Category: Personal Thoughts

The Best Computer Backpack

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The Booq Boa Squeeze is the best computer backpack you can buy. I bought mine  in 2010 after reading Fabrice Grinda’s post and my Booq Boa is still going strong after almost three years.

It’s lightweight at 2.9lbs, compact, durable and comfortable.  It easily fits my MacBook Pro and charger, my Kindle, my notebook, pens, papers and other assorted working materials. And if I’m in a pinch it can also hold a water bottle, a sweatshirt another random possessions in its multitude of pockets. I get compliments on its style about 50% of of the time I travel through airports.

If you’re in the market for a backpack, I highly recommend you try out the Booq Boa Squeeze.

booq boa squeeze

My Investment Thesis

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One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned over the past two years is that I must have an investment thesis to evaluate my opportunities. Without one, I succumb to the  entrepreneur’s disease: taking on too many seemingly good opportunities and doing none of them well. A good example of someone who has a clear investment thesis is Fred Wilson, who only invests in startups that are “building large networks of engaged users that can disrupt big markets.”

So here’s mine, whether as a founder, advisor or investor, in no particular order. A project must:

  1. Make money (business) or be self sustaining (nonprofit)
  2. Solve a real problem
  3. Makes peoples’ lives better in a real, measurable way
  4. Give me a platform to talk about the things I believe in

If an opportunity doesn’t fit these points, I’m not interested. No social photo apps. No group texting. No opaque finance deals. No businesses that exist solely for making money. There are enough good opportunities for me that I know I can both work on projects that make money and that make the world a better place. Nothing else.

Do you have an investment thesis? If so, what is it?

My main projects I’m working on right now all fit this criteria:

Entrepreneurship Courses in Chile

An organization that teaches entrepreneurship to Chileans who want to launch a business. We’re currently teaching classes in three Chilean universities, launching an online course and making our content available to as many Chileans who want to learn as possible. We are changing people’s lives by empowering them to take control of their lives. The program works and many of our students have launched profitable businesses, both in tech and traditional industries.

La Condonería

An online store that sells condoms with home delivery. Previously, the only way to purchase condoms in Chile was to go to a pharmacy, take a number, wait in line and then ask the pharmacist for condoms while all of the other clients are watching you. Sometimes the pharmacist looks at you condescendingly, other times other customers look at you disapprovingly. The process is embarrassing, especially for Chileans who live in a culture where, in many families, sex is still a taboo, a somewhat shameful activity, even for someone in their mid 20s. Most schools don’t have sex education. So many Chileans just don’t buy condoms, especially women. I have friends who drive 3+ miles away from their house to buy condoms just to not run into anyone they know. Plus they’re about double the price of condoms in the US. The system is broken, so we’re fixing it with La Condonería.

Startup Chile 101

I wrote the book to help people have a soft landing in Chile and avoid making the mistakes I made when I first got here. The book is the guide book I’d wished I’d had before I came to Chile and will make sure people have as good of an experience as I did.

Forward Technology Festival

After South By Southwest in 2010, I decided Madison should have a tech festival just like Austin. So along with two friends, we started The Forward Technology Festival. August 2013 will be the fourth festival. It gives me the platform to talk about entrepreneurship in Wisconsin and outside of the coasts.

Capital Entrepreneurs

In 2008 Madison, WI, didn’t have a good place for entrepreneurs to get together, so along with a few other entrepreneur friends, we created Capital Entrepreneurs, a way for entrepreneurs to share their experiences and get to know each other. Five years later, it’s growing like crazy and has more members than ever. It gives me the chance to interact with a group I care about.

Writing

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I haven’t written much on my blog lately. I have fifteen (or more) really good posts that I want to write. But I haven’t published much lately. I’ve been really busy, but that’s not the real reason why I haven’t written more.

The real reason is that its much harder to write now that it used to be. I used to be able to crank out a good blog post in 30 minutes. Now, I get started and nothing seems to flow. My main ideas are there, but they’re poorly expressed. I use too many words to get my point across. I reread what I’ve written and I realize it’s not as good as most of my older posts and I just delete it all and give up and work on something new. Or it just sounds dumb.

I’ve had a few periods like this over the past five and a half years of my blog, but they were mostly because of laziness, summer or work. This time is different. I didn’t figure it out until last week when a friend of mine sent me a few sentences to translate from spanish to english that he needed to use in marketing copy. I was happy to help.

I took a look at the first sentence and started to translate. My first crack was:

You’re invited to get to know our new b2b website, the new tool that will help us improve our sales process, give you more information about our products and create closer client relationships.

I finished, but knew two parts sounded wrong. Nobody says “get to know” or “give you more information.” I knew it was wrong. I sat there for five minutes wracking my brain, trying to figure out how to say it more clearly. I gave up and asked a friend from the states who fixed it for me. We ended up with:

You’re invited to explore our new b2b website, the new tool that will help us improve our sales process, deliver information about our products and create closer client relationships.

Much better. It dawned on me that my writing is worse because of spanish. So is my english. I say stuff in english that I know instantly isn’t right. Or just sounds funny. A while back, my Chilean friend and business partner Enrique and I had to give a short talk in english to 50 entrepreneurs. Enrique led off in english, then threw it over to me. I stumbled through my simple two minute talk. It was terrible. Enrique, a Chilean, clearly spoke better than me.

After our talk, we mingled with a few entrepreneurs. The first two were from Argentina and Mexico and we started out in spanish. After a few minutes, they asked where I was from, confused. They clearly knew I wasn’t a native speaker of spanish because my accent is still terrible. But they didn’t think I was a native english speaker either.

I’m out of practice and have been avoiding writing here because the finished product isn’t as good as it used to be. And it’s harder than it used to be. The goal of this post is to force myself to just keep writing and hopefully it’ll come back.

Have any of you struggled with this problem when learning a second language? If so, did you do anything that helped make it better? I’m frustrated here. I’ll take any ideas.

Madison’s Isthmus Wrote About Me, Madison, Startup Chile and Entrepreneurship

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Mark Eisen of Madison’s The Isthmus wrote an article, Nathan Lustig Takes His Talent Abroad, about me, Madison, Startup Chile and my background of what made me an entrepreneur. If you’ve read my blog, you’ll probably recognize many of the stories that Mark wrote about. It was really fun chatting with Mark about Madison’s future and the startup scene that we’ve building for the past decade. I’m glad I can still be a part of it from “5400 miles away.”

I wanted to make one clarification about about the business school: while it’s true I absolutely hated Accounting 100, the first two weeks were incredibly helpful in understanding how Quickbooks worked. Although the classes and many of the students weren’t my style, I owe a ton of my success to some of the professors there including John Surdyk and Anne Miner who run the Burrill Business Plan Competition where I first met Joe Boucher, a UW professor and my lawyer, Jon Eckhardt who helped me a ton with both ExchangeHut and Entrustet. Plus two of by business partners were business students who graduated from the entrepreneurship program!

Thanks to Mark for writing and everyone who took time to be interviewed to make the article happen. Thanks Joe, Matt, Forrest, Scott, Maite and anyone else who I missed. And it’s true. I’ll be back in Madison for at least awhile in late June! It will be great to see you all.