Russell Potterfield is an entrepreneur who leads 511 Capital, a “startup foundry” that researches opportunities and launches businesses into those opportunities, using a proprietary product development model. He concurrently serves as Executive Chair of Endevica Bio and CEO of Scarlet Begonias Industrial Development Enterprises, Global Sporting Intentions & Print Ninja.
Entrepreneurial Role Models:
- Ken Gruber
- Bobby Sandage
- Dan Marks
- Gene Gerke
When business started difficulties overcame:
“I have been very entrepreneurial since I staggered out of undergrad in 1996… In the early days as we tried to bring Endevica off the bench and into a real drug commercialisation process there is so much to learn. And so, you don’t know what you don’t know so just anecdotally…. It’s difficult at the start to understand what the business is going to turn into”…[Listen for More]
Favourite Books:
The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done Book by Peter F DruckerFavourite Quote:
“General Marshall during World War II insisted that a general officer be immediately relieved if found less than outstanding. To keep him in command, he reasoned, was incompatible with the responsibility the army and the nation owed the men under an officer’s command. Marshall flatly refused to listen to the argument: ‘But we have no replacement.’ ‘All that matters,’ he pointed out, ‘is that you know that this man is not equal to the task. Where his replacement comes from is the next question.’
But Marshall also insisted that to relieve a man from command was less a judgment on the man than on the commander who had appointed him. ‘The only thing we know is that this spot was the wrong one for the man,’ he argued. ‘This does not mean that he is not the ideal man for some other job. Appointing him was my mistake, now it’s up to me to find what he can do.’”
Recommended Online Resources:
YouTube, LLC is an American video-sharing website headquartered in San Bruno, California. Three former PayPal employees—Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim—created the service in February 2005. Google bought the site in November 2006 for US$1.65 billion; YouTube now operates as one of Google’s subsidiaries.
Best Advice to Other Entrepreneurs:
“if you are going to commit your time, treasure, talent, all of those resources, you should really get behind something you can be proud of. And that is going to be different for every person… At the end of the day when I am at a cocktail party and I am talking to somebody about what I do I want to be able to be proud of that. If you take your activities through that lens, they all get to be a little bit easier and a little bit more meaningful”…[Listen for More]
More About Russell Potterfield:
Neil’s Quote at the Beginning:
“What’s right is what’s left if you do everything else wrong.” Robin Williams
Other Quotes From the Chat with Russell Potterfield:
- “Be sure your board is stacked with people that you admire and that have great subject matter expertise”
- “Really digging in, and it’s hard to do, it’s painful to learn new things, and it’s painful to understand how to learn new things… Really, it’s committing to learning something completely new when there are no guide posts, when there are no ways forward and then committing to do it and then doing it”
- “Making sure that you have great advisers”
- “I think it is critical to have a great team in order to be successful ”
- “When you are on the fence for a long time about person, about a decision, about a product make the hard decision and make the human resource transition move forward where you can. When you are struggling with product development make the hard decision”
- “In any entrepreneurial journey there are touch points along the way”
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