Five years ago I dropped out of a PhD program and started my first company. I had no idea what I was doing and made every mistake you could imagine. Needless to say that business didn’t last very long.

Since then I’ve gone on to start three more companies — one venture-backed, two service-based — each with varying levels of success and failure.

From these experiences there’s one lesson I’ve learned that’s remarkably simple, exceedingly powerful and virtually universal: good things happen when you’re helpful.

Clear a path and make others look good

I was recently introduced to Ryan Holiday’s “canvas strategy”. In short, his “canvas strategy” speaks to the notion of identifying mentors and actively finding ways to support them and their missi...