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Bruce Lee To Stopping To Smell The Flowers – What Keeps Founders Motivated?

QUESTION: Who or what inspires YOU? Role models? Quotes? Fictional Characters? Snack food?

 

Brian Clough, Soccer Genius

Being a huge Nottingham Forest fan, my personal role model is Brian Clough–a football manager who took a small club from nothing, and turned them into the champions of Europe, twice!

 

 

It mirrors what we are trying to achieve with Rolio–build a product from scratch with zero funding, and make it into a brand that is known worldwide.

 

Myuran Balendran, Co-founder, Rolio

 

 

Bruce lee all the way!

I’ve been a huge Bruce Lee fan since my childhood.  Everything he taught in the martial arts can be applied to startup life – the style of “no style” is a profound way of thinking; to shed techniques from your arsenal that don’t yield results.  

 

 

Bruce Lee was the original “lean” process guru before it was trendy.

 

Jeremy Gocke, Co-Founder, Fliptu

 

 

Reading And Enjoying The Present

Inspiration comes from a lot of different things. It comes from reading. I read about my historic heroes, different businesses that are doing incredible things. My friends–it’s really cool to see people you that know do amazing things, being bold and audacious and acting in the face of uncertainty in a powerful way. I see that everyday in friends who are building their own companies or doing whatever they’re doing.

 

 

 

Just life. Being an entrepreneur, you’re stuck behind a computer and hustling hard. Once you get a chance to step back and take a deep breath and walk around the block maybe for a bit–that’s refreshing. You need to take time for the cliche smelling of the roses and all that good stuff. That always inspires me. I think it’s [inspiration] the combination of the books you read, the people you’re with, and taking the time to enjoy the present moment.

 

Brenton Gieser, Co-founder and Chief Social Media Strategist, JoynIn

 

Google

I dream of building a Google everyday. That’s where I want to be.

 

 

A true technology company that treasures engineering. So Google, inspires me.

 

Steven Goh, Founder, Spawt

 

Freedom, Helping Others And Code

This is going to sound really weird – but these days the main things that inspire me are freedom, helping others, and code. Let me explain all three:

 

I don’t mean the “American freedom” type of freedom – I mean just the freedom to do the things I love when I want to. I don’t think my personality works very well “taking orders from the man”, and I am much happier when I have the freedom to make my own choices. I don’t like ordering people around, either – I like cooperating and working with others, just not being told what to do.

 

 

Also the freedom to just take time for myself – I have an 18-month old, and it’d be great to spend as much time with him as humanly possible.

 

Helping others: it seems like a lot of people who “make it” simply forget where they came from, and how difficult it was. I vow to never do the same. There’s a lot of people with great ideas and a lot of talent, who simply never get it to take off because they haven’t had the right circumstances (poor family, bad neighborhood, etc.) – I’ve met a few of them on my path, and if I ever made it big enough to where I don’t have to worry about myself anymore, I’d like to help those people to take their abilities and talents to the next level.

 

Lastly, code. I love coding, and few inanimate things make me happy like coding (especially C# – I really love the language). That was one of my primary inspirations at the start – I’d just sit down and start coding, and in no time at all components were written and the day had flown by.

 

Marcos Boyington, Co-founder, Vendalism

 

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