Dave Grohl & Serial Entrepreneurship

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All it takes is a few clicks for you to make a difference . Welcome to the future and welcome to the Shadow Network with KP Ready .

And one of the things again , if you don't know who he is , you've got a big miss over on the LinkedIn side , because you need to be following him on LinkedIn , follow his post on LinkedIn and hear what he's talking about over there . My name is Jeff Eccles .

I am the head of marketing and senior advisor at Shadow Partners and part of my job is to come here every week and say KP , what were you thinking when you wrote that post ? We call this unpacking KP . This is a lot of fun . We get to dig into some of the things that KP posts and why he posts them . So , first of all , welcome KP .

I'm glad you're here .

And you start out . It says first of all , I'm a huge Dave Grohl fan Same same here . So I've been looking for reasons to incorporate him into my writing . Just need an excuse . Then , sitting here on a layover watching Foo Fighters Live at Wimbledon Stadium An idea with Spart . I love everything about this so far .

Kp goes on to say , just in case you have been living under a rock , dave Grohl is currently the frontman for the Foo Fighters and formerly the drummer for Nirvana . He has also worked on various side projects with other musicians . However , my favorite side project is the documentary Sonic Highways .

If you haven't watched it , you don't have to be a Foo Fighters fan to appreciate it . You probably do want to have an interest in music history . Hit by lightning . Not all entrepreneurs are talented for their successes . Sometimes they are in the right place at the right time with the right team .

Nirvana was a three person band that was not necessarily musically complex . However , they were grunge when grunge was hot .

So I love , I love the way you start out here and now you're , as you get into the article here , obviously you're tying Dave and Nirvana and the other projects to , you know , as an analogy , to startup culture and to entrepreneurs and to innovation . So where does it go from here ?

What is it that you see in what he's doing , what he has done and what you see on the day to day ? What is it that you see in what he's doing , what he has done and what you see on the day to day in the startup and innovation world ?

Do I know what I'm doing ? And so that kind of leads to imposter syndrome and I always find it fascinating .

Dave essentially played every instrument on the first Fru Fighters album and did it by himself Because he was kind of like I don't know if I'm really talented , like I don't know if I want to share this with the world , I don't even want to talk to a producer because maybe I'm not that talented , like you know , kept it to himself and that's why , like everybody

thinks like oh my God , he's so talented the first album he played every instrument . It was kind of like because he was embarrassed to get anybody else to play with him , because he was unsure .

One is like living with imposter syndrome and kind of learning at some point like no , actually I learned a lot . Maybe I can't go build another public company , maybe that's not in the cards , but I did learn a lot and I know a lot , so that actually counts .

And then I think , from there , the mistakes I made on going to that was well , here's the team that made me successful .

Let me , if I just get the band back together for this next startup , which I did in one of my startups that you know , I wouldn't say failed but was definitely not a win , right , it was kind of like everybody got their money back type of thing . I went out and hired all the people that worked for me at my first successful startup and it didn't work .

It didn't work . And I think because people move on the skill sets , you know that . You know , when Nirvana was driving around in a van doing gigs and that grit and grime , we did the same thing .

We were working off like folding tables from Home Depot , grit and grime , and then everybody makes a couple million bucks and they're no longer willing to work like that .

Right Now , all of a sudden , you got to stay at the four seasons and actually I think the first year the Foo Fighters toured , they did tour around in a van , like they all had Nirvana money , but he didn't act like he had Nirvana money right , they walked around just like they did .

And there's a reason why , like Chris Novichelik , there's a reason why a lot of the players and Foo Fighters like had nothing to do with Nirvana , including the producers , because they had kind of moved on right . They were doing other stuff . And so I think that's a mistake I made was , oh , I just have to get the band back together . Big failure .

Everybody was in a different spot and so that doesn't really kind of work . And then I think also you know this idea that I've been successful , like you still have to grind you so , like I did it once , and it's really tough If you've had success as a serial entrepreneur .

That's why I think a lot of serial entrepreneurs that do really well Failed the first couple of times and then they had success . I think it's that being successful at the you know your first , your first time , I think can can mess with your brain . It's funny .

I was in Vegas one time and I'm sitting there and playing roulette which is one of my more favorite mindless games and this dad and kid comes up . The kid clearly just turned 21 first time at a casino . The dad's explaining all the games and the kid puts a hundred bucks down on a number and it hit and I'm like this kid is ruined for life .

Yes , he's gonna think this is how roulette works , right ? You put a hundred bucks down and you get money back . Like this is so easy . You know he'll go on to spend , you know , hundreds of thousands of dollars in his life trying to chase that spark .

And I kind of feel like sometimes in the startup world , you know your first startup , being a winner can kind of jade you about what it takes . And one of those is like why don't have to work as hard ? Because I have resources , because I do have some seed capital of my own , because I've learned some things .

But I'll tell you , like the serial entrepreneurs I know that even you know I have a friend that took his company public early on his second company . He took public but he was in every Saturday and Sunday grinding it out . He might have had a hundred million bucks in the bank . You would have never known it , yeah . So I think that's another thing .

And then I think a lot of times when you have that first success like Nirvana happened overnight , right , just boom overnight . Next season of the run , mtv right next out , next out like it's just the dot-com was a little bit of that thing too right , it just happened so fast . And I think it biases you that things happen Right at three-year exit .

I mean I took my company public in like three years . That's . That's not regular , right , that's not right right and so I think if you live in that bias of like that's how it works , it will be greatly disappointed .

So I think that's another thing that I think , if you look at , nirvana happened fast I think Dave Grohl figured out like that wasn't real , like that that's not how things

work . And , by the way , grunge is dead . You know , when they launched the first 1994 few fighters launched , grunge was dead . Yeah we all moved on . We're all listening to god knows what at that time , but we're listening to something different .

And then I think you know , one of the things that I think Dave Grohl's done well is kind of being a constant burner and learning about other things , expanding , like what it means to be an artist right , Doing documentaries he did a stupid horror movie right , Like really terrible .

Of course I went inside , but it was pretty terrible but but so I think that expansion to other more , you know , into other things he's written books , you know that kind of thing , and I think it's . I think that's something that you can't really .

And I think for my own journey to being an entrepreneur that started off with credit cards , to having , when it was more financially backed , to now be venture capital you know I'm no Dave Grohl , but I feel like that's a little bit of what it takes is to be a constant learner , to not rest on your laurels .

I see that with some more experienced entrepreneurs they talk about like here's how we did it in the 90s , and it's like , are we still doing it that way though ?

You know , pick your sport doesn't matter , is it ? Is it easier to win a championship as the defender ? Right , you won , you won last year . Now can you win next year ? Or as the one that came in second place , right , the one that lost the championship the year before ? To me that's a fascinating conversation and , you know , I guess the answer is it depends .

But but I think some of the things that you talked about the grit and the grind and everything else and resting on your laurels right , you know , did if you won . Are you resting on your laurels expecting to win the second If you lost ? Does that , you know ?

Does that drive the grit and grind to go harder this season to get back to the championship and win ?

Our great Atlanta Falcons lost to the Patriots and the Super Bowl right . Yeah , never to be heard from again .

But kind of it's almost like being second might be harder , because some of those players that have been highlighted in the Super Bowl get traded like their . Their market value has gone up , right , and so another team goes and takes them away , versus if you're the winner , nobody's poaching like , nobody's leaving that team .

Lebron James LeBron James is too old to be playing . I can't . I mean on paper right . Too old to be playing , yet he still works out . And nutrition , yet he's not eating cheeseburgers either , you know . So I think that sustaining it does have a lot to do with the grind and has to do a lot with the work .

We're unpacking one of his posts on LinkedIn and , again , if you're not following KP on LinkedIn , for K period , he period ready R , e , d , d Y .

On LinkedIn he's posting , sometimes multiple times a day , and it's we unpack these because what KP posts about is what he's experiencing , what he's learning , so to speak , but more reflecting on as he's working with some of the great firms and some of the great companies and some of the great innovators in the AC space .

So , kp , thanks for coming and unpacking this post . Again , the title is what serial entrepreneurs can learn from Dave Grohl . So thanks , kp , for unpacking this one for us .