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What an adventure, guys.
And like the best adventures, sometimes you have to be bold. I’m announcing today that I’m stepping down as the CEO of Vittana.
I’m moving upstairs and becoming Co-Chair of Vittana’s Board of Directors. The reason? It’s simple. Given Vittana’s growth and impact, it’s time for a new generation of leadership. My commitment to Vittana hasn’t changed — I’ll still be very involved, albeit in a slightly different role.
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Long story short, I fried my iPhone — there was a small incident involving a nice Seattle day, an open sunroof and a freak rainstorm.
Here are the 5 things I learned about myself when I tried to tough it out for a week with a half-working iPhone. …read more
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Yes, there is evil in the world. Yes, there is death — unfair, untimely death. There is apathy, there is greed, there is awfulness. But, there is also goodness in this world. Real goodness.
Yesterday, someone tried to steal that from us.
Well, fuck that. I refuse. There is goodness, I know this. There is kindness, I know this too. There is courage, genuineness, raw messy inner human beauty — all of this I know.
I know this because, over the past five years of building Vittana, I’ve had the genuine honor (pleasure!) of getting to know some of the most amazing people in the world. …read more
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Thanks to you, Vittana grew 4X, expanded in Africa, reached 8,000 students in 12 countries & had our first $1 million month!
Even this past week has been incredible!
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Grasshopper: “What’s the secret?”
Master: “The secret is that there is no secret — you just have to work harder than everyone else.”
It’s actually very simple. If you work 10% harder every day, how far ahead are you at the end of the year? Hint: It’s not 10%.
1,283,305,580,313,390 vs. 1 — The 10% Rule
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Four years ago, I walked away from Amazon and a million dollars — thousands of stock options. I was a twenty-something kid running a billion-dollar team but I wanted more. …read more
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Over the past couple weeks, I’ve been thinking a lot about Vittana’s values. What do we stand for? What kind of organization are we trying to build?
There is one quote that was on our first business plan, strategic plan & every other document since founding:
Ridiculing idealism is shortsighted, but idealism without the rigors of pessimism is misleading.
We need very hard-headed idealists who can look into the worst and best of humanity and can create and implement strategies of success.
— State of the Future 2007, Millennium Project
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These days, I spend a lot of my time traveling. Fundraising, speaking, sure — but the best kind of travel is visiting Vittana youth in countries all around the world.
I always ask what we’re doing right, how we’ve screwed up, and whether we’re living up to their hopes and dreams. Trust me, they don’t hold back — I’ve gotten an earful a few times!
In the past few months, I’ve been through Rwanda, Jordan and the Philippines. They always remind me of growing up in India — countries of deep contradiction, with pockets of very real opportunity amidst extreme, palpable poverty.
Take Rwanda for instance. What do you think of first when you hear Rwanda? The genocide, right? …read more
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We don’t need a Facebook for dogs and we don’t need a 300th link shortener.
Non-profit folks sometimes tease me about techies building useless stuff. (I’m the token techie at a lot of conferences.) But really, non-profits aren’t much better. So often, we just put in bandaids.
How long did it take us to find a malaria vaccine? We’re so close. Mosquito nets are great, but what if we’d really taken a chance and thrown our weight behind a vaccine earlier? …read more
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We’ll always be under construction, if just to keep this beautiful sign up. Taken in my old stomping grounds — an abandoned warehouse in South Berkeley, CA.
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While wandering around Manila my first night in the Philippines, I happened upon these kids playing on a burnt-out old pier in Manila Bay.
