Holidays are a great time to reflect on the past 12 months and anxiously plan for the next year. And if you're lucky enough to be in New York for the holidays, you realize how many people come to this city primarily to find a job or to visit. And then they leave - leaving the city beautifully empty and eerily different.
I was having drinks with a colleague of mine this week and we were discussing how our social networks consist of people who - when committed to an idea - follow through with immense passion and intense dedication. Everything around them not related to the idea fades away and they're focused on making it - the idea - a reality.
On the other hand, when we talk about this pursuit with outsiders, they're terrified of pursuing their ideas or in awe when others are courageous enough to follow through.
Taking this leap of faith is not easy by any means, but once you do it enough times, it becomes easier every subsequent time.
And despite the strenuous process of turning an idea to a product and then taking a company to market liquidity - it is the absolute core of how financial markets operate.
Whether you’re reading this on an iPhone, an iPad or even a computer - the device that you’re reading on is built by people who took that leap of faith. No one really needed computers back in the day and not too long ago, using a touch screen as your primary device was a crazy idea.
Same thing about launching a service that could only communicate in 140 characters or somehow finding all the world’s information via a simple text box.
All of those are created by people who took the leap of faith and changed the path of humanity.
It is that leap of faith that drives entrepreneurs and separates *billions* of people from chasing a dream.