#35 Jerry Neumann - Startups Succeed When There's Uncertainty

In a world dominated by big companies with billions of dollars in investible capital, why should tiny startups be successful with anything?

After all, startups are less capitalized, have a non-existent brand, and often the products they release are basic.

Our today’s guest, Jerry Neumann, spends his time thinking about why startups are able to grow despite being surrounded by big companies. Without giving out too much, his ideas revolve around the concept of “uncertainty” and how, counterintuitively, it is the key to a startup's success.

He’s a venture capitalist with investments in popular companies such as DataDog and BankSimple. He also teaches entrepreneurship at Columbia University’s engineering school. He writes a blog called reactionwheel.net, which I will highly recommend everyone to read after they’re done listening to this podcast.

== What we talk about ==
0:00 - Introduction
1:23 - How did you become a venture capitalist and after that how did you end up teaching entrepreneurship at Columbia University?
7:59 - Can entrepreneurship be taught? What exactly are you teaching your students?
13:22 - Why should entrepreneurs embrace uncertainty & how does it fuel startups?
23:44 - Why big companies are obsessed with certainty?
30:22 - How should an entrepreneur handle uncertainty?
32:40 - Do you think if an opportunity or an Idea is too obvious, should an entrepreneur not pursue it?
39:32 - Can you talk about how market uncertainty is different than technical uncertainty?
44:15 - What is your thought when people say that the culture of innovation & the pace of innovation is itself a moat?
48:17 - Do have a framework to think about what are strong moats?
50:44 - How should an entrepreneur proceed to resolve uncertainty in an optimal way?
57:55 - Can you share your thoughts on what entrepreneurs should know about how VCs work?
1:04:16 - Closing of Podcast