How can a company invest all the time and money necessary to manufacture, ship, maintain, and stock big kiosks full of DVDs all over the country—and only charge customers a dollar a day per movie?

Before an audience of startup founders and employees at Catapult Chicago last month, Mark openly answered this and many other questions while riffing on his career path as a serial entrepreneur—which included, as it turns out: SVP of Strategy, Innovation & New Business at Redbox.

He made it clear there is no secret formula for building a concept and turning it into a multi-billion dollar business. But there are a number of open secrets he holds dear that absolutely anyone can use.

Think Weirdly

Everybody can be innovative, but it takes practice and it takes time. Sitting out on a back porch at night with a beer really is the kind of place where billion dollar ideas are born. Obscure connections, forgotten lessons learned, and untapped markets start to become apparent when people allow their busy brains to shut off the incessant chatter of Twitter, Gmail, networking, dinner, and deadlines for an evening.

New experiences will also start to seep into and change old assumptions, which is one of the ways thought leaders stay ahead of the power curve. So whether it’s in the car, club, kitchen, or bathtub, find your beach and think weirdly while you’re there.

The original thought experiment for Redbox started with a bunch of unrelated questions that turned out to be very connected indeed:

• What markets are full of unhappy consumers and ripe for upheaval? (movie rental late fees are the stuff of legend)
• Where do people travel close to their home regularly already? (the grocery store)
• Where are shoppers accustomed to making impulse purchases? (near the checkout line)
• What price is everybody willing to pay for a night’s entertainment? (a dollar a day sounds pretty reasonable)

It’s trite, but it’s true: The only dumb question is an unasked one. But once an idea is implemented, broad brainstorming has to be replaced with exact execution.

Test Yourself Half to Death

An idea isn’t good if your target audience doesn’t think it’s good. So the importance of exhaustively testing how customers use a new product or service cannot be overstated. And pay attention to what they do rather than what they say. Not many movie goers would list Kevin James as their favorite actor. But according to Redbox, he’s the King of American Cinema.

Thorough testing also clarifies and improves a business plan. The second trip customers have to make to return a movie, for example, allowed Redbox to negotiate a rent-free relationship with national grocery chains.

Make no mistake, early testing and iteration is the least glamorous, most difficult part of building a business. Assembling marketing & development teams, analyzing market trends and user feedback, and securing investment is old fashioned hard work. But that’s how big ideas become big companies, and there are a growing number of national organizations and events like Startup America and Startup Weekend that help entrepreneurs turn million-dollar ideas into millions of dollars.

Trust the Plan

Once a business is proven profitable and scalable, the necessary level of investment reaches a level that’s difficult for those who aren’t neck deep in private equity to comprehend. There are now about forty four thousand rental kiosks in the US, and each kiosk costs around fifteen thousand dollars to manufacture.

This means that growing rapidly enough to stave off competitors required a $660 million dollar investment, in a product for which consumers typically spend a maximum of a dollar a day.

But it paid off. In four years, Redbox has gone from a hundred million to two billion dollars in revenue, and four hundred million people walk by a kiosk every week.

Stay Weird to Stay Agile

Like with natural selection, the company that succeeds in the long run isn’t necessarily the biggest or strongest—it’s the one most adaptable to change. When Redbox launched, DVDs were ubiquitous, but they’re already on their way out. What now?

One option would be to milk the DVD rental space completely, and then just as flash drives and streaming media take over, shut everything down and sell everything off.

Instead, Mark poured himself a gin and tonic (I’m guessing) and thought about what Redbox is, what it could be, and which facets of the entertainment industry were ripe for innovation. Then, he decided that rental kiosks were actually discovery destinations for leisure time, and launched a completely new product: tickets to live events.

But you better believe the development team at Redbox did their due diligence before stepping into the overpriced world of convenience fees Ticketmaster has so carefully crafted. And what did they find? An unimaginably high percentage of tickets to live events in the US go unsold. Forty motherloving percent. Sounds like there may be some room for improvement, right?

Do your Thing

So think weirdly, test like crazy, invest with abandon, and don’t forget to stay weird. Your billion dollar idea depends on it.

This was the subject line of an email that Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia sent Jamie Wong several years ago. At the time, Wong hadn’t yet founded Vayable—she already had the idea for the online travel marketplace, but she was still reluctant to execute it. “I felt for some reason like I wasn’t ready,” she says.

When Wong, then an Airbnb host, encountered Gebbia at a meetup, she talked to him about how she really wanted to start her own company. “I asked him if we could grab a coffee, and we did,” Wong recalls. “Then afterwards he sent me an email showing me the first version of Airbnb. The subject of the email was: ‘Got 10 minutes? Go.’”

She was impressed (and shocked) by how Airbnb had since grown from its first version. “Now I know that’s all it takes—seriously. Ten minutes. Get it out. Joe was absolutely right. And I think this is what he tells entrepreneurs all the time, to this day, which is: Get it out.”

Getting It Out

Naturally, it took Wong more than ten minutes to create Vayable. She hustled. She put in the work. She found a technical co-founder (Tim Robertson), designed the site, and developed the technology needed to build her platform. But those ten minutes of “getting it out” were extremely crucial: it marked the end of Wong’s reluctance and the beginning of a commitment to turn ideas into action.

“When I moved back to San Francisco (where I grew up), I knew that I wanted to start this company,” Wong says. “But I felt for some reason like I wasn’t ready. I needed to save more money, I needed to gain more experience, I needed to build my network and get more experience in the travel domain. There was every excuse running through my head, every reason under the sun. The thing is, all of those things were actually true and very rational. But, I think that’s the whole point. When you start a company, it’s totally irrational. No one’s ever prepared, and doing it is a complete exercise in putting a cart before the horse.”

It turned out that Wong’s “irrationality” would spell major entrepreneurial success. Since its founding in 2010, Vayable has grown to offer over 2,500 handpicked experiences in more than 600 cities, connecting travelers to pre-screened local guides. The experiences can be anything from a Flushing Chinatown food tour in New York or or an insider-guided trip to a flea market in Paris, to an equestrian adventure in Buenos Aires or an urban art tour through the streets of Berlin.

Vayable has also been backed by Y Combinator. Recently, it received a seed round of funding from investors like SV Angel, 500 Startups, former Expedia president Erik Blachford, Scribd co-founder Jared Friedman, and Justin.tv and Exec co-founder Justin Kan. Thrillist has praised Vayable as a great way to “free yourself of tourist traps.” GeekSugar adds that the site is “definitely a more personalized way to see the world.”

Today, Wong is no longer reluctant about executing on her own vision, which is to make Vayable the way people travel. “I want to see us in every town, in every village, in every country around the world,” she says. “Hopefully, this will provide new infrastructure for tourism. We’re building a platform where people are making a living doing what they love.”

Connecting the dots

Vayable may be Wong’s first company, but she’s a born hustler. She holds a Master’s degree from Columbia University, where she was also awarded the Chancellor Scholarship for achievements in broadcast journalism. In 2006, she worked closely with the founders of Kickstarter on product development and community building, while also advising on business strategy at mobile payment company Boku; in 2007, she joined the team as a researcher/writer at Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, helping TDS win multiple Emmy Awards for Outstanding Variety, Music, or Comedy Series.

While growing up in California, Wong showed natural entrepreneurial instincts that she did not, at first, recognize she had. She’d pick lemons from the neighbor’s backyard and sell them back to the neighbors. Or she’d make drawings, lay them out on the street, and sell them as artwork. Or she’d perform her own musical shows and sell tickets to strangers. On hot days, she’d resell Otter Pops that her mother bought from Costco.

“My mom said, ‘Jamie, you’re selling them for less than I bought them for.’ And that’s when I learned about margin and profit.” Wong recalls with a laugh. “(But) pretty much every opportunity was an entrepreneurial opportunity. People say that entrepreneurs are born, and I think that’s true—but I also think that you may not realize you’re a born entrepreneur until much later in life. Once that happens, you look back at your life and suddenly the dots start to connect. They may not connect along the way. I thought I took all these detours but it turned out they were all necessary stops.”

Entrepreneurial Learnings and Experiences

Fast forward to 2013. Wong is at the inaugural Big Kansas City (a Silicon Prairie News event), talking to fellow entrepreneurs about “building the world you want to live in.” She says, “There’s no point going out and risking everything—the odds are stacked against you when you start a company—if you’re not actually building the world you want to live in.”

Later, in an exclusive interview with Technori, Wong shares even more words of wisdom, as well as her learnings and experiences from building Vayable.

On realizing she was an entrepreneur: “At TDS, I’d finally acquired my dream job and worked in this incredible environment and amazing culture with a very inspiring boss. I was spending all day mining blogs and news, reading about political hypocrisy, and making jokes about it. It was a freaking dream! But I wasn’t that happy. I wasn’t that engaged. I was executing on someone else’s vision. That was when I realized that if I have my dream job and I’m still dissatisfied with it, I need to start my own thing.”

On starting a company: “It’s like building a parachute on the way down. You don’t know. No one’s done this before. You need to remind yourself that while it’s great to get advice from mentors and read books and educate yourself about your market, all you can really do is follow your instincts. Because there’s no playbook. You’re writing your own playbook. If there’s already a direct way down then you’re probably not making a great contribution and you should probably pivot your idea. The art of the startup is building your parachute on the way down.”

On staying motivated: “You’ve got to love what you do. Because there will be days when everything is going against you and you have no control over it. Sometimes those days turn into weeks or months or, for some companies, years. You have to persevere. And I really do believe that the heart of perseverance is passion. It’s got to be more than just the end point or the goal that feeds you, because that’s illusory. What’s real right now is the journey. If you’re not enjoying that ride and don’t feel committed to it or believe in it, then you better get off.”

On authenticity: “I think that when you’re building a community marketplace, the community really responds to authenticity, to the fact that they can relate to you. We have a team and a foundation that’s really relatable because we are guides. Our community manager, June Lin, is one of the top guides on Vayable. I don’t know how she finds the time to do it but she does. But I do believe that everything has to start at home. All the values that we’re trying to impart to our community: it starts with us. We’re building a team where everyone’s making a living doing what they love.”

On the dynamics of mentorship: “Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia of Airbnb have been incredible mentors. They have also become friends. I think it’s important that you’re friends with your mentors, that there’s mutual respect and that both sides are getting something out of it, the way a friendship really is. These relationships shouldn’t be just one-way. It should never be just about taking; it should be about finding ways to give back.”

On helping build a starter community: “Making entrepreneurship and technology more open is really, really important to me. My background is non-traditional for tech, being a woman, which is clearly a minority in tech, although of course for me the tech isn’t contained in just the gender issue. But (I love) the idea of being impassioned about opening up the sector to more people in general—and growing it. We need more talent. We need tech to be more accessible to more people. Anything that’s going to help build a gateway and a portal to that world, I want to be a part of helping build that. I feel like I’m not only very driven to do so; I feel like it’s my responsibility to do so.”

So many of them are prepared to suffer for their business strategies, yet so few actually take the time to learn how to strategize.

Part of the problem, I suppose, is that it has become quite fashionable to call oneself an entrepreneur without really knowing what the word means. Or what the title requires.

But, necessity is the mother of fashion. When the economy as we once knew it dropped dead in 2008, many Americans suddenly realized: taking control of one’s own destiny and going it alone was as dicey as placing said destiny in the hands of the mysterious boardroom troglodytes that run big corporations with seemingly little else but their own interests—and the interests of their shareholders—in mind. Especially when they were running so many of those businesses into the ground.

So, really, entrepreneurialism was no longer a luxury or a choice. It was the last ticket to self-preservation.

What is your vision? What do you believe?

Entrepreneurship also became something of a quasi-patriotic procession. American history was written by entrepreneurs, beginning with the “Founding Fathers,” who dreamed dreams of self-government wedded to shrewd ideas of personal portfolio management; and then by packs of “rugged individualists” who succeeded them in the decades that followed. They are those singular, sainted figures of yore who continued to dream big, really big, and then created something even bigger: U.S. Steel. Ford Motor Company. Standard Oil.

It’s a perilous reality, too. There are ineluctable dangers associated with the entrepreneurial mantle that are easily and inevitably compounded when, for example, the starter of a startup doesn’t take the time or make the effort to understand the elemental points of strategy. This is not to say that one should drop everything and matriculate in the nearest accelerated B-school program before setting out to become the next Mark Zuckerberg or Sergey Brin.

Quite the contrary. To create a successful strategy as an entrepreneur, one doesn’t need B-school; one needs a vision.

Every strategy begins with some far-reaching, far-thinking view of what can be: A horseless carriage. A trip to the moon. A just and verdant world. Anything you want, really, just so long as everybody else in your world thinks it impossible.

It is, paradoxically, the easiest and hardest question you’ll pose to yourself: What is my vision? Because, what you’re really asking is, What do I believe?

Simple to pop. Tough to answer.

Often times, we don’t know what we believe until we’re tested; and there’s no greater test in America than starting one’s own venture from scratch.

Some would argue that taking swift action before knowing exactly “why”—and “to what end”—is better than taking no action at all. There’s some truth to it: we can all stand around making up our own lines in a venture-play, in the hopes that something like “Hamlet” will emerge before the curtain goes up, and the “play” goes public. Or we could start by envisioning the creation of a poem unlimited and design a plot and develop our roles accordingly in support of a boldly, bravely imagined narrative.

I guess it all depends on what it is we’re trying to do as entrepreneurs: improvise or strategize. If the latter, there are some things to bear in mind before we tease out a vision.

Idealism vs Opportunism? (Or Opportunism as Idealism?)

You know what you don’t want: You don’t want to work for anybody else. You want your name on the door. You want to keep your own counsel and your own hours. You don’t want to ask anybody’s permission to come in late, or to leave early, or to use the restroom.

That’s all well and good, but a vision that merely negates the status quo is not really a vision. A vision is a clear, strategically imaginative idea of something that exists beyond the realm of present possibilities. As you begin to divine your vision as an entrepreneur, you should probably figure out first if you’re out to make it big in the world or for the world. Either one is, of course, a perfectly legitimate underpinning to your vision. If you prefer to make your money first, then figure out how to save the world—great. It’s the old model of the enlightened industrialist, a la Rockefeller and Carnegie; and, among the living, Gates and Buffet.

Just make sure that whatever it is you’re “entrepreneur-ing” isn’t going to destroy the very world you’re hoping to help down the road. If you see opportunism as idealism then perhaps your strategic vision begins to shape up along the lines of social entrepreneurialism: An enterprising model with a mission-driven cause—Tom’s Shoes, Ethos’ Water. Don’t confuse this with “corporate social responsibility,” where the mission exists to serve the business. It’s the other way around.

All Original Goals Melt Into Air

Nothing is certain, not even uncertainty. Our belief about this or that changes from day to day because we change from day to day. Minute to minute actually, if one is paying attention—for example, you have information now that you didn’t have at the beginning of this article; info that may or may not influence future behavior. Either way, you have acquired knowledge—opinions, if you prefer—which hopefully has triggered more thinking, which will lead to more insights, causing the scales of the mind to tilt ever so slightly. (Keep reading and they will tilt some more.) Clearly, the judged—and the judges—are not stationary. Together, they are mutable, always in motion.

What does all this mean? The goal, that shiny city on the hill that you see in your mind’s eye, is never fixed.  It changes as we change—and, often times, the closer entrepreneurs come to the goal, the more they will realize it looks nothing at all like what they imagined. That’s OK. On the road to one’s own private Damascus, the entrepreneur is faced with choices—choices in partners, choices in policies, choices in priorities. Sometimes, it’s a choice that leaves no choice but to kill one version of the dream in favor of another. The adaptable entrepreneur, the elastic entrepreneur, the one who knows that no goal is ever fixed, will claim the brass ring. The inflexible ones, who blindly and blithely pursue the vision of a goal unchanged, even in spite of their own interests, will find themselves leading the dreaded march of folly.

Think Beyond Yourself

Entrepreneurs are usually classified as type-A, single-minded, goal-oriented egoists; the free-market autuer who finds it positively inconceivable that anybody else can improve upon the manifest perfection of the vision. However, the most successful entrepreneurs understand from the get-go that self-centeredness is really a synonym for “unimaginative.”

They not only consider other points of view, even those that run contrary to the big idea; they use the sum of the knowledge and experience of others to imagine, fashion, and hone a shared vision, which in the end, is far, far greater and more powerful than any singly held notion.  This unites coworkers—first followers, if you’re a startup—creating solidarity through a common purpose and true belief in a common cause, which helps to lay the groundwork for something known as “culture.”

And culture devours strategy every time.

I had the privilege of interviewing some incredible entrepreneurs and investors during the conference, including: Tony Conrad, Dave McClure, Marc Ecko, and Gentry Underwood.

I learned an enormous amount from each one of them about investing, startups, building a brand, and human centered design. In the coming weeks, those full interviews will be rolling out on Technori.com.

But, as is often the case, when I’m interviewing someone for a story, sometimes it’s not the words they say that impress or teach me the most.

It’s often the set of intangibles:

• Mannerisms
• Presence
• Tone
• How thoroughly they answer questions
• How open and vulnerable they are willing to be with me
• How generous they are with their time and energy

Every single one of them gave me the best of all of the things on the list above. Here are seven of the specific lessons I learned about those intangibles—and on a top-level, about becoming an incredible starter:

1. Those “famous” entrepreneurs and investors? They are just people.

A lot of folks are star struck when they walk up to a guy like Marc Ecko. But Marc is just a normal guy who’s had the courage to live a phenomenal story. If you want to have a great conversation with a popular entrepreneur or investor, treat him or her like a regular human being. Be prepared with great questions. Soak up as much as you can. Don’t let your irrational fear about going up to someone “famous” get in the way of you running with the opportunity to connect with and learn from them.

2. You have to be yourself.

This is one of those age-old sentiments that is lost on many because the advice is given so frequently. And that’s a shame, because it’s so important. What I noticed about all of the speakers I interviewed is that they were very confident in themselves, flaws and all. They all had an exceptional level of candor, honesty, and vulnerability. You don’t need to be perfect. You don’t need to be like anyone else. You just need to be you. Do that really well, and others will be infectiously drawn to that.

3. Yeah, it’s important to hustle. But it’s also important to cultivate relationships. 

Stop going up to investors and asking for money. Honestly, don’t do that shit. If you want to tell someone passionately about your business, DO IT. ABSOLUTELY. Impress them with your passion. Impress them with your confidence and your story. But, use it as a way to get to know them so they’ll remember you when you follow up. And then, build out that relationship over time. Be valuable to that investor before you ask for money or a meeting. Because if you flat out ask for a meeting, you might get one, and it might be good or bad. But, if you get to know them and build personal rapport, when the time is right, you’ll get that meeting and the investor will be more interested, attentive, and, well, invested in what you have to say.

Relationships are everything. So yeah, go hustle and make incredible shit happen. But remember that, as with any kind of investment, you’re more likely to get someone’s time, money, energy, and respect when you’ve proven that you deserve it more than the thousands of others asking for the same things.

4. Entrepreneurship is fucking hard. 

Every single person I interviewed shared this sentiment. It’s really, really, really, really hard to build a company. If you’ve got hopes of being a successful entrepreneur, brace yourself now. There will be excruciatingly hard moments ahead. It will not always be fun. You will not always love your job every single day. You’ll deal with crises and conflicts and problems bigger than you could ever image. You’ll be told “no” more times than you ever thought possible. Do it anyway. If you’re in love with a dream, and you’ve figured out how to make that dream real at the intersection of your passion and talent, go make it happen. DO NOT STOP. Anything worth doing is fucking hard. Prepare for it.

5. You have to be okay with the potential reality that people will hate on you. 

When you put stuff out into the world, whether it’s a product, a service, an investment, a presentation—whatever—people are going to notice. And when people notice, they are going to have an opinion. Sometimes, those opinions won’t be favorable. Sometimes, they’ll be mean, unfounded, or downright untrue. You have to get used to the idea that people are going to find reasons to hate you and what you’re building. And you have to get over the focus on the 10% of things that go wrong.

The truth is, if you’re building something with all of your heart and soul, more people will love it than hate it. You will make a much bigger positive impact than you could ever imagine. Ignore the haters. Separate the external feedback from your personal sense of self and faith in your startup.

6. Don’t be an asshole. Treat people really well. 

In the process of meeting great people, you’ll inevitably come across some very cocky, arrogant, horrible ones. Don’t get caught up in it. Let it go and realize it’s their own insecurity and drama, not yours. If someone doesn’t want to give you the time of day, don’t waste much time wondering why. It’s not worth it. They’re not worth it. Spend the time instead on making sure you treat everyone else you meet exceptionally well.

No matter how busy you get, how many emails you need to answer, how long your to-do list is, you have to remember this: you’re no more or less important than everyone else on this planet. Everybody has a story to tell. Everyone is fighting a hard battle. Everyone is building something—whether it’s a company, a product, a family, a dream, etc. We have to start treating one another better. You must always keep in mind that, while your startup feels like the most important thing in the world, no one will ever care about it as much as you do (at least, no one ever should). Keep things in perspective.

It’s much, much more important to be kind than it is to be self-important. Give the people you meet—especially those who champion you in your inner circle—all of the love, energy, patience, and kindness you can muster. In the long run, it makes all the difference in the world.

7. Learn how to be 100% present. 

Wherever you are, be there. Be 100% there. As an entrepreneur, you’re likely going through a TON. You’ve got a lot on your plate. You’re working really hard. You have to make big decisions. You’re probably stressed, and overly busy, and anxious. When you walk in the door at an event, meeting, etc., leave it at the door. Let it go. Take the time to really be present with people. Give them everything you’ve got.

Let people know their stories matter to you.

And remember that every story is important—Tony Conrad‘s, Dave McClure‘s, Marc Ecko‘s, and Gentry Underwood‘s….

And yours.

Interns provide high-value, low-cost talent and fresh perspective. Accordingly, the interns’ scope of work can (and should) go beyond stereotypical coffee making. By hiring interns, you can expand capacity for new projects or find students who bring new skills, such as graphic design, to your team.  While ambitious students lack the experience of full-time employees, they genuinely want to learn and excel.

Designing an internship position

So how do you get started? First, consider the following logistics as you design the position:

• When will the internship occur? Full-time internships commonly occur during summer break, but you could also offer part-time positions during the fall or spring semesters. Make sure that a current employee has the capacity to mentor and manage the interns’ work during this period.

• What level of commitment do you expect? Describe your requirements in time (days or hours per week) or key duties, such as managing your social media or achieving sales goals.

• Is the location flexible? Traditional internships usually require face-to-face interaction, but long-distance roles provide greater flexibility to attract more students. Will there be any travel required?

• What skills are required? Before enlisting an intern, determine whether you expect specific skills from day one, or if students can receive training and learn on the job. Be clear about whether you need an iOS developer, someone with a mastery of Microsoft Excel, or both.

• What is your goal for the outcome of the internship?  Do you want to find aspiring entrepreneurs who are interested in gaining short-term experience, or candidates who are looking for full-time job opportunities?  If you’re looking for the latter, focus on hiring students who will graduate sooner.

• Will your internship be paid?  The Department of Labor provides six criteria to determine whether interns need to be paid under the Fair Labor Standards Act.  These guidelines are heavily based on the internship’s educational merit and the benefits that the company receives.  In lieu of being paid, interns might be able to receive college credit through their educational institution.

Cash-strapped students may seek paid opportunities, but interning provides invaluable experience apart from regular compensation. In the long run, students take internships to build their resumes and unlock future opportunities like recommendation letters and networking.  Startups have an important edge when competing for talent because they provide great interaction and flexibility.

How to find great intern applicants

The next step is finding applicants. Recruiting for undergraduate or MBA internships typically begins three- to five months in advance, although many students look for last-minute positions. Attracting great applicants is a lot like real estate: location, location, location. After outlining the position’s basic criteria, you can publicize your internship in a variety of ways. Here are a few effective methods:

• Submit a job posting to a college’s career center or post a message on the campus’s virtual job board. A university-branded site feels more credible than open forums like Craigslist, and helps attract high-quality talent during the recruiting cycle.

• Contact on-campus organizations, such as a consulting club or the college’s entrepreneurship center, with a description of the position and your contact information. If the location is convenient, you could offer to attend a meeting in person.

• Utilize local or national startup-focused sites such as Built in Chicago to broadcast the internship opening. While this may not reach as many eyeballs as a campus-wide ad, proactive students monitor these sites and will follow up.

• Reach out to your network, specifically contacts such as adjunct professors at local universities.  They can recommend outstanding students or share your contact information with their classes.

Recruiting provides a great way to develop on-campus brand recognition. If your startup hires full time employees, internships develop a pipeline for finding new hires. After assessing students’ skills through the internship, companies can easily extend full-time job offers to top performers. While hiring an intern takes time and effort, the benefits easily recoup the costs if you plan for an intern well.

Looking to grow your startup but missed the event? Don’t worry. Here’s a recap of four valuable lessons we learned at the Technori Growth Summit:

1. “Test early and often.” – David Petrillo

As the inventor and co-founder of the wildly successful Coffee Joulies, a coffee temperature regulator that raised over $300K on Kickstarter, Petrillo emphasized the importance of having a “test everything” mentality in growing a business. Test everything, test early, test often.

Interestingly enough, the success of Coffee Joulies did not happen overnight. It was essentially an iterative process that involved working on prototypes for 8 months, conducting tons of research and lots of testing, regularly pulling historical data from Kickstarter to identify what worked and (perhaps more importantly) what didn’t work, pitching to targeted blogs to maximize viral potential, and being relentless in listening to the customer in order to create a product that delivered real value.

The idea behind Coffee Joulies, Petrillo said, was to come up with a “simple, easy solution that I could build myself to solve a simple product that a bunch of people have.” He started on a small budget and allocated only $5K for making the product. (“Half the fun was doing everything super cheap,” Petrillo said.) From this original vision, he was able to raise funds from Kickstarter (Coffee Joulies was the third most-funded project at the time), negotiated a $150K deal with the sharks on ABC’s Shark Tank, and win another $100K from the 2011 Shopify Build-a-Business competition. In other words, Petrillo was able to grow Coffee Joulies without going the traditional angel or VC fundraising route.

“Our backers are our customers,” he said.

2. “Create content that teaches.” – Neil Patel

Co-founder of visitor tracking CrazyEgg and customer analytics platform KISSmetrics, Patel knows a thing or two about consistently increasing traffic and revenue, two of the most telling signs of any Internet company’s growth. A blogger, entrepreneur, analytics expert, and angel investor, he’s also known for guiding businesses—entrepreneurs, bloggers, marketers, and digital media publishers, in particular—on how to double, sometimes even triple, traffic in 30 days.

Patel’s advice? “Create content that teaches.” This is something that he himself has focused on. Having blogged since 2006, Patel generates impressive amounts of traffic and revenue from quality, informative content. “You can’t give up,” he said. “You need to be consistently awesome.”

His blogging hustle and hard work have certainly paid off. With KISSmetrics, 70 percent of leads come from the blog; his current Quick Sprout blog, meanwhile, produces over $1 million in annual revenues. He has also written for or been featured on Inc. Magazine, Forbes, GigaOM, TechCrunch, Mashable, and Entrepreneur Magazine.

Patel also advised creating the kind of content that is targeted to a specific niche. “Our [niche-targeted content] converted visitors into customers,” he said. “The broader [blog] posts did not convert as much.” Like Petrillo, he recognized early on the importance of having a product or site that delivered value—that customers, in other words, were willing to pay for.

3. “The more incentive you give people to share, the more likely they are to share.” – Emerson Spartz

Spartz stood before the summit attendees as a leading authority in driving a special, very modern-day type of growth: Internet virality. Now a New York Times best-selling author and the CEO of Chicago-based digital company Spartz Media, he was the original founder of the Harry Potter fan site MuggleNet, which he created when he was 12.

His successes—which include sites like OMG Facts, GivesMeHope, SmartphOWNED, Six Billion Secrets, and, of course, MuggleNet—don’t necessarily reveal how he always seems to be able to create sites that generate an incredible amount of word-of-mouth buzz (plus about 160 million total monthly pageviews). In fact, his personal upbringing reveals more: at age 12, growing up as a “weird kid” in Indiana (in his words), Spartz convinced his parents to let him drop out and home school himself. In college, he read one non-fiction book a day. He usually read about business, politics, technology, and economics, but a lot of the books were about neuroscience.

It’s safe to say that from this daily reading habit, Spartz learned a great deal about how the human mind works: valuable information that serves him well not only in persuading and convincing consumers, but also in getting them talking.

Sharing growth and virality tips to summit attendees, Spartz said that identity—specifically, how identity is affirmed online—plays an important role in determining the viral success of a project, campaign, or product. “People always ask themselves, ‘Will sharing this make me look cool?’ The more incentive you give people to share, the more likely they are to share.”

4. “The most important factor to succeed at growth is company culture.” – Aaron Ginn

Having led the growth of businesses that range from early-stage startups to large corporations, Ginn got his start in consumer healthcare with medical wallet service Simplee. He was also a former growth hacker for Mitt Romney for America, and is now the Head of Growth at StumbleUpon, a mentor/organizer for Growthathon, and the author of the TechCrunch series, “Defining a Growth Hacker.”

At the summit, Ginn discussed the multiple challenges faced by companies looking to grow. “Everyone wants to grow,” he said. “(But) growth is really hard. Product is really hard. Recruiting is really hard. Doing anything worthwhile is hard.”

Ginn said that the key is to dedicate resources to help achieve an organization’s growth goals: “This prevents excuses for failure.” And it all starts with company culture—with a specialized team of people recognizing what they value, what the focus is, how others are held accountable, and how problems can be solved.

Ginn also emphasized the roles of the product manager, engineers, data scientist, and designers in growing a company. “Everybody loves building the next shiny thing,” he said, “but growth requires banging your head against the wall. Common culture problems can inhibit growth, so [you have to] focus a company on what is really important.”

That sentiment came from Erik Severinghaus, founder of SimpleRelevance, at the April 25th Evening With An Expert event hosted by the Chicago chapter of the American Marketing Association at the 1871 tech incubator.

Math may not be the inspiration for marketers, but now it’s become a necessity. There’s simply too much valuable information buried in big data for them to ignore it any longer. Severinghaus was part of a discussion on how marketers are using big data. He was joined by Doug Laney of Gartner and Dan Neely of Networked Insights in an evening that would leave Don Draper sprinting for the cocktail bar.

From an evening full of great takeaways, here are the four concepts that stood out:

1. “The Mad Men are giving way to The Math Men”

That’s a quote from Severinghaus, but it could have been the title of the evening’s program.

“Too much marketing is intuition, or based on dated data,” Neely said. “That’s why it fails.”

There’s so much data available today, and so many great companies analyzing it to find its incremental value, that there’s no excuse for the level of guesswork advertisers are accustomed to.

Severinghaus, whose company specializes in automated email personalization, sited the “batch and blast” email technique used by so many Fortune 500 companies. He argues that these companies are losing millions of dollars in the form of degraded email lists because they’re sending people information they don’t want, and/or at times they don’t want to see it.

“We know that women purchase more often over lunch hour and men purchase after work,” he said. “Why don’t we use that?”

2. Don’t be afraid

Data is created constantly.

Companies are racing to find the best way to use this information trail we’re leaving behind everywhere we go in the digital world—our website visits, our check-ins, our social conversations, our eye-tracking.

To many of us, this is a scary notion. A couple of years ago, I clicked on a link for Clarks desert boots. Soon, ads for the boots were popping up on every site I visited. I thought I had stumbled into the early roll of a fashion wave– until I realized it was a personal wave created for me based on the user trail I left behind.

This specter of the corporate Big Brother, powered by big data, is hard to shake. Neely acknowledged those fears, but argued that this omnipresent data farming produces far more good than evil.

“Some of it’s bad, but most of it is good,” he said. “My life is much easier because of the amount of information Delta Airlines knows about me. I like that they re-book my flight for me because they know I’m not going to make my connection. I like not having to wait in line.”

Personally, I’m not all in. I don’t want to be a member of the choir (see Eli Pariser’s great Ted Talk on Filter Bubbles), but for the marketer or the entrepreneur, there’s no excuse for waiting.

Oh, and in case you were wondering: though I don’t like being sold to, I did buy those Clarks boots. And I love them.

3. Get used to this phrase: “Pre-informed”

“Pre-informed” is a term Neely used, as he bemoaned the inefficiencies of the campaign creation process. ”It is not an efficient process to do marketing,” he said. “It’s a very inefficient thing. When you think of the rigor that goes into planning a campaign, does all of it really need to happen?”

Traditionally marketing has been 80 percent hunches and 20 percent testing. Neely predicts that smart data use can flip this equation. ”That’s pre-informing your decisions,” he said. “We’re going to get more efficient at what we do, and better at spending the money we have.”

4. Experiment more

Wait, doesn’t experimentation contradict the idea of being pre-informed?

Not really. We still need to follow some hunches and take some risks. That’s how we flip this data on its head and create new, incredibly valuable insights (Matthew Hartman touched on this just the other day.)

“Too many companies,” Laney said, “are scared of experimentation. Instead, they stick to their silos.” Laney pointed to Google, a company that runs thousands of experiments each year, and is famous for giving employees “20% time” solely to experiment with new ideas. Google isn’t afraid to fail with new service launches if it’s in the name of innovation.

“We encourage organizations to experiment constantly,” Laney said. “We look to other industries for great ideas to use big data. After all, if someone in your industry is already doing something, do you really want to be the second one in line?”

When an entrepreneur goes for funding, he or she needs to present a financing package to potential investors and understand all the details and assumptions behind the numbers.  The financial model is the key tool entrepreneurs can use to share their perspectives with investors.  The VCs will have their own smarty pants accounting analysts prepare their own models, but that’s equivalent to catalog-level modeling, versus your runway experience.  Therefore, your experience in the field should inform your financial modeling assumptions and make them more compelling.

The VCs will create a funding structure element to their model, which will assist them in evaluating the funding terms.  Startup management teams should see how a VC’s ROI compares to their modeling scenarios and inquire what assumptions were made so they can compare against what they already have input.

Preparing your financial model

To prepare a financial model for a funding round, you need to have these core elements:

• Assumptions
• P&L statement
• Balance sheet
• Statement of cash flow
• Forecasts
• Key metrics

If you have accurate bookkeeping, then the P&L, balance sheet, and statement of cash flow should be easy to generate straight from your general ledger system.

Make sure you cover these in your VC presentation

The presentation to potential investors requires due diligence on the following:

• Market size
• Growth
• Unmet needs
• Value proposition
• Competition
• Strengths and weaknesses
• Business model (which will have many assumptions)
• Scalability
• Key metrics
• Multi-year financial model
• Historical and future timeline of the business
• Investment rounds, returns, risks, and exit strategies
• Introduction to team

Investors have the mindset “actions speak louder than words,” so do not have too much narrative or fluff in the presentation to attract funding.  Show the investors a detailed financial model with the ability to test assumptions and sensitivity, and show how this startup is going to make them money.

Startup assumptions

Assumptions are key for forecasting the future position of the business.  Use historical data or benchmarking of similar businesses to ensure your assumptions are believable.  Assumptions vary based on your business model, but some metric examples would be:

• Number of future users
• Percentage of users you will retain
• How much money will you generate per user
• New revenue streams
• Burn rate of expenses

The future of your company

These assumptions are then plugged into the current reporting to generate multi-year financials to show what the future of the company will look like financially.  It is important to create a model that allows you to play with the assumptions based on feedback received, or new data that will impact the whole model. Key metrics to keep in mind are:

• ROE (return on equity)
• ROI (return on investment)
• Net profit margin ratio
• Accounts receivable turnover ratio
• Gross profit margin ratio
• Debt to Equity ratio
• Working capital

Once you have your assumptions, key metrics, and financials prepared, it is important that you have short-term and long-term cash flow strategies in place for the existing business, and for the potential capital funding raised.  Managing cash flow is an essential function of sustaining a business.  Effective cash flow strategies assure that enough cash is on hand to meet financial obligations (e.g. payroll, suppliers, customers, credit, loans, inventory, or any capital expenditures), while maximizing financial returns from excess cash.

The importance of the business and financial models does not end once the financing is complete.  You and your management team should continue to work with, improve, and update it.  As the business develops, the quality of the forecasting will become apparent.   It is likely that you and your management team will be judged on performance according to your forecasts—so achieving the milestones identified in the modeling will be an important factor in your relationship with your VCs going forward.  This will become a living document and part of the management toolbox for your business.

So when going to a VC, make sure your presentation looks good, but can also be backed up.

From the entrepreneur’s perspective, pay to play might at first look like an intra-investor issue, and indeed, the attitudes of the various investors towards pay to play frequently diverge for a variety of mostly investor-centric reasons.  However, in my view, entrepreneurs make a serious mistake when they assume that pay to play is something the investors should work out among themselves.  Instead, pay to play is something that the entrepreneur should drive at the term sheet stage–to the point of suggesting that it be added to a term sheet an investor has advanced that does not include it.

What makes pay to play important in the context of the investor syndicate–that the various investors want to make sure that they are all committed to the deal for the long haul, even if the long haul includes a down round detour–makes it even more important to the entrepreneur.  Investors may have a variety of internal fund reasons for not participating in a down round– most obviously, that they don’t have sufficient capital reserves to pony up. Nonetheless, from the entrepreneur’s perspective, if the business needs capital the investor’s problems are just that: the investor’s problems.  The entrepreneur, in every down round case I can think of, should want every current investor to have every good reason to pony up.  You may not always need negotiating leverage vis-a-vis your investors, but having it is never a bad thing.

As for the various flavors of pay to play, the two bookends are as follows:

The most severe form asserts that if an investor doesn’t play in a down round, his or her preferred stock is immediately converted to common stock at the pre-round (i.e. without any anti-dilution protection for the round that he or she is passing on) conversion price.  Ouch.

At the other end of the spectrum is a pay to play provision which asserts that an investor who doesn’t play in a given down round does not get anti-dilution protection in that round, but retains all rights, including anti-dilution protection, going forward.  Smart readers can no doubt see room for a wide variety of pay to play provisions falling between the two extremes.

My take is that the entrepreneur should always want the most severe form of pay to play provision he or she can get—the idea being that you can always, at the time of a down round (and with the cooperation of the participating investors in the round) back off enforcing the full force of the provision on the investors that choose not to play.  On the other hand, you can’t up the ante on the pay to play after the fact. In other words, you can’t, come the future down round, increase the severity of the pay to play provision already in place.

A few concluding thoughts:

First, while pay to play is something entrepreneurs should make sure is on the table, ultimately it is in most cases an important negotiating point, but not (in my experience) something to bust an otherwise solid deal over.

Second, whatever the ultimate outcome of the pay to play discussion, having the conversation will typically smoke out any prospective investors who may have serious internal constraints on participating in any downstream financing rounds.  The only worse thing then having an investor who doesn’t have any dry powder available for a future round, down or otherwise, is having such an investor and not knowing that going in.

These people can be hard to spot in advance, but when you have one working for you, you know it right away. At ReWork, we’ve found that these indispensable employees tend to share eight common traits. Here they are, along with some advice on how you can uncover them.

1. Resourcefulness

The ability to (quickly) find, unlock, and mobilize resources (i.e. money, expertise, skills, support) in order to plan, pivot, evaluate, execute, or scale a project.

The information age has been upon us for sometime now. Anything we could ever hope to know is at our fingertips, including best practices, trouble-shooting guides, top-10 lists, and the Twitter handles of people who are far more experienced than we are. But not everyone can access this information equally.  Most are still overwhelmed in this sea of knowledge.

If I asked you to conduct a feasibility study on effective conservation techniques to protect the rare aquatic pygmy sloths of Panama, how quickly could you find a template for such a study? How long before you would be in touch with a niche conservation biologist who studies those animals to help advise you?

If your answer is anything over 2 hours, you’ve got room for improvement (seriously).

How to uncover it:

• Ask for specific examples of times that they found critical information or resources quickly. This includes fundraising and coalition building, as well as smaller stuff (like “How-To” lists) that helped a project move forward faster.
• Tell them you want to do an obscure project and need help. Ask them to conduct a feasibility study on something like the pygmy sloths examples above. See how quickly they can find a template for such a study, or the contact information for the niche biologist who studies those animals and may be able to serve as an advisor.

2. Resiliency

The ability to work well under uncertainty, and to continue after (substantial) setbacks.

Most organizations are now experiencing increased instability and uncertainty, and thus, using shorter planning horizons. Teams in all functional areas are seeing more tumultuous work streams with changing goals and deadlines. Some people have a strong tendency to mentally lock-up under those conditions. The results aren’t good: decreased performance, irritability, fear, and tensions with other team members. Resiliency is the ability to maintain smooth sailing through those situations.

How to uncover it:

• Ask for evidence of grit. This could be times they narrowly averted disaster, took a huge risk and had it pay off, or came back from a stunning defeat to achieve victory in the end.

3. Confidence

A healthy esteem for one’s abilities and approach to life; an innate knowledge that “I can handle it.”

The line between confidence and arrogance is fine, as we all know. Nobody wants to work with people who think they are always right. But there is no substitute for someone who truly, with good reason, believes in his or her ability to handle any situation and figure it out.

How to uncover it:

• See if the person is willing to say “I don’t know.” Ask a question (perhaps about your organization) that: A.) has a right and wrong answer, and B.) is highly unlikely that this person knows the answer. See if they admit not knowing, or if they dodge or BS an answer, or try to guess. If they do any of those things, beware. That is not cool.
• Listen to how they speak. Confident people tend to speak more slowly, take pauses before answering, and don’t backpedal their answers.

4. Coachability

The trait of not only being able to accept constructive criticism, but of actively seeking out consistent feedback and mentorship; the trait of intentionally cultivating a beginner’s mind; the essence of a learner.

Especially for those early in their careers, this is key. Nobody knows everything, and there are lots of people who’ve been there and done that, with failure and success. Having a genuine interest in learning from them–even when it’s hard–is incredibly useful.

How to uncover it:

• Ask for examples of times when they pursued or engaged in mentorship opportunities, and how their mentors helped improve their professional abilities over time or when it mattered most.

5. Versatility

The ability to bring one’s full range of skills and strengths to bear in different and new situations, including both on teams and in individual settings.

This is pretty straightforward. Managers need to know that they can re-shuffle and re-allocate people as needed. Sometimes, that means logistical changes and deadlines shifts. Other times, it means entirely new workflow compared to the status quo. The more adaptable the person, the wider a range of settings he or she can be sent into.

How to uncover it it:

• Ask for evidence that they’ve excelled in wildly different work settings, and ask about their process for handling the transitions.

6. Industriousness

The ability to work your ass off; good old fashioned hard work.

Similar to confidence, there is nothing like a dose of serious hard work. Can they crank for 8 hours straight when push comes to shove? Can they pull an all-nighter if they have to? Do they complain when mind-numbing tasks are required, or do they just do them, and do them well?

How to uncover it:

• Ask them to explain what it means to hustle, in their own words. You’ll know right away whether they like that word–their eyes will light up, they’ll smile, and they’ll fondly recount tales of intense times. Everyone has that spark that let’s them rise to the occasion. Give them the chance to let their spark shine a bit.

7. Loyalty

The ability and willingness to develop a long-term relationship with a team, organization, or cause.

As careers fragment further and further (current college grads will, on average, work for 14 different employers before they retire), the days of long-term work relationships seem to be fading fast. And truthfully, they probably are. But that doesn’t mean people like to work with others who’ll take off at the first sign of trouble or greener pastures.

How to uncover it:

• Ask for examples of times when they chose loyalty over opportunity.
• Ask them what they are committed to in their life, and see if there is overlap in their answer and the mission of your company.

Note: Be careful with this one. Just because someone left a job (or jobs) in short time periods doesn’t mean they don’t have loyalty–it just means those places weren’t able to command their loyalty.

8. Principle

A sense of what is right and what is wrong, and choosing to act in accordance with what is right.

This one is another fine line situation. Being principled is relatively rare–but being judgmental is quite common. Principled doesn’t mean casting judgments left and right; it means being willing to speak up when something wrong is about to happen. Human beings have an instinctual urge to follow those who show a strong sense of ethical concern, and every manager can sleep better at night knowing they can trust their team with sensitive information, delicate situations, and brand equity. Hire people who live their values, and you’ll develop a fantastic company culture.

How to uncover it:

• This one is tough. It’s impossible to ask about this directly in any useful way. Keep your eyes open for someone speaking up about something they don’t agree with. You can ask about times that they’ve witnessed injustice and intervened, but that can be a difficult question to put someone on the spot with.

Find these eight traits in the talent you bring on, and your organization will be thanking you for years to come.