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You don't think, when you start a company as the founding CEO, that if your venture actually works, you end up with three jobs: founder, CEO, and chair of the board. The first eight years at Bonobos, I have learned a lot about the tension between the first two. It didn't even occur to me that I had the third job until much later.
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My definition of gender expands beyond just two genders.
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Only by being obsessed with little things do amazing things emerge.
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I want to be Batman.
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Plenty of entrepreneurs can start a company. What is more rare is to evolve it and to scale with it over time.
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Every company can use someone advocating loudly for the customer.
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Honesty is love.
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The more defensive and angry I get, the more I later discover those feelings are usually just projections of feelings I am having towards myself.
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As a society, we must not allow human rights abuses to go unnoticed and undocumented; it is a vital mission to fight ignorance of these tragic events.
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Since its founding, I've been friends with ModCloth's cofounders and many of its executives and investors. I have long imagined we would one day belong under one roof with that brand as a force in the future of apparel.
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Taking risks and being focused, sometimes, are at odds. Both are required to build a great company.
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At Bonobos, we believe in the future of men.
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The act of founding a company is its own act of narcissism: 'I alone can do this.'
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A great merchant delivers both joy and profit. Then profit gets reinvested in more joy.
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I've been in thousands of conversations dripping with misogyny. I've initiated many of those conversations myself. From my fraternity roots to my bachelor days in New York, I know I have not always shown up in ways that I am proud of.
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To an entrepreneur, closing a financing often feels like the end of a marathon. It's actually the starting gun.
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Business books are generally read and written by people who aren't good at business.
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Culture is an output of a bunch of inputs that have to come together the right way. Specifically, it is the collision of people and their context, how they interact with each other in that context, and then how that context evolves based on those interactions as they multiply.
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With more women in the workplace and in positions of power and leadership, with the legalization of gay marriage and the emerging liberation of the LGBTQ community, traditional definitions of masculinity are changing for the better.
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Growing up, my religious identity was primarily one of confusion. Nothing was pushed on me; nothing was overtly offered.
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Tolerance, diversity, and inclusion are not political opinions. They are non-negotiable human rights - hard fought and secured in America.
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It's easy to be cynical about American politics. It's more important not to be.
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Tenacity is not about avoiding being overwhelmed but being indomitable in the face of the overwhelming odds of your venture's failure.
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There are five kinds of great apes: bonobos, chimpanzees, orangutans, gorillas, and the one which people always think of last: Humans!