The Entrepreneur''s Weekly Nietzsche

What does it really mean to be a disruptor? Is it simply starting a business, or is it something more profound—an act of rebelling against convention, of creating entirely new values? In The Entrepreneur’s Weekly Nietzsche: A Book for Disruptors, venture capitalist Brad Feld and entrepreneur Dave Jilk argue that the true spirit of entrepreneurship mirrors Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy: a relentless, creative act of self-overcoming that demands courage, originality, and meaning.

The authors contend that Nietzsche, though a 19th-century philosopher who viewed commerce with disdain, was himself the ultimate disruptor—tearing down intellectual old orders to create new frames for thinking. Entrepreneurs, they argue, are his modern descendants. Both refuse to accept the status quo and insist on shaping the world rather than being shaped by it.

The Entrepreneur as Creator of New Values

Nietzsche’s famous call for a 'revaluation of all values'—the destruction of inherited morality so that new, life-affirming ones can rise—finds a mirror in entrepreneurship. Great founders don’t just make new products; they reimagine what industries should value, how people should work, and what customers should expect. Feld and Jilk emphasize that genuine disruption requires rejecting “small victories” in favor of the transformative kind. As Nietzsche’s character Zarathustra implores, one must seek a 'great victory' rather than settle for incremental gains.

The authors liken this drive to the entrepreneur’s need to offer a product or vision that is “10x better” than the status quo—both practically and imaginatively. This echoes the Nietzschean image of the creator who dares to envision a new world, not just improve the old one. Whether it’s Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn exploring the ethics of scale or Elon Musk attempting to move humanity off planet Earth, these are modern 'Übermenschen'—those who invent new standards rather than follow existing ones.

From Stoicism to Dionysus: Enduring the Entrepreneurial Struggle

Jilk and Feld situate Nietzsche as a kind of sequel to Stoicism—another philosophy beloved by founders—but one that goes further. Stoicism teaches endurance and discipline, necessary in business, but Nietzsche adds intensity and joy. True entrepreneurship, they argue, embraces not only hardship but also the creative ecstasy of building something meaningful. In this sense, Nietzsche’s Dionysian spirit—passionate, chaotic, life-affirming—complements the Apollonian rationality of business plans and budgets.

The authors illustrate this fusion through real-world examples. In one story, founders of Feld Technologies lose everything early on, fire their staff, and start over. From this failure—the “sea bottom” Nietzsche evokes—rises the “highest mountain” of experience. Their pain becomes the foundation for enduring wisdom, proving Nietzsche’s claim that 'what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.'

Philosophy as a Strategic Tool

In their foreword, entrepreneur Reid Hoffman insists that philosophy is not academic abstraction but a tool for founders to sharpen thinking about human nature, values, and motivation. Every business, he argues, rests implicitly on a theory of human behavior—what people want, why they buy, and how they connect. By studying Nietzsche, entrepreneurs can refine these underlying theories rather than blindly following conventional business wisdom or short-term profit motives.

Nietzsche’s perspectivism—the idea that there is no single truth, only a multiplicity of views—becomes a model for entrepreneurial thinking. In a world of uncertainty, there is no one “right” way to build a company. Instead, each founder must find their own path, learning from others but refusing to imitate. The book highlights founder stories like Daniel Benhammou’s journey in building Acyclica, showing how finding one’s own way is both strategic and existential—an expression of identity.

Why Nietzsche Matters for Modern Leaders

Ultimately, The Entrepreneur’s Weekly Nietzsche frames entrepreneurship as a philosophical calling as much as a business practice. To lead well, one must understand human drives, embrace the unknown, and—above all—create meaning from chaos. This book insists that leadership is not just management but art: the ability to shape culture, inspire others, and thrive amid uncertainty.

For disruptors today, Nietzsche serves as both muse and mirror. He challenges you to take creative risks, face failure with courage, and live with vitality even when the world misunderstands you. In short, Feld and Jilk invite you to become not just an entrepreneur, but a philosopher of your own life and company—a builder of new values in a time that desperately needs them.

Nietzsche’s dictum that “one must still have chaos in oneself to give birth to a dancing star” perfectly captures the entrepreneurial journey. Feld and Jilk reinterpret this as the law of creative destruction—the need to tear down old forms to make way for the truly innovative. They emphasize that disruption is not about noise or hype but about building something so transformative it becomes an entirely new order.

Beyond Incremental Thinking

In The Entrepreneur’s Weekly Nietzsche, the authors quote Nietzsche’s warning against “small victories.” Incremental gains, they argue, can trap even ambitious founders in mediocrity. For startups, aiming to be 10% better is rarely enough; the goal must be a product or experience that is ten times better—so powerful that even competitors admire it. They cite numerous stories from the startup world—such as Jason Mendelson’s launch of SRS Acquiom—as examples of this principle. Mendelson didn’t invent M&A law, but he reimagined a painful, overlooked niche and built a new industry standard around it.

Destruction with Purpose

Nietzsche believed that genuine creation demands destruction. Like his metaphorical hammer smashing “old idols,” entrepreneurs must question sacred assumptions about how markets, customers, and culture work. Walter Knapp’s story of Sovrn demonstrates this: when a crisis hit, Knapp dismantled what wasn’t working—even at immense personal cost—to rebuild a company on integrity. His “crash and rebirth,” Feld and Jilk note, transformed Sovrn into a sustainable, values-based disruptor.

Destruction, in this sense, is not cynicism but renewal. By committing to rebuild from the ground up, entrepreneurs turn Nietzsche’s despair into creative evolution. This is also how you, as a leader, can inject vitality into your work—facing hard truths about what must die for new growth to emerge.

Nietzsche urged his followers to see tragedy not as defeat but as the foundation of greatness. Feld and Jilk extend this to the startup world, where failure is not only inevitable but essential. In the chapter “Hitting Bottom,” they remind readers that the ‘highest mountains rise from the sea’—that depth precedes height.

Learning from the Abyss

Startups, the authors write, often thrive on the lessons of collapse. Every founder’s abyss—whether a business failure, a missed pivot, or a public stumble—contains the raw material for transformation. Feld recalls shuttering his first office and firing his team after an early $10,000 loss. This devastation later shaped the disciplined, transparent culture that defined his career at Foundry Group.

These stories illustrate Nietzsche’s idea of amor fati—the love of one’s fate. Rather than resisting pain, great creators embrace it as necessary for growth. The authors encourage entrepreneurs to document these experiences, share them honestly, and transform them into wisdom, echoing Brad Feld’s later reflections on depression and resilience.

Failure as Practice

Where business culture prizes success stories, Nietzsche’s philosophy prizes endurance. The founders of Twenty20 learned through repeated pivots—Acceptly’s failure leading to Instacanvas, then to a thriving photo-licensing platform—that failure produces insight only when treated as data. Each setback becomes an experiment in Nietzsche’s laboratory of life, where you “will to undergo certain experiences” to attain wisdom.

Ultimately, Feld and Jilk argue, wisdom in business, as in philosophy, is bought at the price of suffering. To lead a startup is to leap into the jaws of experience, knowing that while it may consume you, it is also the only way to become truly wise.

Nietzsche defined culture as “the unity of artistic style in every expression of a people’s life.” Feld and Jilk reinterpret this for business: your company’s culture must have a unified artistic style—consistency of tone, values, and experience across every interaction. Knowledge and technical skill alone don’t make a culture; style does.

Unity of Expression

Using examples like Apple’s minimalist elegance versus IBM’s conservative uniformity, the authors show how cultural style defines brand and behavior. Entrepreneur Tim Enwall describes the culture clash between Google and Nest after acquisition as a “riotous jumble of styles” that undermined success. The lesson: artistic coherence in corporate behavior—how you design, communicate, and lead—is just as strategic as financial discipline.

Trust and Integrity as Foundations

Nietzsche’s insistence on integrity and gratitude serves as moral scaffolding for culture. Ingrid Alongi’s story of betrayal during her company’s sale reveals how quickly culture unravels when trust is broken. Feld and Jilk connect this to Nietzsche’s insight: when someone deceives you, the pain comes not from the lie itself but from the loss of belief. Restoring culture, therefore, is about restoring faith—not through contracts, but by rebuilding authenticity.

This artistic view of culture encourages founders to be not merely managers but curators—shaping every detail, from hiring language to product design, into an expression of their company’s spirit.

One of the most famous parables in Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra—the transformation from camel to lion to child—serves as the blueprint for entrepreneurial evolution. Feld and Jilk use this as the framework for understanding the founder’s inner journey.

Stage One: The Camel

As a camel, you bear burdens—the long hours, the uncertainty, the endless to-do lists. Like the Stoic worker, this stage is about endurance. Entrepreneurs must prove they can carry heavy loads responsibly before they can transcend them. Nietzsche admired the camel’s willingness to suffer, but warned against staying in that role forever.

Stage Two: The Lion

The lion emerges in rebellion. It says a “holy No” to convention—much like founders who reject corporate bureaucracy to chart their own course. Luke Kanies, founder of Puppet, embodies this spirit when he leaves his community of sysadmins to start building tools that no one else dared to create. The lion is contrarian, self-determining, and fearless, traits that define game-changing startups.

Stage Three: The Child

The child represents playful mastery—a 'holy Yes' to creation. As David Cohen describes, founders at Sphero rediscovered the sheer joy of inventing toys that delighted both them and their customers. At this stage, entrepreneurship becomes serious play—a return to childlike creativity enriched by maturity. The best founders, Nietzsche might say, play with reality as children play with building blocks—intensely, joyfully, and without fear.

Nietzsche viewed great leaders as those who inspire faith rather than obedience. Feld and Jilk expand on this: effective entrepreneurship is not about managing tasks but about believing—and helping others believe—in what you are creating. Faith, in their usage, is the confidence that your people and your vision will endure uncertainty.

From Doing to Leading

Early in a startup, founders do everything themselves. But as the company scales, success depends on building an organization that can act independently. As Matt Blumberg describes from his experience at Bolster, leadership means creating systems, rhythms, and trust structures that let others execute. You stop being the hero and start being the architect.

Nietzsche’s metaphor of the river becoming mighty only through its many tributaries captures this shift: greatness flows from enabling others. Faith, then, means trusting the current of your company to carry your shared purpose forward, even when you are not steering every wave.

Leading with Presence and Warmth

Leadership also demands charisma—not in the theatrical sense, but as Nietzsche’s version of “light.” Brad Feld and Nicole Glaros emphasize presence, compassion, and authentic engagement as the real triggers of influence. People 'press toward the light,' Nietzsche writes, not to see better but because it makes them shine. Great founders make others feel luminous.

This philosophy redefines power: not control or dominance, but the ability to help others find purpose in your shared vision. Leadership, then, becomes both art and faith—an act of belief that multiplies belief.

Nietzsche’s hikers who “break their legs after reaching the summit” mirror the founder’s common burnout after success. Feld and Jilk warn that complacency, not failure, is the real danger. The solution is to sustain intensity through purpose, not pressure.

The Discipline of Vigilance

When things are going well—a new funding round, positive press—complacency tempts even great teams. Nietzsche observed that “the danger comes when we begin to take things easily.” Entrepreneurs must resist this by institutionalizing habits of reflection and learning. This might mean regular offsites not to plan tactics but to “step back” and regain perspective—seeing how high the company’s towers stand from afar.

Intensity through Meaning

Burnout arises when effort loses meaning. Nietzsche’s antidote was purpose—the will to power as creative expression, not domination. Feld and Jilk redefine intensity not as working harder, but as deepening engagement with why you build. When effort aligns with purpose, even exhaustion becomes soulful. As Tim Miller of Rally Software discovered, sustaining an industry-changing mission over 13 years was possible only by staying attached to the “why,” not just the grind.

The Entrepreneur’s Weekly Nietzsche closes on a powerful proposition: that entrepreneurship is philosophy in action. To build a company is to wrestle with timeless questions—Who are we? What do we value? How do we shape the future? Nietzsche’s legacy is thus not advice but worldview: you are an artist, not a manager; a meaning-maker, not merely a market player.

Becoming Who You Are

Nietzsche’s call to “become who you are” becomes Feld and Jilk’s challenge to founders: build not to prove worth, but to express your authentic self. Your company, product, and culture are mirrors of your inner life. The most successful founders—those who build enduringly meaningful organizations—are the ones who treat entrepreneurship as self-creation.

Creating Light for Others

Toward the end, Feld’s reflection on depression—countered by friends who simply walked with him—embodies Nietzsche’s empathy: even in darkness, one’s light can reflect through others. The task of the entrepreneur, then, is not only to build wealth or innovation, but to illuminate—a leader whose meaning radiates outward.

In the end, this book argues that the highest form of entrepreneurship is an ethical, creative art of living. To disrupt, in the Nietzschean sense, is to live courageously enough to build new worlds, both in business and in yourself.