Mark Fasciano’s Blog
The Tao of Start-ups
It’s not easy to see how the Tao-te Ching, which advocates “nonaction,” “naturalness,” and essentially going with the flow, pertains to the incessant demands of entrepreneurship, but I’ve managed to find some of its wisdom really helpful in building businesses....
Enlightened about Thomas Edison
Everyone knows that Thomas Edison was a determined inventor, but I recently learned that he was a rather undisciplined businessman. I just finished The Wizard of Menlo Park by Randall Stross, which recounts how Edison’s prideful principles and difficulty working with...
Riding the Shockwaves: How FatWire and Rover Adapted to Crisis
After the burst of the dot-com bubble and the deepening of the economic recession that followed 9/11, I was struggling to keep FatWire Software afloat like just about every other tech startup CEO. The company had 2 years of zero growth, and sales remained flat at...
Strength Through Humility – A Generational Thing
In 2005, I attended a business event in which President Elect Joe Biden (Senator Biden at the time) headlined a slate of political speakers. He was by far the most engaging of them all and the most able to connect with us on a human level. Throughout the years that...
The Primacy of the Mission: Leadership Lessons from 12 O’Clock High
Though I consider myself a peaceful person, I’ve been drawn to certain war movies that I think are particularly good at portraying the leadership skills needed to overcome overwhelming odds and attain seemingly impossible goals.
Tools of a Serial Entrepreneur
I started my first company, FatWire Software, when I was 27, and just finished with grad school.
Doing It the HP Way
When I was building FatWire Software with my grad school buddy in the late 1990s, David Packard’s business philosophy was always at the back of my mind.
Alan Turing: A Hero Ahead of His Time
At the intersection of tech thought leadership and heroism, no figure comes to mind more quickly than Alan Turing.
Young Presidents’ Organization: An Entrepreneur’s Dream Community
Serial entrepreneurship can be a lonely gig.
Leadership Lessons from the Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt
Few American presidents have earned a legacy quite as prolific and inspiring as that of Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt.