Learn to Think in Color

How Do You Raise Money in Today’s Market? Capital is available. Conviction is scarce. Fundraising can look deceptively easy from a distance. Headlines feature enormous venture rounds, new funds continue deploying money, and certain sectors attract remarkable amounts of investment. But the total amount of money invested does not tell an individual founder how easy it will be to raise. Capital can be abundant while concentrating in a relatively small number of companies. That changes the fundraising problem. The challenge is not simply finding someone who has money. It is giving the right investor a compelling reason to allocate that money to your company instead of another opportunity. Start With the Milestone Many fundraising discussions begin with a number. “We need $5 million.” That may eventually be the correct amount, but it should probably not be the starting point. Begin with what the company needs to prove. A young company may need to demonstrate repeatable demand. A so...

Is There a Market for Learning to Ask Better Questions? Why curiosity training is becoming a billion-dollar industry  Reframing the Question The global corporate training market hit  $366 billion in 2023 , but here’s what’s fascinating: while companies spend millions on technical skills, they’re realizing their biggest bottleneck isn’t knowledge—it’s knowing what questions to ask. From Google’s “20% time” policy to Stanford’s design-thinking workshops, organizations are paying premium prices to train inquiry. This isn’t soft-skills fluff anymore. It’s strategy. And it’s being packaged, sold, and scaled across industries. The Economic Case for Question Training Poor questioning has a measurable cost: Bad hiring decisions  cost up to 5x an employee’s salary, often because interviews ask the wrong questions. Failed product launches  waste $50 million on average, frequently because teams never asked, “Who actually needs this?” McKinsey research  shows 70% of digital...