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Transcript:

So that’s a great segue in the next question which is what do you do for the company? If you end up investing in this new venture that this whole class, we’d all brought to you with this idea, what are you going to do for us?

Well, number one write a check which is crucial. And then find out what the needs of the company are. And it’s always going to be people-needs. So if the company needs biz dev help then we would find someone to either go work full-time in biz-dev or someone to advise the company in biz-dev. If the company needs more engineering talent then we’ll introduce the company to engineering talent. So in the early stages, it’s staffing up and getting the company such that it has a successful prototype. That its testing in the market place is getting some metrics. And then we all go introduce the company to the VC’s on the road if it’s a capital intensive company. If not, what’s starting to happen now is the angels will do the next round of financing. Because it doesn’t cost a lot of money to build a company today. You can do your angel round for half a million to a million. And then do the next round for a couple of million. And if the product is taking off, you may not need to raise VC funding.

I think you’re probably talking a lot about Web 2.0 Ventures For sure. That can describe as opposed to capital intensive ventures where you’ve got to build the after how things manufactured.

Right. Just another observation, when you’re a start-up it’s like you’re a fast-moving car and you don’t have time to stop. That you’re going through a busy traffic city, right? And so part of my job I think is to just help all the lights turn green at the right time. And you’ll never know what that’s going to be. You’ll never know if that’s biz-dev. You’ll never know if that’s helping with recruiting. You just never really know. But your always trying to work with the entrepreneur and to anticipate. And that’s why you want to have a broad-based Ocean’s 11 team. Because if you have the right mix of people, there’s always somebody that can help that light turn green. Just the right time when the care is flying through the intersection to break next speed. And in an environment where speed is everything. The company that just has the one extra green light maybe gets to the finish line just a little bit faster. That’s the difference between winning and losing.

Stanford’s Entrepreneurship Corner.

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What people often don’t realize is that the single hardest part of any startup is: people. This presents itself in a number of different ways, whether it be building something your customers love, understanding the intricacies of a strategic partner’s motivations, or employees.

The transition that a startup CEO has to make over the course of the company is not easy. In the early stages, a startup needs someone who is a doer and an executor, because if they don’t, there’s no one else to do so.

As the startup starts to gain traction, a CEO’s responsibilities change. The job of CEO is not to delegate specific tasks. A CEO must effectively communicate the company vision enabling employees to make educated decisions on their own. Allow employees to act in the company’s best interests. What does doing so provide the employee? Responsibility, ownership, and trust.

Responsibility / Accountability

Hire the very best. Do not fall into the trap of just hiring the best you can find right now, because you think you need to scale. Hiring the wrong people can be toxic to the rest of your team. Know what you want and need from your employees and do not deviate from this.

Employees need to not only respect one another, but feel as though they can learn from their colleagues.

via gapingvoid gallery

Reward your top achievers. Let your employees know that so long as they continue to perform and execute well, there will be unlimited opportunities and resources for them to grow at your company.

When an employee is not on par with the rest, there is deep resentment amongst the people who really matter. The worst thing that can happen is people become despondent. Take actions to correct and address this when necessary.

Ownership

Look for the people who have something to prove. It doesn’t matter whether it’s to themselves or the rest of the world. These are the most driven people you can find. They are competent and don’t wait for permission.

The best employees are hard to control, so don’t impede their work and what they can accomplish.  They’d rather do something now and ask for forgiveness later. If a problem arises, they’re quick to fix it. Let them experiment. Not all will pay off, but some will.

People MUST be passionate. Passion breeds a willingness to defend one’s position. It also helps eliminate Groupthink, which is a sign your employees aren’t confident in themselves and their opinions.

You will run into problems if you don’t give competent employees the opportunity to own their own destiny. Their purpose is to contribute to forming the vision of the company, not to solely carry out your vision. Collaborate with employees rather than dictate and they will almost always exceed what you thought was possible.

With passion comes personal pride and responsibility: a sense that what you’re doing really matters. Everyone wants needs to have a purpose.

Trust

You can’t possibly know everything you need to. You absolutely have to accept this fact; don’t be stubborn. Hire smart people to fill in your gaps. Are you self-aware enough to know where you need help?

Don’t be a blocker for other people to do their work. It’s hard to give up control, as you’re used to doing everything yourself. Giving away more ownership and responsibility won’t be a problem, so long as, you hire the right people.

For there to be an ideal level of trust, communication is paramount (and deserves an entire post of its own). Be an open book. People will be better able to empathize with you and the situation. Never let your employees feel they have to put what you say through a filter to conclude the truth.

What Will Make Your Startup Successful

It’s not the product nor the go-to market strategy that ensures success. Just as it’s not the founders nor the investors. It’s the people that are passionately innovating in your company daily.

This is a very high-level view of leadership and culture in a startup, but I consider it to be a key component of a startup’s ability to mature past just being a product built by a couple of 20-something year old founders.

Thanks Jake and Aarlo for reading drafts of this.

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“You hear people in the Valley always say ‘I want my entrepreneurs to be hungry.” I agree with that, but think there’s a difference between being panicked and being hungry. And I think too often founders find themselves with negative net worth, credit card bills, etc and they get freaked out.”

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July 14th. Most know it as Bastille Day, the national holiday in France that marks the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille fortress, leading to the eventual demise of its’ absolute monarchy.

I know it as the day my father’s struggle with cancer ended three years ago. After years of treatments, surgeries, and hope for a cure, it all came to an end.

They say you are whom your parents make you. If this is true, I am sincerely grateful. Throughout my life, my father guided me through thick and thin.

In his final letter to me, he wrote:

I have followed my passion and my heart and you’ll see what I have accomplished in a short time, exercising carpe diem and just going for it.

I think that this can be your legacy. As you have often heard me say, follow your passion and you will reap the rewards.

Beware of not taking your time and exploring all the avenues.

He stressed the importance of living life to its’ fullest and in the moment. I greatly value this philosophy.

When he was diagnosed with cancer, it was an uncertain time in my life. I was not sure what to do, but he led the way practicing his principles of carpe diem. After completing chemotherapy, he moved forward in the face of adversity and always found something new to learn from life. He chose not let his situation hold him back. Ironically, my father has been the most helpful in making sense of my mother’s recent passing.

It is simple to talk about a philosophy of life, but by example my father has taught me how to execute on this philosophy: to seize the moment, to be resilient in the face of adversity, and to learn what life has to offer.

I’ve always looked at everything that I’ve gone through in life as a learning situation, even though it might not have been under the best of circumstances (to be blunt, it sucked). I came to realize that if I took something away from the experience, it would be more manageable because it would be worthwhile.

Even though times may seem hard, it is important to not just try to get by. Learn from them and capitalize on what you’ve learned in the past as the future becomes the present.

My dad was an advocate of personal responsibility, which is why I’ve always felt comfortable creating my own path rather than following everyone else.

Too often, people do things just because they think that is what is expected of them or to please someone else. Only realize you’ve spent all this time doing something that you hated just to satisfy everyone but yourself.

Life is limited enough as it is. Don’t waste anytime doing something that doesn’t satisfy you.

Because if you do procrastinate, you may find that the deadline you set for yourself is tragically cut short.

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My mother recently passed away. I never would’ve expected to be 20 years old and have my only living relative be my 95 year old grandmother who suffers from Alzheimer’s. But, I’ll save my life story for another post.

With any transformative event, there’s an ending, followed by neutrality, and then a beginning. During the neutral zone where I began to come to terms with the my mother’s loss, I reevaluated my priorities moving forward in life. I decided it’d be best for me to part with Heyzap and pursue my other entrepreneurial passions. I’m quite proud of what I helped Heyzap accomplish, and I can’t wait to see how they progress.

Beginning Customer Development

I first had to find out what my entrepreneurial passion truly entailed. That’s where customer development comes into play. It’s allowed me to research a few different markets, and decide which made most sense to focus on and pursue.

MVP #1 is Reputely: a game mechanics platform for web and mobile apps. It seemed obvious to start with Reputely, as it’s very similar to Heyzap, in terms of, distribution and adding virality and engaging content to websites. After helping Heyzap expand it’s distribution network to 200,000+ websites, I know exactly how to automate and scale Reputely.

Rather than building out the product before launching it, I decided to launch Reputely, just with barebones front-end marketing and some screenshots of what the product would be.

I used wufoo for my sign up form and just asked for a name, email, and website (optional). To increase the signup funnel, I wanted to lower the friction as much as possible while still capturing the valuable feedback from the users. So I immediately added an optional page that had my customer development questions. Check out the signup flow here.

I had a few hypotheses going into this that had to be tested.

Click Here to See The Questions I Asked

What is most important to you?

We’re building a few different products. Which would you use?

If Reputely were to offer ONLY an API, would this interest you?

Which social media site drives the most traffic to your website?

What’s the primary benefit you’re hoping Reputely can provide?

Is there anything else you’d like to add? Feedback, Comments, Suggestions, Secret Messages, etc.

As an early beta user, are you willing to talk with us via Skype so we can make Reputely awesome for you?

Some responses were multiple paragraphs of absolutely amazing insight. Feedback I wouldn’t have gotten if I had waited to launch with an actual product … when it was too late to change or accommodate.

This looks like a great idea. I was thinking to build something like this for 2 of our apps, but an external API would save some time.

An out of the box but customizable game mechanics, badging, points platform. Love the idea!

An easy way to implement achievements, invites, points system so I don’t have to code it myself.

83 % agreed to be reached on Skype for further feedback.

I’ll keep the other aggregate results for my own personal use at this time. =)

I also offered a white paper on the best practices of game mechanics for download … Which, in true MVP fashion, has yet to be written.

Adding this whitepaper option increased signups 50%.

Post ‘Launch’

I’m now in a great position. I’ve got a dialogue with my target customers, who are amazingly passionate about Reputely and really want to help.

I was made aware of 3 startups which have remained rather stealth, and it’s been interesting talking with them and seeing what their take on the market is. Something I wouldn’t have been able to do had I not launched.

A few VCs and Angels reached out, but I’m not interested in raising a round right now. I think it’s best to wait to find a fulltime partner to work with on Reputely.

Lessons Learned

• Ask questions in the signup flow, but make it optional
• Automatically select the options you want to encourage your users to select
• Gather feedback from users who didn’t sign up. I used Kissinsights with great success.
• Launch earlier. I could’ve validated the idea with just a single landing page.
• Optimal Startup Cycle:  Sell your product —> Build your product —> Expand sales funnel
• If your goal is initial traffic, don’t launch on a Friday evening before a long weekend holiday. However, it didn’t negatively affect my goal of getting helpful feedback.
• The Hacker News Community provides great feedback and is an ideal place to launch.
• Haters are consistent throughout life (Actual feedback comment: “none, it all seems to suck ass so far”)

Not bad for someone who most would call a “business guy.”

If you liked this post, why not follow me on Twitter here?

Would you mind signing up for Reputely and giving me your feedback?

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Transcript:

As a kid, I spent my summers with my grandparents on their ranch in Texas. I helped fix windmills, vaccinate cattle, and do other chores. We also watched soap operas every afternoon, especially “Days of our Lives.” My grandparents belonged to a Caravan Club, a group of Airstream trailer owners who travel together around the U.S. and Canada. And every few summers, we’d join the caravan. We’d hitch up the Airstream trailer to my grandfather’s car, and off we’d go, in a line with 300 other Airstream adventurers. I loved and worshipped my grandparents and I really looked forward to these trips. On one particular trip, I was about 10 years old. I was rolling around in the big bench seat in the back of the car. My grandfather was driving. And my grandmother had the passenger seat. She smoked throughout these trips, and I hated the smell.

At that age, I’d take any excuse to make estimates and do minor arithmetic. I’d calculate our gas mileage — figure out useless statistics on things like grocery spending. I’d been hearing an ad campaign about smoking. I can’t remember the details, but basically the ad said, every puff of a cigarette takes some number of minutes off of your life: I think it might have been two minutes per puff. At any rate, I decided to do the math for my grandmother. I estimated the number of cigarettes per days, estimated the number of puffs per cigarette and so on. When I was satisfied that I’d come up with a reasonable number, I poked my head into the front of the car, tapped my grandmother on the shoulder, and proudly proclaimed, “At two minutes per puff, you’ve taken nine years off your life!”

I have a vivid memory of what happened, and it was not what I expected. I expected to be applauded for my cleverness and arithmetic skills. “Jeff, you’re so smart. You had to have made some tricky estimates, figure out the number of minutes in a year and do some division.” That’s not what happened. Instead, my grandmother burst into tears. I sat in the backseat and did not know what to do. While my grandmother sat crying, my grandfather, who had been driving in silence, pulled over onto the shoulder of the highway. He got out of the car and came around and opened my door and waited for me to follow. Was I in trouble? My grandfather was a highly intelligent, quiet man. He had never said a harsh word to me, and maybe this was to be the first time? Or maybe he would ask that I get back in the car and apologize to my grandmother. I had no experience in this realm with my grandparents and no way to gauge what the consequences might be. We stopped beside the trailer. My grandfather looked at me, and after a bit of silence, he gently and calmly said, “Jeff, one day you’ll understand that it’s harder to be kind than clever.”

What I want to talk to you about today is the difference between gifts and choices. Cleverness is a gift, kindness is a choice. Gifts are easy — they’re given after all. Choices can be hard. You can seduce yourself with your gifts if you’re not careful, and if you do, it’ll probably be to the detriment of your choices.

This is a group with many gifts. I’m sure one of your gifts is the gift of a smart and capable brain. I’m confident that’s the case because admission is competitive and if there weren’t some signs that you’re clever, the dean of admission wouldn’t have let you in.

Your smarts will come in handy because you will travel in a land of marvels. We humans — plodding as we are — will astonish ourselves. We’ll invent ways to generate clean energy and a lot of it. Atom by atom, we’ll assemble tiny machines that will enter cell walls and make repairs. This month comes the extraordinary but also inevitable news that we’ve synthesized life. In the coming years, we’ll not only synthesize it, but we’ll engineer it to specifications. I believe you’ll even see us understand the human brain. Jules Verne, Mark Twain, Galileo, Newton — all the curious from the ages would have wanted to be alive most of all right now. As a civilization, we will have so many gifts, just as you as individuals have so many individual gifts as you sit before me.

How will you use these gifts? And will you take pride in your gifts or pride in your choices?

I got the idea to start Amazon 16 years ago. I came across the fact that Web usage was growing at 2,300 percent per year. I’d never seen or heard of anything that grew that fast, and the idea of building an online bookstore with millions of titles — something that simply couldn’t exist in the physical world — was very exciting to me. I had just turned 30 years old, and I’d been married for a year. I told my wife MacKenzie that I wanted to quit my job and go do this crazy thing that probably wouldn’t work since most startups don’t, and I wasn’t sure what would happen after that. MacKenzie (also a Princeton grad and sitting here in the second row) told me I should go for it. As a young boy, I’d been a garage inventor. I’d invented an automatic gate closer out of cement-filled tires, a solar cooker that didn’t work very well out of an umbrella and tinfoil, baking-pan alarms to entrap my siblings. I’d always wanted to be an inventor, and she wanted me to follow my passion.

I was working at a financial firm in New York City with a bunch of very smart people, and I had a brilliant boss that I much admired. I went to my boss and told him I wanted to start a company selling books on the Internet. He took me on a long walk in Central Park, listened carefully to me, and finally said, “That sounds like a really good idea, but it would be an even better idea for someone who didn’t already have a good job.” That logic made some sense to me, and he convinced me to think about it for 48 hours before making a final decision. Seen in that light, it really was a difficult choice, but ultimately, I decided I had to give it a shot. I didn’t think I’d regret trying and failing. And I suspected I would always be haunted by a decision to not try at all. After much consideration, I took the less safe path to follow my passion, and I’m proud of that choice.

Tomorrow, in a very real sense, your life — the life you author from scratch on your own — begins.

How will you use your gifts? What choices will you make?

Will inertia be your guide, or will you follow your passions?

Will you follow dogma, or will you be original?

Will you choose a life of ease, or a life of service and adventure?

Will you wilt under criticism, or will you follow your convictions?

Will you bluff it out when you’re wrong, or will you apologize?

Will you guard your heart against rejection, or will you act when you fall in love?

Will you play it safe, or will you be a little bit swashbuckling?

When it’s tough, will you give up, or will you be relentless?

Will you be a cynic, or will you be a builder?

Will you be clever at the expense of others, or will you be kind?

I will hazard a prediction. When you are 80 years old, and in a quiet moment of reflection narrating for only yourself the most personal version of your life story, the telling that will be most compact and meaningful will be the series of choices you have made. In the end, we are our choices. Build yourself a great story. Thank you and good luck!

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Sivers definitely provides some good advice, but there’s a few things here and there that would benefit from some clarification.

To briefly sum up his advice:

1. Choose one company and focus all of your efforts on it.
2. Engage many different people in the company, and make it clear you want to work there.
3. Persistent and varied contact until they hire you

Be Aware of What Motivates You

What are you hoping to get from a job? Are you just in it for the money? Do you need to work on interesting and challenging problems? What type of company culture will you thrive in?

You must answer those questions to know what company will be the right fit for you.

Be an Expert

Focus on building your reputation as a thought leader in your niche. This is something that you should be doing whether you are looking to be hired or not. It takes time and effort, but it is as simple as starting a blog and demonstrating your knowledge of the industry. Give people the chance to know who you are and what you believe without an interview even being necessary.

Show Off

Demonstrate your knowledge and skills in a context that they understand: their company. Tell them why their product sucks, fix it, make it better, and show them you’re passionate about the problems they’re trying to solve. Doing this will produce results much better than persistently contacting them—you retain all of the power when it comes to negotiations. You’re confident in what you can do, and you’ve already proven yourself.

What techniques have you found to be effective for landing your dream job?

If you liked this post, are you following me on twitter yet?

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Here’s what I don’t understand: almost everyone wants to be successful but most simply aren’t willing to do the necessary work. The secret of success isn’t even a secret anymore but still almost no one gets it; it’s as if there is a pile of cash sitting and waiting for you to touch; but for some strange reason, you don’t.

For most people, the race is finished even before it begins out of sheer arrogance, laziness and the lack of initiative. Some of these “get-rich-dreamers” actually wake-up and saunter, only to stumble and fall back into nothingness. Want your dream to become a reality?

Here are 9 secrets to being a successful entrepreneur:

Successful Entrepreneurs think, feel and act confident

One of the fundamental attributes of success is confidence. How do you ever expect to convince others to do business with you if you yourself don’t belief you’re worth doing business with? You have to be optimistic that all your hard work will pay off. Along your path to success, you will fail… miserably. The real question is whether you’re able to recover from those failures and overcome them.

Hard work, like no other

Most people just dream of being wealthy and hardly anyone moves a muscle to earn that extra dollar. Here’s another, “in-your-face” truth to success: get up ahead of everyone else and go back sleep when everyone else is almost done sleeping, only to wake up again much before everyone else.

So many people think they want to be an entrepreneur running their own startup—very few are willing to do the work necessary. Completing (and loving!) an almost inhuman amount of work within a day, working hard like there’s no tomorrow and working on jobs that others consider to be beneath them are the secrets to success. Are you actually willing to do whatever it takes?

Bargain like a fishwife

Most people think that negotiating the hell out of anyone trying to make a deal with you is a waste of time or that you might lose the deal if you negotiate way too much and risk offending the other party; but that is exactly what power players do.

Experienced executives can be the toughest people to negotiate with. They will either get what they want or walk out of the room immediately. Contrary to what most people think, the deal is far from busted because they will often call back or close the deal right there. Master negotiation skills and be willing to walk away and see how the world comes running to your feet.

Put yourself in the position of always feeling comfortable walking away from a deal, and you have mastered the art of negotiation. Have you tried being a fishwife yet?

Save money like a miser

Sure, you can probably get by spending your paycheck every month and living a luxurious life, but how does that fit into your longterm goals? You do have a plan, don’t you? Having a nice cushion allows you to feel comfortable working on your “crazy side project.”

Saving money also allows you to invest in the smart people you surround yourself with, your friends. Ever heard of a friends and family round?

If the most amazing investment opportunity were to come to you tomorrow, would you be able to act on it? Are you willing to make the sacrifices today, so that you can prosper tomorrow?

Love what you do

Earlier I mentioned that you will fail miserably at least once. It’s loving what you do that keeps you going and convinces you to dig your heels in and try once more. Some of the most successful people I know weren’t motivated by the money or the glory. They followed their passions—reaped the rewards—and prospered. Would you be willing to do what you’re doing if you were guaranteed to never make a single dollar?

Be well-read

Knowledge is power – while you may think that’s cliché, I swear by it. Stay on top of information relevant to you, and success will follow. Successful entrepreneurs prefer a book over Television; they would rather take a trip to an unknown place than spend time chatting about the latest gossip. They read when they wait, travel, before and after sleep, and whenever else they get time. Do you read what matters?

Time is god, nothing else

Do you value your time above all else? If you ever have a chance to see someone who executes, and executes well, you’ll see what I mean. They hurry; they don’t stop; they don’t pause for anything; they make quick decisions; they execute in a single day work equivalent to what 3 people do; they are not available for hours of chit-chat.

They are ruthless when it comes to time and guess what? They don’t have the time to hear you complain about the fact that they just passed on your offer to “sit over a cup of coffee”. I know it sounds funny, but the cofounders of Heyzap order everything possible on Amazon, whether it be toothpaste or nutella. Why? Running to the store to pickup those items isn’t efficient for them. How important is your time to you?

Taking risks vs being brash; Tenaciousness vs stupidity — knowing the difference

One of the other reasons why entrepreneurs are successful is because they never gave up. However, they do give up when it makes sense to do so. One of the key differences here between them and most others is simple—you’ve got to know when to give up and when not to. Take calculated risks, as opposed to, being brash and making decisions in the heat of the moment. There is a difference between being tenacious and being stupid. Taking calculated risk breeds winners but being brash throws you into the rabbit-hole. Are you mindful of everything at play?

Self-Aware

In startups, there are the known knowns, the known unknowns, and the unknown unknowns. The unknown unknowns are the most prevalent in an early-stage startup. Your goal is to test your hypotheses, which you’ve formed based on what you know, and in turn, turn those unknown unknowns into, at least, known unknowns. Have you formed a framework for learning what you don’t know?

Have you followed any of the above points so far? What characteristics do you think are inherent in successful entrepreneurs?

If you liked this post, you should follow me on twitter here.

Photo credit: elea

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