6 TED Talks for Aspiring Entrepreneurs

by Monica Selby Monica Selby in Featured, Startup Tips
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I love TED. I love the complete randomness of videos you’ll find there. There are discussions on every topic under the sun: business, technology, art, and the magnificence of spider silk. I also love that each talk is 20 minutes long, max. Some of my personal favorites are even shorter.

I haven’t made it to the actual conference yet, but the website is a great place to go when you need a little extra inspiration. Below are some great TED talks for aspiring entrepreneurs. They’re in no particular order, but our list spans inspiration from Steve Jobs to tech tips from David Pogue.

I know my list isn’t by any means exhaustive. Check out the links and send me a tweet. What did I miss?

  1. Simon Sinek–How Great Leaders Inspire Action. Sinek discusses his theory about the “golden circle.” Great leaders ask “why” before they ask “what” or “how.” He uses examples like Apple, Martin Luther King, Jr, and the Wright brothers. Any entrepreneur should start with the “why.” Why do you get up in the morning? Why are building your business?
  2. Richard St. John–8 Secrets to Success. This is a short one, only 3 minutes long. St. John whittles down a 2 hour talk to explain the simple steps to success.
  3. Steve Jobs–How To Live Before You Die. Jobs’ Stanford commencement speech is famous. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a must.
  4. Elizabeth Gilbert–Your Elusive Creative Genius. We want to believe that geniuses are rare, but Gilbert asserts that we all have our own genius. She describes the moment of inspiration and the paranormal feeling when we brush up against brilliance.
  5. David Pogue–10 Top Time-Saving Tech Tips. Tech entrepreneur? See if you know all these little tricks. Pogue is particularly passionate about stupid voicemail instructions. The NYT tech columnist is pretty funny, and this is another short one.
  6. Luis von Ahn–Massive-Scale Online Collaboration. One of the inventors of CAPTCHA realized we can harness time in 10 second increments to digitize books. If we can digitize books like this, what else can we do with mass human capital in small time increments?

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