General Assembly session on entrepreneurship in London

Last week Sarah and I attended a fascinating session hosted by General Assembly, London, an evening designed to help start-ups get thinking about business planning and, well, get on with it. It goes without saying that we were among the oldest there; most of the attendees were in their twenties and considering perhaps their first entrepreneurial adventure. We were interested in that, course, but were also interested from a kind of "meta" position: Sarah is professionally and personally obsessed with start-up culture and keen to see how it can be be "taught"; I, on the other hand, am very keen to see how others run workshops, that being one of my stocks in trade.

In fact it was a great evening, covering a huge amount of ground in three hours; course facilitator Rob Fitzpatrick was fantastic: engaging, hugely energetic and ready, willing and able to step into discussion and give instant and adroit feedback. I'm also already "on side" with anyone who kicks off a session on business practice by citing Taleb's The Black Swan, as regular readers would imagine.

Towards the end of the evening, Rob showed us this little video by CD Baby founder Derek Sivers which nicely sums up the importance finding a balance between persistence and flexibility from someone who's truly been there and done that.