Why Not Sorry
Over my career, I’ve had some of the best seats in business. I write case studies at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, which means I sit down with entrepreneurs and seek to understand the moments that made or nearly broke their companies (and them). Before that I spent four years at McKinsey, doing something similar in rooms with fewer windows. I keep a running list of the ones that have been published.
What I notice, over and over, is how ordinary the beginnings are. The people who build remarkable things rarely feel ready when they start. They start anyway, and somewhere along the way they stop apologizing for how much they want.
That’s why “not sorry”. The future gets built by people whose conviction runs ahead of the evidence, and Not Sorry is where I write those ideas and stories down properly, the way I’d tell them to a friend over dinner.
I send The Deep Read: a short piece that explains an industry, a company, or an idea in plain English. And Profiles are long reported stories about a company or a career with Canada somewhere in it, reconstructed decision by decision: what they chose, what went wrong, and what it cost.
I started this because of Canada. The most useful thing I can build for Canadian founders is something the whole world reads. I kept watching people I admire leave to build somewhere else, and I wanted the case for staying, or for coming back, made well. That hasn’t changed. I also sit on the board of the C100, for the same reason. But I don’t think being insular about it helps anyone. Be Giant interviewed me about all of this.
If you’re building something ambitious, or you’d like to work together, I’d be thrilled to hear from you at bryan@notsorryca.com.
Get after it.
Start here
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