking it public before Big Blue—IBM—muscled into the market.

This is the untold story of one of the last remaining original founders of Silicon Valley and she’s a woman - marvellous! Read the full piece from Gareth Edwards on Every here - it’s a great read!

“It’s Lore Harp from Vector Graphic. We have a new memory board and need about 50,000 chips!”?

BOOK

AI Needs You: How We Can Change AI's Future and Save Our Own by Verity Harding

I have just been sent this book by the publisher and I can’t wait to get into it.

Book blurb:

Artificial intelligence may be the most transformative technology of our time. As AI’s power grows, so does the need to figure out what—and who—this technology is really for. AI Needs You argues that it is critical for society to take the lead in answering this urgent question and ensuring that AI fulfills its promise.

Verity Harding draws inspiring lessons from the histories of three twentieth-century tech revolutions—the space race, in vitro fertilization, and the internet—to empower each of us to join the conversation about AI and its possible futures. Sharing her perspective as a leading insider in technology and politics, she rejects the dominant narrative, which often likens AI’s advent to that of the atomic bomb. History points the way to an achievable future in which democratically determined values guide AI to be peaceful in its intent; to embrace limitations; to serve purpose, not profit; and to be firmly rooted in societal trust.

AI Needs You gives us hope that we, the people, can imbue AI with a deep intentionality that reflects our best values, ideals, and interests, and that serves the public good. AI will permeate our lives in unforeseeable ways, but it is clear that the shape of AI’s future—and of our own—cannot be left only to those building it. It is up to us to guide this technology away from our worst fears and toward a future that we can trust and believe in.

Buy the book here.

FILM

Have you seen Something Ventured? It’s a 2011 documentary film investigating the emergence of American venture capitalism in the mid-20th century. Something Ventured follows the stories of the venture capitalists who worked with entrepreneurs to start and build companies like Apple, Intel, Cisco, Atari, Tandem and others, and looks at the influence of Georges Doriot. It is a full-length independent film which includes interviews with prominent American venture capitalists and entrepreneurs of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, as well as archival photography and footage. The film has aired across the US on local PBS stations as well as on public television in Norway.

Something Ventured features the venture capitalists Arthur Rock, Tom Perkins, Don Valentine, Dick Kramlich, Reid Dennis, Bill Draper, Pitch Johnson, Bill Bowes, Bill Edwards, and Jim Gaither. The entrepreneurs featured in Something Ventured are Gordon Moore (co-founder of Intel), Jimmy Treybig (founder of Tandem), Nolan Bushnell (founder of Atari), Dr. Herbert Boyer (co-founder of Genentech), Mike Markkula (second president/CEO of Apple), Sandy Lerner (co-founder of Cisco), John Morgridge (early CEO of Cisco), and Robert Campbell (founder of what would become PowerPoint).

Watch it on YouTube here or Vimeo here.

Tom Perkins: “I don’t know how to write a business plan. I can only tell you how we read them. We start at the back, and if the numbers are big, we look at the front to see what kind of business it is."

Thank you for reading?the?newsletter?and?for listening to?the?podcast, and?if you enjoy them, please do share with your network - my goal is to have these stories reach as many as possible so that others can be inspired too. And if you have two minutes, please do leave a review for the podcast - it would mean the world to me and helps others to find it too.

Danielle