Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1368

Tramway à Lisbonne by yannick le goff on 500px

This morning I stumbled upon a blog post by a Berlin-based venture capitalist ( Ciarán O'Leary ) talking about how Lisbon feels like the next Berlin. In other words, it feels like the next great European startup hub.

Here’s his reasoning :

• The tech scene is organic – it happened on its own, came out of nowhere. That is much more fun and sustainable than any kind of political or targeted economic strategy.
  

• There are a ton of constraints (funding, local talent base, etc.) so entrepreneurs need to hustle to make things happen. Hustle is good.
  

• Berlin was an economic void, Portugal had a massive economic crisis and Lisbon sure isn’t letting that crisis go to waste.
  

• Entrepreneurship has the real chance to be a center stage act, not a side gig. It’s everywhere.
  

• The city is very, very cool. You just want to be here.
  

• You can have a great life on a startup salary.
  

• Everyone speaks english; everyone is welcoming and open. That matters a lot when you want to attract international talent and funding.
  

Of course, he’s not the only one calling Lisbon the next Berlin. The EU also named Lisbon “ the most entrepreneurial region in Europe in 2015 .” Isn’t it interesting what can grow out of economic crisis? See PIGS .

I also don’t think it’s a coincidence that Monocle held its first ever Quality of Life Conference in Lisbon . It’s a testament to O’Leary’s point above that, “You just want to be here.”

And while being “very, very cool” may not seem immediately relevant to creating a robust startup environment, it really is. It may be the most important point. It makes the city a magnet for talent. 

Just the other day I was trying to explain Berlin to someone and I used a similar lexicon. I said: “It’s an unbelievably cool city. It bleeds hipness. You will love it.”

If you’re a city, that’s a great thing to be.

This May 2nd at 1:00pm I’m going to be participating and speaking at a Jane’s Walk here in Toronto called, Gardiner Expressway: To be or not to be?  

The other “walk leaders” include Andrew Hilton, City Councillor Jaye Robinson , Ed Levy, Kyle Baptista, and architect Les Klein (Quadrangle Architects).

This will be my first time going to a Jane’s Walk, but it’s clearly a topic that I’m interested in. For over a year I have been arguing that we should remove the Gardiner East  (the portion east of Jarvis Street).

This has proved to be a contentious position and topic. One critic said that I only want to remove the Gardiner East so that – as a real estate developer – I can make it harder for people to get into the city, which in turn will force them into buying more condos in the city. 

That was not my thinking.

Instead, I view it as an opportunity to truly unlock the eastern portion of Toronto’s waterfront and the Portlands area. Take a look at the Keating Channel (shown above) and tell me whether or not you could imagine a better and more urban kind of waterfront. I get excited when I think of the potential.

And, if we’re going to do this, I believe now is the time, before the area gets developed. Because once it gets developed around the Gardiner, things will never be quite the same – even if we do eventually remove or bury it.

Click here for more information on the Jane’s Walk. Please also keep in mind that there will be many other viewpoints expressed at the Walk. This is just mine.

Image: Gardiner Expressway and Don River, Flickr

In the business world – particularly in the startup world these days – there’s a lot of emphasis on the importance of failure. The mantra is: “fail early and fail often.” Because if you’re not failing, then you’re likely not pushing yourself hard enough and getting out of your comfort zone. 

Some people think we’ve gone too far in our celebration of failure, but I think there’s a lot of value in not being afraid of making mistakes. I try and adopt the same mentality when I snowboard. If I’m not physically falling, then I’m likely not trying things I’ve never done before. ( I may have taken that philosophy too far this winter .)

Here’s a video from Gary Vaynerchuk’s #AskGaryVee show where Jack and Suzy Welch are guests and the first question has to do with this exact topic: the importance of failure.

Given all of this, I was fascinated to learn about something new this week called Rejection Therapy. I was out for beers with some good friends of mine earlier in the week and one of them – who is an educator here in the city – started telling me the story of Jason Comely .

Jason was a freelance IT guy from Cambridge, Ontario. His wife had recently left him for someone “better” and he went into a deep slump. Eventually, he realized that he had become terrified of rejection. His wife had rejected him and he never wanted that to ever happen again.

Initially he withdrew from life. 

But eventually he decided that he was going to experiment with the exact opposite approach. He decided that he was going to force himself to get rejected by someone every, single, day.

It didn’t matter how it happened, but he had to get rejected. He would walk up to strangers and ask for a ride home. He would ask for a discount before buying something. The list goes on. 

Eventually he thought it would be a good idea to start documenting all of his rejections: this is what I did today and this how I got rejected. It became a game for him. When he would get his rejection for the day, he would celebrate it. Then he thought to himself: why not turn this into an actual game that other people could purchase? And that’s what he did.

He calls it Rejection Therapy and here are the five objectives that he lays out:

1. To be more aware of how irrational social fears control and restrict our lives
2. Smash the tyranny of fear and reap the treasures (treasures include wealth, relationships and self-confidence)
3. Learn from, and even enjoy rejection
4. To not be attached to outcomes, especially when it involves the free agency of other people
5. Permit yourself to fail

Playing Rejection Therapy may not be for everyone. But I think the lessons are universally applicable. There’s value in trying. There’s value in asking. There’s value in making mistakes. And there’s value in not being afraid of someone saying no.