Kathryn Minshew Quotes
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Get your product in front of actual, living, breathing strangers. Your college roommate's approval does not mean there's market demand.
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Having a co-founder is incredible, but it has to be the right person: someone who shares your values and ethics, absolutely, but also someone who has a similar vision for the future in terms of their appetite for risk, for low salaries, for hard work.
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People actually aren't moving on from companies much more quickly than in the past, but there's a perception that they do, so companies are investing less in talent on the assumption that young employees won't stay long.
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You know, as most entrepreneurs do, that a company is only as good as its people. The hard part is actually building the team that will embody your company's culture and propel you forward.
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Being able to hear someone say, 'I found an incredible job on The Muse,' or 'It gave me courage to make a career change,' that's the motivating factor.
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For me, I spent months on job boards in 2010 and was frustrated by the experience. It's antiquated and clunky, and there was nothing about a particular job posting that helped me favor one company over another. You literally get a list of 5,000 jobs that look the same.
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I tend to find you have to be fairly vulnerable to get something... to get a perspective worth having. Which can be controversial. But I find telling someone what you're thinking about, what you want, and what you're afraid of can often help them give guidance.
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The idea for The Muse came from my own life, from a product that I wanted but couldn't find anywhere. Sometimes when you see a need for something in your own life and you can't get it, you feel crazy enough to make it happen yourself.
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Thinking big is only one part of being a successful entrepreneur.
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For many people, the hardest thing about job-seeking is figuring out where to start. All through college, I heard my friends asking themselves, 'What do I want to do with my life?' And guess what? After college, and after that first job, people still ask the same question.
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I think the idea of a 'perfect job' is a myth - there are pros and cons of every position, good days and bad days, and even what most people would consider dream jobs come with their share of downsides.
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Launching a start-up, you need to get a lot done quickly. Every day is different. Everyone pitches in with everything. It's easy for the founding team to say, 'We're flexible. We all help out with everything!' But when it comes to making decisions - that flexibility can spell inefficiency and disaster.
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When I was still a bright-eyed McKinsey consultant, I remember hitting a point where I didn't know what to do next, and someone gave me the book, 'How Remarkable Women Lead,' and I read it and scribbled in it, and it felt like a guide in helping me figure out my career.
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For almost the first year of The Muse's life, I would do 5 to 8 networking events a week. And I don't necessarily think that's the right path for everyone, but I realized that as an entrepreneur, one of my strengths was finding the right people who could help us. I didn't come into startups with any network.
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I had been a veteran of pretty challenging job searches, so I knew firsthand how frustrating, confusing, and demoralizing the job search process can be. Even after you get a job, many people join companies and discover in the first couple weeks that they aren't a good match with the personality and values of the company.
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I probably have a small number of people that are consistently advisors and mentors, but I'm much more likely to have a broader array of... almost like an unofficial board of advisors, where I know that certain people are going to be good for certain types of topics.
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There are always going to be obstacles. I think the bigger your aspirations, the larger the obstacles.
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So many of my rookie mistakes could have been avoided by first-hand exposure to other, more experienced technology entrepreneurs.
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Something I've learned is that when people tell me I can't do something, I immediately wonder why and then think it through. It only makes me more motivated to prove them wrong.
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It's hard when you have a lot of naysayers to know when they might be right or when to ignore them and go with your gut and do something that may seem risky.
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When talking to first-time entrepreneurs, I often ask them: 'How do you know that people want your product or service?' As you can expect, the answer is often that they don't yet, but will know once they launch. And they're right. That's why it's critical to launch as quickly as possible so you can get that feedback.
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Job seekers light up when they find The Muse - we're a breath of fresh air in a stale, musty world. Our user experience focuses first and foremost on the individual, on providing them information - from content to company profiles - to make the most pressing professional decisions in their lives.
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As a cohort, millennials are unique in their social consciousness, and they make decisions based on that awareness. Keep them engaged at work by showcasing a culture of paying it forward and tying the day-to-day into the larger purpose of the organization.
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I'm an entrepreneur, so I've got to be ruthless about 'me' time if I want to have any left to myself! I make myself leave the office by 8 or 9 P.M. most nights, even if I do curl up with my laptop and a glass of wine at home to get through email.