Keynote
Don't Just Start a Startup, Launch a Personal Revolution
In 1960 a president asked a generation to give years of their lives to a place they had never seen. A hundred and forty thousand said yes. Nobody is going to ask us — so we have to ask each other.
Revolt is against.
Revolution is for.
It starts at two in the morning on the steps of the Michigan Union, three weeks before an election, with a senator who had no prepared remarks and a crowd of students who would not go to bed. What he asked them founded the Peace Corps. My father was one of the people who said yes.
That question is not coming again. Meanwhile every arrangement people built their careers inside of is coming apart at once — which is frightening, and is also the largest opening any of us will see, because when the arrangements come apart the question of who gets to build is open again.
So the talk turns on a word. Revolt is easy and free and changes nothing. Revolution, in its older sense, meant a turning back — a body coming all the way around to where it was always meant to be. Most of us were knocked out of that orbit by a salary.
It ends where Austin started, and with an ask: that the room build the bridge between here and there, in both directions, starting that week.
Best for
- Festival and conference main stages
- Ecosystem gatherings where the audience is mixed — founders, officials, students
- Opening a program you want people to commit to
- Rooms outside the United States, which is where most of these have been given
What the room leaves with
- The difference between being against something and being for something — and why only one of them survives to Monday morning.
- Why culture precedes capital, with the thirty-year Austin case as evidence rather than inspiration.
- The three things an entrepreneur becomes when the business stops being the point: pioneer, revolutionary, guardian — and a demand that they choose one.
- A concrete next step, because a room that leaves moved and unorganized has been wasted.
Also available
The rest of what I speak about.
U.S. Market Entry: Five Lenses for Crossing Borders
Why Texas and Austin specifically, the second valley of death nobody plans for, and how to pick a beachhead small enough to actually win. Run as a conversation, not a lecture.
Read →Why Austin Is Overtaking Silicon Valley
What international founders get wrong about the United States, and the three things you need before you land: mindset, relationships, and ecosystem fluency.
Read →Creating a Powerful Future Together in an Age of Disruption
Care, connection, creation — and why the places that have already lived through the worst of it tend to understand this fastest.
Read →Bring it to your city