I’ve had a pretty expensive education.

As an investor I’ve spent about $200m of other people’s money. As an entrepreneur I’ve spent about another $100m. As an R&D manager I’ve probably spent another $100m. So a total of a $400m education.

My MO had been to milk that money through consultancy fees, guaranteeing a return for myself but not necessarily for the investor. A lawyer yesterday saw right through this and pointed it out to me. Spot on.

I don’t feel guilty at all; my intentions have always been honourable, if not the results. Oddly, in this space the wins teach you very little. Things that go wrong are the real learnings, so long as you dissect them after the fact and place them into a working model, to be tested later on.

Now I have this great skill base and an almost complete working model,  it’s a valuable asset to others. As an advisor I can sit down with any tech company and guide them in the right direction whilst pointing out all the potential pitfalls to avoid.

Which is what I spent my morning doing for a random startup, introduced to me by a friend and colleague.

Such generosity (advice provided for the price of breakfast) makes me feel a little better about that expensive education. It just does; cheered me up no end! The crisp, cool, sunny Bondi morning helped substantially!

Regards the entrepreneur in question; it doesn’t matter too much if s/he doesn’t have the $400m education. All s/he needs, and this morning’s one has it, is the skills to find good people and identify them as such, and take notice of them. Its all about leveraging networks and continuing to leverage them until the good people emerge at the end of the supply chain of people.

It takes the uncanny skill of identifying the good people that know what they are talking about, and believing them. Filtering out the bullshit artists, that often don’t even know themselves that they are so, is one of the skills here, which is a naturally learned skill. Recognising the good people; this takes skill too. One asks the right questions and the good people can explain very complex concepts in simple terms complete with root cause explanations that are easily digested.