North Star Labs

Blog

  • Listening to signals

    Listening to signals

    Easter 2005. Tignes, France.

    It’s April 2005 and I’m skiing with friends in the French Alps. I’ve just left my steady job at a software company to stumble into entrepreneurship. There wasn’t any great plan or well thought out strategy, I had a few irons in fires here and there, but mostly I was just bursting with desire to do it.

    I had two ambitions when I was younger. The first was to go to University, and the second was to run my own business. I didn’t care what the business was, it could be making lampposts or bottle tops, I just wanted to run it.

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  • If not now, when?

    If not now, when?

    January, 1984. Calcot, Reading. 

    I’m 8 years old walking home from school with my friend Jamie. 

    We’re walking along a pathway that cuts through our housing estate. The sort of path that passes by everyone’s back fence. 

    There is an open bit of scrubland along the path and I find a Tesco bag in the long grass.

    I couldn’t tell you why I was looking, just the curious mind of a young boy idly walking home from school I guess – but inside the Tesco bag is something wrapped in a blood stained sheet.

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  • Confessions of a recovering workaholic

    Confessions of a recovering workaholic

    I’m now in my third week of taking time out. I’ve carved out two and a half days of my working week to do other stuff.

    There has been the odd small encroachment when “work” has bled into my “discovery” time, but overall, I’ve stuck to it and I’m loving it. Thanks to my amazing team for giving me the freedom to do it.

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  • How to avoid failure and criticism

    How to avoid failure and criticism

    Firstly, thank you to everyone who provided feedback to my first blog post.

    As a brand new blog, I was expecting to be blogging into a black hole for a while, so I was pleasantly surprised that finding an itch to scratch resonated with your own experiences.

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  • Finding an itch to scratch

    Finding an itch to scratch

    Avalon Beach, 1997

    I can see it in my mind’s eye as though it was yesterday. I’m sitting alone in the dunes overlooking the sea in a small town called Avalon in the northern beaches of Sydney, Australia.

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  • Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

    This awesome lecture from Randy Pausch has clocked up quite a few views on Youtube (13 million at the time of writing). It’s over an hour long but well worth it.

    Some nuggets that I love from the late Randy Pausch, who is delivering this lecture with 10 tumours in his liver and a life expectancy of 3-6 months:

    • Brick Walls are there for a reason. They let us show our dedication and let us know how badly we want things
    • Don’t bail – The best gold is at the bottom of barrels of crap
    • Get a feedback loop and listen to it
    • Don’t complain; just work harder
    • Find the best in everyone – no matter how long it takes
    • We cannot change the cards we are dealt with – just how we play the hand
    • Luck is where opportunity meets preparation
    • Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted

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