Live Life, Give First and The Power of Mentorship....Sunday Reads and Listens

Happy Sunday.

I am reading my friend Brad Feld’s book ‘Give First - The Power of Mentorship’. You can order it here. I am also sending out 100 free copies to my newsletter readers so hit me up via email with your address if you want a copy.

Brad is someone I cold called back in 2006 (I knew of him) when Fred Wilson gave me his phone number and said to call him because he would likely be interested in investing in ‘Wallstrip’ which I had just pitched to Fred (he invested). Brad invested, we became great friends and as I was new to the world of being a founder in the internet era - first at Wallstrip, then Stocktwits (his firm Foundry invested in the company - Brad became a mentor. Both he and Fred are ‘give first guys’ and live to mentor.

I like to think I pay that all forward at our firm Social Leverage where we lead with our expertise, enthusiasm, ideas, introductions and our time before we worry about the investment/deal itself.

Moving along…

As I hit 60, I consider ‘life my life’ daily to make decisions. I love to work but I also like to live my life as I move to a ‘time thousandairre’ from a one ‘time billionaire’ (credit Jim O'Shaugnessy).

I have been in New York a few days and my daughter Rachel and we have been busy.

On Friday we went to the US Open to watch the men’s semifinals.

I have never seen Djokovic or Alcarez play live and they were playing each other in the first match. Djokovic did not have answers at his age of 38 and Alcarez made it look easy. It was still wonderful to watch with a lot of great rallies and tennis.

Yesterday, I wandered SOHO, did some shopping and met up with Rachel for dinner and The Comedy Cellar - a regular activity of ours. We got lucky as Mike Birbiglia came up to work on some new material. It was a great line up of comedians tonight and we met with a few upstairs after.

I tell my kids to ‘live their life’ all the time. I am happy that for the most part they do. You can’t just tell someone to have a good attitude and live their life. Both Rachel and Max are very curious and for the most part have a great attitude, but the distractions are everywhere. The distractions from the phone, the apps and ai feeds can be toxic.

Rachel is 27 and we have great conversations. I treat her like a founder at times, which allows me to be a mentor first, not a father.

I am trying to lead by example by kicking a fifteen year Twitter habit. I removed the app from my phone and can only use the app by desktop. In fact, I removed all social apps from my phone - save Stocktwits. The greed of our network overlords has likely done us a favor and pushed us to a ‘post real-time world’ (more here). I believe that the algorithms signal the end of social and we will see a slow reversion back to face to face meetings and live events.

Have a great Sunday.

PS - Speaking of mentors, few have done more in comedy than Conan. This episode with his old college buddy and legend Greg Daniels (The Office) is a hilarious look back at life in New York and in general - pre-internet.