Why do I think surfing and
entrepreneurship have a lot in common
well first of all often the best waves
happen during difficult times that’s
true for surfing and the way sometimes
storm just bring more waves the Great
Recession is exactly when Airbnb got
started 2008 I mean it got started at a
time where there are a lot of people who
are looking for how to make money
because they’re out of work and say had
an extra bedroom or an extra you know a
cottage in the backyard and so it was
part of the reason that the it took off
relatively quickly and then there are a
lot of people traveling who wanted to
save money during a recession secondly
it’s very free form and not regimented
if you’re gonna go play tennis or golf
or basketball well tennis you might need
to get court time golf you might need to
get a tee time and and basketball you
need to unless your video shoot by
yourself you’re gonna have to go out and
get a bunch of people to play with
entrepreneurship and surfing are
initially a very lone sport you go out
and you have your board in surfing and
you go surf very freeform there’s no
it’s not like skiing where there’s
there’s a certain way they ski down the
mountain no in fact there’s just waves
and you go out on the waves very similar
to entrepreneurship
thirdly it is a fellowship with
unwritten rules the truth is and if you
see a bunch of surfers after surfing for
the day they’re all like buddies you
know male and female both they’re
they’re just good buddies hanging out
similarly you get a bunch of
entrepreneurs together in a room and
start talking about their stories um
same thing happens it’s a bit of a
fellowship and then finally you need to
understand what’s going on underneath
the surface to be the expert surfer who
can look out at the horizon and pick out
the right wave is like the entrepreneur
who can look at a bunch of trends and
fads and pick out the trend that is
going to be long-lasting as opposed to
the short-term fad which is like a wave
that doesn’t ever make it to shore so
the world is full of corporate it’s like
a corporate graveyard of people who act
she didn’t learn how to surf in this era
of surfing now the era of surfing didn’t
exist 30 or 40 years ago yes there was
technology 30 or 40 years ago but it
wasn’t the the dominant intelligence of
our era was not digital intelligence we
have IQ we have EQ and we now have DQ
digital intelligence and there are a lot
of corporate boardrooms full of people
who do not know how to surf which is why
they want to go hire digital natives
which is young Millennials to come and
help them to figure out how to surf
these are a bunch of companies some of
which have gone out of business some of
which are on life support partly because
they got disrupted here’s a guy who
hasn’t been disrupted yet although he
sort of has in some ways having he’s had
a really difficult year but you probably
would you probably would trade places
with him maybe you would I don’t know
Mark Zuckerberg said if we don’t create
the thing that kills em Amazon if it
kills Facebook someone else will so the
idea of disruption isn’t something you
do to someone else
it’s someone you do something you do to
yourself as well um and you don’t have
to do it just with your own I mean look
myself a little bit of water you don’t
have to do it just with your own
internal team you could go by a company
as Facebook did when they bought
Instagram and whatsapp to help make sure
the disruption was happening in house by
actually bringing those technologists
from those companies and their what they
were doing inside Facebook.
