Matt Corker » Great Ideas

VCIC: First Copenhagen, Now Oxford.

Matt Corker — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 11:54:42 +0000

For the past 2.5 days, 4 of my classmates and I came together as the “Miracle Workers” to compete at the internal round for the Venture Capital Investment Competition. Unlike the usual business case competition, this competition gives MBAs an opportunity to act as a venture capital firm and select a real start-up company to invest in and then negotiate the terms of investment with the actual entrepreneur team. (For you business competition junkies, further details on how it all works can be found here.)

Working with a team from Copenhagen, Ecudaor, Norway and Germany was an experience. A great experience in fact. They selected me to be the team lead as soon as we were formed and, from that point forward, I was reminded what it feels like to manage a team of people that are WAY smarter than you. (I say this not to downplay what I bring to the table. I say this so you understand the talent THEY brought to the table!)

My two big takeaways from this experience:

The team matters. Both our team (how we work together) and the entrepreneur team (do they have what it will take to make their biz a success). Handling internal debates, push-back from the entrepreneurs, and tight deadlines also become easy with a well-functioning team.
Manage the conversation, not the time. (Despite the giant clock looming overhead.) Start each interview or negotiation conversation indicating the way you want to talk rather than what you want to talk about. Wrap-up the conversation with intentional points that show that you were a) listening to them and b) understood their concerns/desires/etc. 20 seconds is all it takes to get a seemingly never-ending conversation to wrap up nicely for both parties.

Overall, the competition was challenging, fun, and was something I never thought I’d enjoy doing before (the people development guy negotiating pre-money valuations… who knew)!

An added bonus: our team took home both “Entrepreneurs Choice Award” for being the team they’d most want to work with and first place at the competition as awarded by the panel of real VC judges that followed us through each stage of the competition. This means that the Miracle Workers are now off to Regionals in March to compete against London Business School, HEC, Manchester, IESE, and Rotterdam.

Well done gents. You make miracles work.

Pick of the Post: Ratatat vs Marvin Gaye – Ain’t No Drugs High Enough (Jane Doze Remix)

Redefine Perfection

Matt Corker — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 22:45:34 +0000

These posts by my friends Jo and Jackie, got me thinking about our obsession with the idea of perfection.

Dictionaries define perfection as a state of completeness and flawlessness.

What if perfection could be a state of being complete with flaws?
What if we considered that because it has flaws, it is perfect.

The perfect job would then become the one that we still have bad days at.
The perfect friend becomes the one that sometimes forgets about that event that was important to you.
The perfect apartment becomes the one with the eccentric roommate.
The perfect body becomes the one that has a strong core hidden under a layer of love.
The perfect grade becomes the one that reminds us we still have something to work on.
The perfect lover becomes the one that pushes us out of our comfort zone.

When we include the blemishes of life in our definition of perfection, it becomes attainable, real, and everywhere. Perfection is real. We may just need to redefine it to see it.

Pick of the Post: Kelly Clarkson – Dark Side (watch it below!)

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“You Are Just Not Going To Stop Smiling, Are You?”

Matt Corker — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 22:16:27 +0000

This video reminds me of the influence we can have when we choose to act consistently in a way that serves the world. Others get pissed off. They want to bring us down with them. Their playing small wants to keep us from playing big.

School Portrait (2011) from Michael Berliner on Vimeo.

It’s easy to give in. It’s also just as easy not to. Keep smiling, yo.

Pick of the Post: Pink – Heartbreak Down

Value and Motivation: Wesley George

Matt Corker — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 18:26:08 +0000

corker #3: Wesley George! Wes is a seeker of truths. After becoming friends in Vancouver, he went off to complete his degree in mathematics in Ontario and has since moved to New York to help a professor with some of her projects as he completes his PhD in cryptography. He looks for what is true and real (in numbers and in life). I feel smarter by simply talking to him for 5 minutes. His wisdom is infectious. (And also so vast that we chose to separate his musing into two posts for you!) What a corker.

I caught up with S, an old friend of mine, over the Christmas break. S. is in the third year of dental school in Michigan. I don’t remember when he first got the idea, but it was something he committed fully to. He spends two summers studying for the DAT. Canadian schools show no interest in his (multiple) applications, but he’s accepted to a school in Michigan; after securing a massive loan, the journey begins.

I wasn’t shy to question his motives. I felt that he, like many students, took this path because he imagined it would in the future offer him the freedom to do the things that were important, whatever he eventually decided these were. It is that the real values are as yet unarticulated, and that this path of training does nothing to shape them that this choice seems disordered.

Whatever S.’s original motivation was, it runs out 2 years into this program. The promise of future freedom no longer has purchase. (freedom for what?) Class is unappealing. Studying seems pointless. He skips class to sit at home, smoking weed and playing Halo in his underwear. Even the enormous debt of two year’s tuition – whose repayment seems impossible without the income potential of a dentist – is no motivation.

Now earlier that term, when he still cared, S. had signed up to spend part of his summer in Guatemala with Dentists without Borders. And though he’s in no place to be making new commitments, he honours this one and leaves for Guatemala.

The work is not glamorous and the days are long. Largely he’s pulling infected teeth. By Canadian standards, this is emergency medicine not dentistry. But it’s easy to see how this thing he’s doing is important to the people he’s with. There’s a new importance to his work.

Suddenly it clicks.

It’s not important that this is dentistry or medicine, that he’s in Guatemala, or that he’s alleviating suffering. He could be a mechanic back in Detroit, a barber in Sudbury, a bus driver in Manitoba, a web developer in Vancouver; take your pick. The point is that he sees how his skills – his commitments, his investments – can effect other people’s reality, and so they have cause to seek him out as he can help them better their lives.

This is why what he’s doing is valuable – because it involves him with other people, enabling him and empowering him to participate in society.

Dentistry is cast in a new light – it is not about provisioning for some unspecified future investment, it is enabling him right now to take up the things most valuable.

With this, all tension, all hesitation, all doubt dissolves. He is renewed, reborn. New clarity: his actions follow directly from and reinforce his values. And with this clarity, purpose.

So why didn’t he see this before?

More musing from the corker series:
corker #1: Steph Corker -The Remarkable Journey
corker #2: Mike Desjardins – Creating White Space

Pick of the Post: Austra – Beat and the Pulse

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Flashes of Benevolence

Matt Corker — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 17:59:48 +0000

I was in line at Capers on 4th, and somehow got a flash of inspiration and decided to buy the person behind me in line their meal. It was an elderly man, and he was eating a very light serving of dinner. He said that was the nicest thing someone did for him lately, and the cashier said in his three years of working at Capers, he has never witnessed anything like that.

Thanks for sharing the tip of giving generously to strangers. I loved it, and will continue doing this regularly.

Stay awesome.

E-mails like this make me smile.
Listen to those “flashes of inspiration.” They happen on purpose.
By acting on them we put that purpose into motion.

What revolution are your flashes of inspiration calling you to create?

Pick of the Post: Coldplay – Paradise

Benevolence by Jason Mraz

Day 2 + 3: Distraction & Creative Action

Matt Corker — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 11:16:02 +0000

Day 1 was filled with temptation. The textbooks, the incoming letters from friends I haven’t heard from in years, the blog posts … all tempting to read. I did not give in.

Day 2, yesterday, was a day of distraction. Was there an episode of Community that I could kill some time with? What about perusing pinterest for some visual stimulation? How much time could I spend watching videos on YouTube? (When I found myself watching babies laughing and beagles, I knew it was time to stop.) My procrastination had turned from text to images.

Day 3, today, is the day of creative action. I started off my day with a meeting with the Department of Management, Politics, and Philosophy about their research in self-management. This is the department at CBS that asks questions like “What is money?” and “How do we use co-creation in today’s society?” and hires (read: pays) PhD candidates to do research in authenticity and vulnerability in the business world. It was 10 am and my mind was blown.

My day continued with the download of Danielle’s Big Beautiful Book Plan. It was time to answer the call and realize that this blog may have been the beginning of something bigger … stay tuned.

And now, I am moments away from taking on another artist task for the week: create a vacation and make plans to do it. Well – “all talk, no action” and I don’t go well together. When a plan is created, I commit to making it happen. So I am flying off to Basel, Switzerland with the European Yogi Nomads to enjoy 4 classes this weekend with some great people from across Europe. One of the classes is being taught by Nanna (my friend/teacher here in Copenhagen) and Chris Chavez – together!

Worlds are about to collide in Basel and it will be beautiful.

Pick of the Post: MC Yogi – Give Love

Day 1: “I want to read a book”

Matt Corker — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 09:49:42 +0000

That was the first thought I had when I woke up yesterday – Day 1 of reading deprivation week.

Yes, at 7 am, my bookshelf of textbooks and inspiring texts seemed more appealing to me than eating breakfast. I wanted to read because I knew I wasn’t supposed to.

I’ve experienced that before…

Someone tells me I can’t do something.
Out comes the “oh ya, watch me” response.

Someone tells me I’m not allowed to be somewhere/do something.
Out comes the “I think I could find a way” rebelliousness.

Someone tells me it’s going to be hard and horrible.
Out comes the “not for me, thanks” thoughts.

I think me and my inner rebel will have a good time together this week. Pick of the Post: Freesol ft. Justin Timberlake – Role Model

Creativity On Crack – Reading Depreviation Week

Matt Corker — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 19:00:13 +0000

At the beginning of my MBA, I committed to taking in meaningful learning and development opportunities that would pop up along the way. Ones that would compliment the spreadsheets and textbooks and challenge me all the same.

I was recommend and, since the start of the year, have begun the self-directed course/book The Artist’s Way. The author describes this 12-week course as “a spiritual path to creativity” and “a course in discovering and recovering your creative self.” (It sure isn’t Industrial Economics, that’s for sure!) I believe that tapping into our creative brains helps us see what can be possible and helps us find cool ways to make those ideas happen, so I was (and still am) game.

At first, the weekly chapters, tasks, and morning journal pages seemed too easy. “Am I doing this right?” “Is this really supposed to challenge me?” Over the last three weeks, I have come to love the journal pages and actually look forward to writing them. Then I read the assignment for this week.

No reading for one week.

No Facebook. No Twitter. No textbooks. No magazines. No blogs. No newspapers. No articles. For one full week.

The student inside of me scoffed it off in disbelief. “I have a paper due that I need to get sources for. The author must be kidding me.” “I have pre-readings for my courses that I have to complete.” “I have a trip to Basel – how am I going to entertain myself on the plane!?!” “What about my blogroll? Or my Google news!?” The author then reminded the students and working professionals that NEED to read textbooks or reports that we “wriggle out” of our commitment to read all the time – and call it procrastination. This week was an invitation to wriggle in to not reading. To use creative solutions to find ways of making “not reading” work rather than finding ways of making “reading” not work.

Ok. Now I feel challenged. I can write (phew – blogging galore!) and read my class notes (that I wrote), my e-mails, and the Artist Way tasks for the week. Other than that, as of tomorrow morning, I will be on a strict no reading diet.

So, to my online social networks and favourite blog authors, thanks for your patience.
I’m going to see you again on the 31st.
Be sure to create something rad while I’m away.

Pick of the Post: Casting Crowns – Courageous

Feel the Fear. Step Into Action.

Matt Corker — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 14:03:02 +0000

Sometimes I get really nervous. This usually happens right before I hit the stage, the morning before a marathon, or right before I press send to that e-mail I knew needed to be written yet have no idea where or how it will be received.

I am then reminded that nerves are the best thing I could be experiencing in that moment.

As Steven Pressfield says in “The War of Art,” (hat tip to Chloe for the great read):

The more fear we feel about a specific enterprise, the more certain we can be that that enterprise is important to us and to the growth of our soul. That’s why we feel so much Resistance. If it meant nothing to us, there’d be no Resistance. …

The professional tackles the project that will make him stretch. He takes on the assignment that will bear him into uncharted waters, compel him to explore unconscious parts of himself.

Is he scared? Hell, yes. He’s petrified.

(Conversely, the professional turns down roles that he’s done before. He’s not afraid of them anymore. Why waste his time?)

So if you’re paralyzed with fear, it’s a good sign. It shows you what you have to do.

Deep breath. Here we go!

Pick of the Post: Straight No Chaser – Buddy Holly

Moving On

Matt Corker — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:21:03 +0000

Pick of the Post: We Are The In Crowd – Never Be What You Wnat

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