Stephen Dean first built his career in information technology, working as a developer for Hewlett-Packard and several start-ups. He received his MBA from Duke before co-founding Keona Health, which manages all facets of finance, marketing, and operations.
Entrepreneurial Role Models:
- Paul Graham
- Theodore Roosevelt was an American politician, statesman, soldier, conservationist, naturalist, historian, and writer who served as the 26th president of the United States from 1901 to 1909.
When business started difficulties overcame:
“we had to get creative at pretty much every level… Funding, you need money and once you have money you have a ticking clock… Constantly there to find sustainability before that money runs out. Unless you happen to be one of those who happen to be in a business where you make more money than you are spending from the get go. But in software where we are that is not the way it is. So while we were working on being sustainable from a pure market perspective we applied to and received federal grants from the Nationalist use of health to study the safety and effectiveness of our innovative approaches in AI inside of healthcare”…[Listen for More]
Favourite Books:
- The Lean Startup: How Constant Innovation Creates Radically Successful Book by Eric Ries
- The Four Steps to the Epiphany: Successful Strategies for Products That Win Hardcover Book by Steve Blank
Favourite Quote:
” It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” Theodore Roosevelt
Recommended Online Resources:
- Blog of David Skok, Matrix Partners For Entrepreneurs offers advice on the key issues founders and their teams face in getting started, getting funded, and building a successful company.
Also mentioned
- Y Combinator – created a new model for funding early stage startups Twice a year they invest in a large number of startups
Best Advice to Other Entrepreneurs:
“I really do feel that figuring out how to get through… Life is tough… And being able to get through the hardships and being able to be comfortable with situations that are uncomfortable and that are hard and you don’t know what success is going to look like. But creating a plan and taking that next step anyway is kind of key to all of life whether you’re an entrepreneur or not”…[Listen for More]
More About Stephen Dean:
Neil’s Quote at the Beginning:
“The trouble is, you think you have time.” Buddha
Other Quotes From the Chat with Stephen Dean:
- “I talked about the mistakes and knowing what you know now and it really fits in with that. It was the lack of knowledge that we had. We came from outside of healthcare and jumped into an industry that we didn’t know, we saw some problems that we knew we had the answer to…”
- “Starting to get comfortable with what is uncomfortable… Finding something that you are really willing to commit your all to.”
- “All of life is about feedback loops. You can get a long way by following other things in life but you need to have your own feedback loop ”
- “the entrepreneurial world is full of aphorisms that people feel are true that are half crap…” Like you learn the most from failure… Well yeah I have learned a ton from failure, I have had a lot of them. but the failure that I have learned from is the failure that I know why I have failed. If I don’t know why I failed I didn’t learn anything from it, I just feel worse…”
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