Hi everyone,

Welcome back to the bi-weekly GENESIS newsletter👋

If you’re new around here, this is where we share some stories, advice, and resources for GenZ entrepreneurs in the GENESIS community - and plug our events too :)

In today’s edition…

• 🤔 Start with your WHY

• 💬 Quote of the Week

• ⏪ Recap

• 📅 Upcoming Events

• ✨ Asking the Community

🤔 Start with your WHY

I’m a big supporter of spending some of your precious time as a founder reading. One of the books I read recently is Start with Why by Simon Sinek. Yes, I know, it’s all over the place, it’s probably been recommended to you a million times.

There’s a reason for that. Let me put it in the context of a young founder…

The core thesis of the book is that people don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it.

WHY does your company exist? WHY do you get out of bed every morning? And WHY should anyone care?

You don’t choose Apple just because it’s better, but because you identify with the changemakers, misfits, creatives, and luxury buyers who use Apple.

That’s the most important contribution of Steve Jobs. When he was an early founder just starting out, he knew very little about running a business or building a computer. But he knew what he stood for, and what Apple would stand for — rejecting the status quo.

And knowing your WHY is the most important job of a founder.

Once you have the WHY figured out, the WHAT will come. It will also shift, just like Apple shifted from computers to phones to watches to media to glasses and beyond.

If you don’t know your WHY you will not be able to convince potential cofounders. Or early employees. Or customers. Or investors. Or yourself, when the going gets tough.

In my mind, having a solid WHY is what separates a side hustle — which can earn you some cash but won’t change the world — with a company/brand.

And funny enough, all companies, organizations, governments, nonprofits, and brands all start from the same place: the WHY. It’s just the route to getting there that differs.

If you’re a young founder, it’s easy to get so bogged down with minutiae that you forget the big picture. The big picture being: you have a lifetime of opportunity ahead of you, what impact will you have on the world? Don’t just aim to start a business and sell it right away. Aim to start the next Google or Disney or Apple. Inspire generations to come with a timeless WHY.

A friend of mine put it this way. Imagine you’re in GTA playing free roam. It’s an open map. Nobody’s telling you what to do or how to play the game. So what do you do?

I’ll let you brood on that over the weekend 🙂 Highly recommend reading the full book…

💬 Quote of the Week

By the time you're 80, the decisions you make now will have had time to compound and produce crazy results. At 80 you'll be happy if your current self made decisions with that long term view in mind.

And when you're 10 years old, you mostly care about having fun in the here-and-now. Which is just as important.

Life is a delicate balance between acknowledging the past, living in the present, and looking towards the future. Entrepreneurs making 5-10+ year commitments in the present moment must carefully set this balance.

⏪ Recap

📅 Upcoming Events

Chicago founder/investor/exec friends —> we have two more private dinners before this year comes to an end, on Nov 15th and Dec 19th. If you’re interested in joining one of these please drop a reply to this email. Thanks!

✨ Asking the Community

We have something exciting cooking for January 2024 — one of the largest startup/VC events the Midwest has seen to date — but we need your help.

No spoilers yet :)

If your firm (or a friend’s) would like to sponsor an event with 300+ young founders, a VIP investor lunch for the most prominent VCs/angels in the Midwest, or an afterparty with 200-300 GenZ changemakers in Chicago, please drop a reply to this email.

We’re open to partnerships with consultancies, VCs, legal/accounting, startup service providers, GenZ focused brands, platform providers, etc.

👉Join our GenZ founders & funders Slack👈

Thank you for reading this edition of the GENESIS newsletter! See you next soon🙏

~ Toni Witt