A VC in Vacationland

Cover via Amazon

The Checklist, a 2007 article in the New Yorker, has become a must read in the start up community. Faced with the high degree of complexity needed to make a new company successful, entrepreneurs have turned to constructing elaborate check lists on how to manage growth. You can read the longer book, The Checklist Manifesto, but gain the same insights from the article, unless you need a lot of help constructing a checklist….

The "Checklist Manifesto" was written by Atul Gawande, a doctor and writer for the New Yorker. Its premise: A simple checklist can help people manage complex situations. Gawande uses a number of examples across a variety of industries, from medicine, technology and even disaster relief to illustrate his point.

I am always encouraging my entrepreneurs to work to a list of priorities. There are so many things you could do when building a company, but three quarters of them are probably superfluous or distracting from fundamental goals.