Paul G. Silva

MARCH 6, 2025

Have you ever wished you could pick the brains of Seth Godin, Jim Collins, and Eric Ries (or whoever are your intellectual heroes) whenever you face a business challenge? What if you could assemble your dream team of advisors and consult them anytime, day or night, without scheduling conflicts or hefty consulting fees? This isn’t a fantasy. Using ChatGPT, you can create a virtual board of advisors that brings the wisdom and perspectives of your chosen mentors to your fingertips.

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Paul G. Silva

MARCH 4, 2025

This post is part of my ongoing series exploring lessons from Jim Collins’s book, BE 2.0 (Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0). The Advantage of Being Prepared for the Unpredictable Every organization will face disruption. The question isn’t if it will happen, but how you’ll respond when it does. In BE 2.0 , Jim Collins explains that great organizations don’t just survive uncertaintythey use it as an opportunity to pull ahead of competitors.

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Paul G. Silva

FEBRUARY 25, 2025

This post is part of my ongoing series exploring lessons from Jim Collins’s book, BE 2.0 (Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0). Greatness Comes from Iteration, Not Perfection There’s a dangerous myth in business that success comes from getting it right the first time. But in BE 2.0 , Jim Collins emphasizes that great outcomes don’t emerge from perfect initial ideasthey come from relentless iteration and adaptation.

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Paul G. Silva

FEBRUARY 18, 2025

This post is part of my ongoing series exploring lessons from Jim Collins’s book, BE 2.0 (Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0). Trust First, Verify Later Most leaders wait for trust to be earned. Collins suggests flipping this: trust first, then support growth. But how does this work in practice? A Story of Trust in Action At Valley Venture Mentors, we hired a junior employee who had dropped out of college and had little-to-no work experience.

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Paul G. Silva

FEBRUARY 11, 2025

The Millau Viaduct , consistently ranked as one of the greatest engineering achievements of modern times This post is part of my ongoing series exploring lessons from Jim Collins’s book, BE 2.0 (Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0). Beyond Just Setting Big Goals A Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG) isn’t just about thinking biggerit’s about forcing yourself to innovate when the current way of doing things won’t get you there.

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Paul G. Silva

FEBRUARY 5, 2025

This little video has the best advice I’ve seen on how to design your competitor/competitive advantages/competitive landscape slide(s). Key Takeaways: Purpose of the Competition Slide: Showcase your awareness of existing competitors. Emphasize your startup’s unique value proposition. Build credibility with investors by demonstrating market insight.

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Paul G. Silva

FEBRUARY 4, 2025

This post is part of my ongoing series exploring lessons from Jim Collinss book, BE 2.0 (Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0). BE 2.0: Culture is Strategy This post is part of my ongoing series exploring lessons from Jim Collins’s book, BE 2.0 (Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0). Check out the previous post about how luck favors persistence. Why Culture Matters More Than Strategy People often say “culture eats strategy for breakfast.” In BE 2.0, Jim Collins takes this further: culture doesn&

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Paul G. Silva

JANUARY 28, 2025

This post is part of my ongoing series exploring lessons from Jim Collins’s book, BE 2.0 (Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0). Understanding Luck in Business Ever notice how some teams seem to “get lucky” more often than others? In BE 2.0, Jim Collins explains why: it’s not just about luckit’s about being ready for it and knowing what to do when it arrives.

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Paul G. Silva

JANUARY 21, 2025

This post is part of my ongoing series exploring lessons from Jim Collins’s book, BE 2.0 (Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0). Check out the previous posts on leadership values and getting the right people. What is Vision? What makes some organizations last while others fade away? Jim Collins found a surprising answer: a clear, compelling vision. Think of vision as your organization’s North Star it guides your team, especially when times get tough.

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Paul G. Silva

JANUARY 14, 2025

This post is part of my ongoing series exploring lessons from Jim Collinss book, BE 2.0 (Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0). “Get the right people on the bus, then get them in the right seats.” This metaphor from Collins captures one of the most profound lessons from BE 2.0 : success begins with the right people. He calls this principle “First who, then what.” It’s not about having the perfect strategy firstit’s about assembling the right team and helping each perso

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Paul G. Silva

JANUARY 9, 2025

Innovative ideas often falter, not because they lack merit but because their adoption stalls. While tools like the Business Model Canvas or Lean Canvas help define business models, they fall short of addressing the challenges of adoption. Enter the Adoption Roadmap , a tool designed to bridge this gap. It provides leaders with a practical, step-by-step guide to drive adoption at every stage of their innovations lifecyclefrom pilot to expansion.

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Paul G. Silva

JANUARY 7, 2025

This post is part of my ongoing series exploring lessons from Jim Collinss book, BE 2.0 (Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0). One of the most enduring lessons from BE 2.0 is this: great companies begin with strong core values that guide every decision. These values arent just posters on the wall or slogans in a company handbooktheyre living, breathing principles that shape how teams work and how decisions are made.

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Paul G. Silva

DECEMBER 30, 2024

Leading a rapidly growing software company means constantly learning and adapting. I recently looked at our rapid growth over the past 2 years and I wanted to make sure I was growing alongside our team. That’s when I discovered Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0 (BE 2.0) by Jim Collins. You might know Collins from Good to Great or Built to Last. BE 2.0 is special though – it takes all those earlier insights and combines them with two decades of additional research and real-world validation.

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Paul G. Silva

DECEMBER 22, 2024

Short Version I recently listened to a fascinating episode of Beyond the Prompt featuring David Boyle, a veteran with 20+ years of experience in audience intelligence. David shared practical ways organizations can leverage AI for better decision-making and productivity. In this post, I’ll break down his key insights and combine them with my own experiences implementing AI in daily work.

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Paul G. Silva

NOVEMBER 26, 2024

I am thrilled to introduce Forge the Future —an immersive roleplaying simulation designed for aspiring entrepreneurs and business professionals! Have you ever tried explaining to friends or family what it’s really like to build a startup? The late-night pivots, the investor meetings that change everything, the moment you realize your MVP needs a complete rebuild while your runway is dwindling?

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Paul G. Silva

NOVEMBER 7, 2024

Practice Your Pitch and Save Your Social Capital Entrepreneurs benefit tremendously from practicing their pitch and Q&A. The more practice they get, the better they become at understanding common questions, responding clearly and concisely, and handling the emotions of tough questions. However, mentors have limited time, and many do not ask the hardest questions or provide enough critical feedback.

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Paul G. Silva

JUNE 12, 2024

We are standing on the edge of a profound shift in the world of angel investing. For years, the process of raising funds from multiple angel investor groups—known as “syndication”—has been mired in friction. The visionary minds at the Angel Capital Association (ACA), the global beacon for angel investors, have spent over a decade sculpting best practices.

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Paul G. Silva

MAY 23, 2024

Our “Building Exit Ramps to Private Equity” session at the Angel Capital Association ’s summit last week featured knowledgeable panelists and an engaged audience. Here are a few of my major takeaways: Private Equity (PE) as a Growing Exit Option :PE firms are increasingly becoming a viable exit option for angel-backed companies. In sectors like B2B SaaS, PE firms now acquire more companies than strategic buyers!

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Paul G. Silva

FEBRUARY 9, 2024

There is no lack of coverage of when Private Equity is done wrong. John Oliver, by himself, has numerous well-regarded pieces on the topic. This is not dissimilar to when bad venture capitalists or angel investors tarnish the reputations of investors in general. And this reporting is important. We should know about bad actors, how to avoid them, and call shame on them!

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Paul G. Silva

FEBRUARY 6, 2024

This article originally appeared on the PixelEdge Blog. “[The PixelEdge] workshop and canvasses provided an easy structured framework to work through our evaluation and customer discovery process. The ideas … have been very exciting to me and my team.” Client Business Information Director Problem A leading data aggregator for an entertainment sector came to PixelEdge to help maximize one of their offerings.

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Paul G. Silva

DECEMBER 29, 2023

Dungeons & Dragons, the most famous “tabletop role-playing game” in the world, does an incredible job of letting a group of friends co-author vibrant stories of heroic daring. Other games let you and your friends tell different kinds of stories, from cheery cartoon character shenanigans, to cyberpunk hackers fighting The Machine, to queer teenage superheros coming of age, and zillions of others!

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Paul G. Silva

DECEMBER 21, 2023

When a startup founder is trying to raise money, they know they should use referrals to get introduced to investors. But those referrals are hard to get! Usually entrepreneurs try cold-calling investors or asking investors they know to make referrals. Investors ignore cold-calls. It is 100% a waste of an entrepreneur’s time to cold-call investors.

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Paul G. Silva

DECEMBER 15, 2023

[This is part of a series on the KISS Canvas ] For over twenty years I’ve had the pleasure of co-founding a handful of ventures and mentoring hundreds of startup and intrepreneurial teams. Over the past six years, and with great help, I’ve developed the Keep It Super Simple (KISS) Canvas to help innovators find and mitigate some of their biggest risks, from ideation to scaling.

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Paul G. Silva

DECEMBER 15, 2023

Greg Satell was interviewed on the You Are Not So Smart podcast (excellent, highly recommended) about his book Cascades. Cascades explains Greg’s observations on what it takes for innovation of all kinds (political movements, cultural change, startups, re-orgs, etc.) to achieve lasting impact. Here are the key takeaways that I believe relate to startup / intrepreneurial innovators. 5 Reasons People Will Oppose You We innovators already believe.

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Paul G. Silva

DECEMBER 11, 2023

User Payer Channel There are 3 stakeholders critical to a product’s success: User: the primary end-user of the product. Payer: pay for the product. Channel: responsible for getting Users to adopt the product. You must solve each stakeholder’s distinct pains or else your product will fail. Fail to solve the Channel’s problems and no one will hear about your product.

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Paul G. Silva

NOVEMBER 8, 2023

Jeremy Lam kindly interviewed me for the Swif podcast. We discussed the work PixelEdge does to help business services firms increase their EBITDA and disrupt competitors.

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Paul G. Silva

OCTOBER 30, 2023

Source Harvard Business Review Putting Products into Services , by Mohanbir Sawhney Analysis High-end professional services firms, unlike product companies, traditionally experience only linear revenue growth. That’s because selling more services means adding more professionals, which limits profit margins. And this growth is complicated by the chronic talent shortage hitting every business services sector I’ve encountered.

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Paul G. Silva

SEPTEMBER 11, 2023

Meetings ARE expensive Poorly run meetings drain people of their energy (sometimes of their very soul)! A bad meeting can easily sink the productivity of team members for an entire day, sometimes for a lot longer! That could be worth thousands of dollars in lost productivity. People participating in your meeting can’t be doing something else – like the things on their To Do list adding value to the company!

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Paul G. Silva

AUGUST 9, 2023

Alexander Osterwalder and the team at Strategizer published a small eBook chock-full of best practices on corporate innovation called From Innovation Theater to Growth Engine. Ahead of the book they also released a set of videos explaining some of the concepts. Strategizer is likely one of the top innovation consultants out there. They don’t build the innovations, but they do teach you how to find, vet, and manage a portfolio of innovative ideas.

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Paul G. Silva

AUGUST 10, 2023

Picture it. Your team gets the big meeting with the CEO of a company right smack in the middle of your target market. This company could be an amazing reference client. The CEO spends a lot of time with your team, telling you exactly what she needs. She gladly looks at multiple iterations of the product, giving concrete, actionable feedback at every stage.

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development innovation 130

Paul G. Silva

AUGUST 8, 2023

A few years back Google published research on what made their teams thrive. By far the most important attribute was Psychological Safety. Psychological safety refers to an individual’s perception of the consequences of taking an interpersonal risk or a belief that a team is safe for risk taking in the face of being seen as ignorant, incompetent, negative, or disruptive.

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Paul G. Silva

JUNE 14, 2023

From 2003-2022 the River Valley Investors operated as a traditional angel group, investing in nearly 100 startups. For posterity, here are some of the more recent investments… 2022 Hubly Surgical Hubly Surgical has an advanced drill, complete with auto-stop and visual feedback, to make medical drilling safe across underserved settings. They’re first starting with the high-complication, hand-cranked, most common neurosurgery: bedside craniotomy.

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Paul G. Silva

MARCH 30, 2023

In February Sandy Wollman, Marty Isaac, and myself worked with the Angel Capital Association to evolve New England & New York’s syndication process to work for more angel groups. Angels from New England, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania came together to test out our new approach to syndicating deals. Representatives from other syndication groups from as far as the west coast attended as well.

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Paul G. Silva

DECEMBER 12, 2022

[This is part of a series on the KISS Canvas ]. Struggling to map your business model because you have lots of stakeholders / customer segments? The Keep It Super Simple (KISS) Canvas takes your complex, multi-sided business model and turns it into an easy-to-understand story. Each row answers a key question about a stakeholder. Each column represents a stakeholder: payers, users, channel partners, employees, etc.

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Paul G. Silva

NOVEMBER 19, 2022

Hand holding light bulb and cog inside. Idea and imagination. Creative and inspiration. Innovation gears icon with network connection on metal texture background. Innovative technology in science and industrial concept. “We’ve been world-class at what we do for decades. But the world has changed and we need to adapt. How do we come up with ideas that are out-of-the-box and have high potential?

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innovation leadership creativity disruption 147

Paul G. Silva

OCTOBER 6, 2022

A central tenet of the Lean Startup is “pivot, persevere, or perish.” On June 1st, after five years of perseverance and pivoting, my partners and I wound down Launch413. With six months now past, it feels right to share what we’ve learned. For those unfamiliar with it, Launch413 was a Post Accelerator that helped startup CEOs scale for sustained success by providing coaches with deep domain expertise.

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Paul G. Silva

SEPTEMBER 15, 2022

The angel groups of New England and New York joined forces to help startups get funded. Initial results: 2x as many startups are being seen by 2x as many investors, in 1/10th the time. Entrepreneur Pain Points. You would think that the marginal effort to raise money from a second angel group is much lower. Won’t the second group take all the hard work you did from the first group and only need to ask a few more questions?

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