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Don Mathis

Lessons from the front…

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Lessons From The Front…

…  musings from a career in entrepreneurship, big business and the Navy.

 

@Mathis_DHM

  • RT @ComcastMilitary: At @comcast @NBCUniversal, we value the skills that #veterans, #militaryspouses, and members of the @USNationalGuard a… 1 week ago
  • RT @BluVector: New ransomware variants have entered the scene in Q4 2020 and are quickly making a name for themselves. Today we will be exp… 2 weeks ago
  • RT @BluVector: Egregor is a new ransomware variant discovered in September 2020. It has adopted the “name and shame” method of inducing vic… 2 weeks ago
  • RT @ComcastMilitary: What do Harriet Tubman and Bea Arthur from the #GoldenGirls have in common? They're both veterans! Check out these oth… 1 month ago
  • RT @HBSAlumni: @adwane @Mathis_DHM @dteten @AnthonyTjan: This upcoming event, “Meet the i-lab‘s “Unicorns”: Celebrating Venture Success Sto… 1 month ago
  • RT @comcast: We’re honoring the strength and legacy of servicewomen of color this #WomensHistoryMonth through our partnership with @MWMHerM… 1 month ago
  • RT @ComcastMilitary: Join us in shouting out the @navy_reserve on its 106th birthday! https://t.co/lBY5vDBLgh 1 month ago
  • RT @BluVector: We are so excited to be at Ai4 Cybersecurity Summit today and tomorrow! Our VP of Engineering, Scott Miserendino, is one of… 2 months ago
  • RT @HiltonNewsroom: Hilton’s Michael Leidinger sat down with @cybr_media for an interview about his path from the #Navy to Chief Informatio… 3 months ago
  • Honored to be a participant! twitter.com/CyberIreland/s… 4 months ago
Follow @Mathis_DHM

Lessons From The Front…

…  musings from a career in entrepreneurship, big business and the Navy.

 

@Mathis_DHM

  • RT @ComcastMilitary: At @comcast @NBCUniversal, we value the skills that #veterans, #militaryspouses, and members of the @USNationalGuard a… 1 week ago
  • RT @BluVector: New ransomware variants have entered the scene in Q4 2020 and are quickly making a name for themselves. Today we will be exp… 2 weeks ago
  • RT @BluVector: Egregor is a new ransomware variant discovered in September 2020. It has adopted the “name and shame” method of inducing vic… 2 weeks ago
  • RT @ComcastMilitary: What do Harriet Tubman and Bea Arthur from the #GoldenGirls have in common? They're both veterans! Check out these oth… 1 month ago
  • RT @HBSAlumni: @adwane @Mathis_DHM @dteten @AnthonyTjan: This upcoming event, “Meet the i-lab‘s “Unicorns”: Celebrating Venture Success Sto… 1 month ago
  • RT @comcast: We’re honoring the strength and legacy of servicewomen of color this #WomensHistoryMonth through our partnership with @MWMHerM… 1 month ago
  • RT @ComcastMilitary: Join us in shouting out the @navy_reserve on its 106th birthday! https://t.co/lBY5vDBLgh 1 month ago
  • RT @BluVector: We are so excited to be at Ai4 Cybersecurity Summit today and tomorrow! Our VP of Engineering, Scott Miserendino, is one of… 2 months ago
  • RT @HiltonNewsroom: Hilton’s Michael Leidinger sat down with @cybr_media for an interview about his path from the #Navy to Chief Informatio… 3 months ago
  • Honored to be a participant! twitter.com/CyberIreland/s… 4 months ago
Follow @Mathis_DHM

The Vision Thing … from our company blog

Don Mathis Kinetic Social_Navy 2013
Don Mathis at Navy training, 2013

I recently wrote a piece for Kinetic Social’s company blog, “Kinetic Conversations.”  I thought it was worth highlighting here, especially after having just returned from a conference at the Harvard Business School Rock Center for Entrepreneurship (the “Rock 100” conference). Two intense days at the Rock conference, where we focused on issues of starting and growing companies,  certainly underscored this key take away for me:

The Mission Matters. In any setting – military, non-profit, business or otherwise – a group of people forming as a team needs a guiding principle around which they can organize. As Robert S. Kaplan, a professor at Harvard Business School, puts it: “you need a reason to get out of bed and go to work each day.” Something substantial, something that guides you, something you can believe in. Incidentally, making money is a side-effect of building something meaningful in business, but it cannot be the mission … and in those cases where it is, it often doesn’t last long.

At Kinetic Social, we completed our Series A fundraising in May, and we took the summer to take both a deep breath and a step back from our run-like-hell sprint out of the starting gates. Now, we are wrapping up a process of clarifying and codifying our mission. Really, it is more of a vision than a mission (the differences between the two are a subject for another time, but for our purposes here, I will treat them as the same). We are focused at Kinetic on making sense of the world’s social signal. The vision we are developing is larger than that, but that is the essence.

*               *               *

You can read the full piece here. Oh and, by the way, we’ve had the good fortune to raise a Series B subsequent to writing this piece!

Follow Don on Twitter @KineticDHM
Connect with Don on Google+

Don Mathis is the CEO and Co-Founder of Kinetic Social, a social data and technology company focused on making sense of the world’s social signal. He also serves in the US Navy on reserve duty, where he is an Expeditionary Combat Logistics & Anti-Terrorism Officer.

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Don Mathis

Don Mathis: GM, Comcast NBCUniversal, Navy. Tech Entrepreneur & Executive. View all posts by Don Mathis

Posted on May 10, 2014April 14, 2018Author Don MathisCategories PostsTags Don Mathis, Don Mathis Kinetic Social, entrepreneurship, Kinetic, Kinetic Social, Leadership, Management, Navy, Reserve, Reservist, Social Media, Social media marketing, Start-up, Venture capital

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