Titanic

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What Lessons can Entrepreneurs Learn from Gold Rushes, Pickaxes, and the Titanic Effect?

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What Lessons can Entrepreneurs Learn from Gold Rushes, Pickaxes, and the Titanic Effect?

So what do gold rushes have to do with the Titanic? To start, gold rushes—both literal and figurative—have the potential to create significant wealth for a few lucky/opportunistic ones who jump on board. Windows of opportunity, whether to exploit a specific limited natural resource or to leverage a disruptive technology, create ample potential for significant wealth--but also a plethora of sunken ventures. The Titanic was a vehicle for many aspiring immigrants to achieve their own dream in the new land of the United States, a gold rush of sorts.

What Do Icebergs Have to Do with Startups?

What Do Icebergs Have to Do with Startups? 

Great question. Of course, an iceberg has to be included in any book about the “Titanic.” More importantly, we recognize that startups have to make decisions under uncertainty. Choosing one path can incur hidden debts because of the path not taken. We call those hidden debts icebergs. Well, we actually call them “debtbergs” in “The Titanic Effect.”

Once we landed on the concept of decisions having debtbergs attached to them, we then realized we needed to learn more about icebergs. What we discovered is that icebergs themselves are both interesting and diverse.