(also funny/ironic to see Amit Agarwal article right below on "how to make sure Techmeme links to your blog", heh ;)
Okay folks... i am getting really fucking tired of all your
yeah, i know it's gonna be tough. and the credit crunch / downturn / whatchamacallit has already changed the balance of power from entrepreneur to investor in less than a month. if you are lucky enough to *GET* financing, your term sheets are gonna suck ass (learn about liquidation preferences & protective provisions). if you are running an existing startup, you are probably going to have to cut spending, cut hiring, and you may even end up firing people / doing layoffs. and then you pay taxes and then you die.
sorry, life's a bitch.
but listen up:
in other words... WAKE. the FUCK. UP.
if you came to Silicon Valley to do a startup (or to join one), it ain't always fun & games. this isn't Disneyland, or a Harlequin romance novel (unless of course you're Tom Perkins). you don't always win every hand of poker, you don't always get a free lunch, an Aeron chair, or free child care.
the popular [mis]conception of startups being free rides to a pile of cash and/or stock options is just so much horse shit.
twenty years ago, i moved out to Silicon Valley after graduating from college. i did not do so with the intent to get rich quick, but neither to live among sheep. i came here for geeks & technology, ultimate frisbee, and a free-wheeling, entrepreneurial spirit that has electrified the valley since The Traitorous Eight walked out of Shockley Semiconductor over 50 years ago and started a Revolution.
while i don't profess to understand credit or capital markets, i do know that internet startups cost less money than ever to get started. and unless i missed something, there are more people online now than ever, spending more money online than ever. and i doubt any of these trends will likely reverse in the long-term -- lower costs, more people online, more e-commerce. doesn't that seem like a pretty good environment for building new online businesses? if not, then what the fuck are you doing here? go back home & get a safe job in insurance or mortgage appraisals (oh, wait a sec...)
the long-term macro trend of growing global internet e-commerce has been the foundation of my own personal startup bets, and why i plan to continue to invest going forward. the companies and people i bet on HAVE to be both optimistic & opportunistic, if only because THE ODDS AGAINST STARTUPS SUCK ***ALL*** THE TIME, not just in downturns. you damn well *better* have a positive attitude, or you're just never going to get out of bed in the morning.
you mean the current market environment scares you?
try making payroll on credit card advances when you're carrying over $100K in personal debt (been there). try dealing with your servers being stolen on new year's day while you're in the middle of trying to close an acquisition (yeah, that sucked too). try looking yourself in the face every morning, knowing 10-20 people depend on you for their jobs & families & kids, and feeling like you're completely inadequate to the task and can't hide it (every day for 3 years).
being an entrepreneur is a friggin' FEAR FACTORY, and a living nightmare every day of the week. this is nothing new. 4 out of 5 small businesses fail within the first few years, and the odds aren't that much different for startups. you are going to be embarrassed, ashamed, labeled as an idiot, shunned, ridiculed, and occasionally driven from the village with pitchforks. on average, YOU ARE GOING TO FAIL. MULTIPLE TIMES, in NEW & INTERESTING ways.
GET USED TO IT.
in fact, the more you are used to failing -- and failing fast, with data on how you fail -- the better off you will be. for a great presentation on how to use speed & fast failure as the ultimate startup weapon, check out mike cassidy's presentation on SPEED: The Ultimate Startup Weapon.
and while we're at it, let me take on this issue of "conserving cash". personally, i think it's the wrong message. the point is not to spend less cash. the point is to FIND YOUR FRIGGIN' BUSINESS MODEL. if you know which direction you're going, it's ok to RUN... on the other hand, if you have no friggin clue where you going, it doesn't matter how slow you crawl you ain't gonna get there. you can slow down your spend until you figure out your business, but once you DO understand it, then by all means STEP ON THE GAS! use your cash effectively to build product features, expand marketing, and hopefully use cash-flow positive arbitrage to MAKE MONEY.
to put it more succinctly: in a down market, it's even more important for you to understand the fundamental metrics of your startup, how activation & retention work, how customer acquisition & referral work, and how to make money. these were always important, just more so now when people are looking harder at #'s.
*PLUG*: for more about how to learn more about Startup Metrics, see our recently completed STARTonomics conference.
Silicon Valley has never been without risk or fear. in fact, quite the opposite -- Silicon Valley is rife with fear & paranoia. and yet GOOD entrepreneurs somehow manage to overcome their fear, somehow make their hopes & dreams bigger than their fear, somehow manage to find imaginative solutions to problems whilst being backed into a corner by a guy with a .44 Magnum who outweighs you by 75 lbs, and nothing in your pockets but a butter knife and a paper clip. it doesn't matter.
and so i leave you with this:
the true Silicon Valley entrepreneur will find a way around these obstacles. the true Silicon Valley entrepreneur is not frightened by a "down market". they are not daunted by VCs who now have massive leverage. and they are not going to back down. the true Silicon Valley entrepreneur is full of optimism, and sees the world as his or her oyster.
you are MacGyver.
you are Jeanne d'Arc.
you are Luke Skywalker.
you are Paul FUCKING Atreides, and the SPICE must FLOW, motherfucker.
Robert just penned a pretty good post on how to tune up your resume for the "economic slowdown". He gets it mostly right (write?) -- do your best to stand out, write a regular blog -- however, i think he's a bit long-winded on his recommendations and overlooks some fundamentals (which he actually does practice, but doesn't mention so much).
So as i commented on Guy Kawasaki's blog almost 2 years ago, i'll summarize again why Resumes are for Shit, and why all you need are 4 basic things to get a kick-ass job (or whatever u want really -- still have to write that post later on why money-sex-power-drugs-guns are pretty much commutable):
1) get a LinkedIn profile, and pimp it out -- HARD.
a simple LinkedIn profile is nice, but it's not what i'm talking about. you better work, sister (sashay, chante!) -- get your connections into LinkedIn, fill out a work history with different positions you've held & expertise gained, get recommendations from people & partners who you worked with (not just your boss), answer questions on topics that matter in your line of work, etc. most importantly, reference companies, products, skills, and other keywords that are important to you & others (see below).
note that other social networking profiles don't substitute for LinkedIn. there was a time when i thought Facebook might eventually subsume LinkedIn, but i was clearly wr... wr... WRONG (ok there, i said it). both LinkedIn & Facebook -- and for that matter, MySpace as well -- have broadly established & well-entrenched userbase that likely prefer one of those 3 primary SNS platforms. but still most people who call themselves "professionals" should maintain a LinkedIn profile, even if it's not their primary hangout. LinkedIn is *THE* place that most recruiting (or any) professionals use for people search, and LinkedIn search results generally rank at the top for many Google name searches. note: if you have a common name like John Smith, even more reason to create popular content attached to your name to distinguish you from other John Smith's who rank for basketball, accounting, or other types of specialized content.
fyi, Guy was initially a bit of a Luddite re: my suggestion to use LinkedIn + Blog as alternatives to a traditional resume, however he came around later and penned one of the single most useful posts about LinkedIn i've ever read (tip: an old friend may have helped change his mind on that one). if you haven't checked it out, i strongly encourage you to do so. Guy doesn't really need LinkedIn, but his suggestions are top notch.
2) write a regular blog, and 3) ABSOLUTELY DOMINATE selected keywords (the ones that matter to you or others).
surprisingly, this doesn't take as much work as you'd think.
if you write regularly, passionately, & intelligently about topics people care about (ie: search for), use appropriate keywords in headlines & titles, you'll start to rank for that content rather quickly. in fact, i've accidentally blogged about topics / keywords i don't really care about, but ended up ranking for anyway.
let me explain.
NEWSFLASH: there are a lot of people out there who blog. a few of these crazy people blog regularly. a few of those few know how to use keywords in headlines, and how link text & basic SEO fundamentals work. a very small further few write well and are fun & interesting to read. however, there are very very VERY few people who blog regularly, interestingly, & specifically with respect to the keywords they care about. if you are one of these people, you can rather easily become king of your (perhaps small but focused) hill, by using regular & interesting blog posts that score well and rank for search keywords of note. it also helps if you include or embed photos or other media (see #4).
you can of course use other search-friendly sites & services as distribution for your content & keywords, but blogs (& blog headlines) are pretty well optimized for search so it's probably the easiest place to start... tho twitter & friendfeed & a few other notable services work well to amplify & distribute original signal from your blog or other social platforms. i'll describe some of these below.
4) create notable online social media (video, pictures, presentations, etc) relevant to your line of work and link [to] them / embed them on your blog, your LinkedIn profile, and other online sites.
this one is actually overlooked by a number of very thoughtful (but not very colorful) bloggers. i once wrote a post about Facebook licensing their platform to Bebo in response to Google launching OpenSocial. the copy was pretty much empty blather except for the somewhat insane graphic at right that i created using powerpoint, and then uploaded to Flickr (and also to SlideShare), then embedded in the post. i probably spent about 5 minutes writing the post, but i killed most of an afternoon (3-4 hours) putting together one silly image to satisfy my own freakish psychotic social network addiction. the photo later got picked up by several other bloggers, and when i checked just now the Flickr photo had over 6000 views. the SlideShare presentation (just one slide) has about 5600 views. and the photo comes up on the first page of google image search results for the term "social graph". whaddya know: my crazy-ass graphic is DOMINATING the social graph term! and i bet my post gets more awareness than any ten other high-and-mighty bloggers who wrote some in-depth intellectual analysis (yeah i know i do that shit too).
the simple thing is --
we are visual creatures.
we dream in color.
people love images, and they watch a lot more TV than they read. you've heard "a picture says a thousand words"? well as far as blogs are concerned, it's damn well true. i'd even go so far as to say there is such a thing as keyword visual arbitrage -- essentially, that there are high-volume search terms with low-volume associated images or video, that you can draft off and use to discover & attract new audience. this may seem like link-baiting, but actually it's just satisfying market demand for visual imagery around key terms that people have expressed an interest in.
in fact, i'm often criticized by several folks who say that my trademark "ransom note kidnapper" font style choices -- bold, underlined, enlarged, or many-colored fonts -- clearly let people know i am both childish and insane. and some folks may be right that it is incredibly annoying and odd, but it is a visual brand choice i've made (whether consciously or not ;) whatever your perspective, i've developed my own special (olympics?) audience. the choice of using "AARRR!" as an acronym for my "Startup Metrics for Pirates" is pretty much the auditory complement to the visual point above.
if you don't care to be quite as lunatic as i, you can simply use embed code and links to bring your popular social media from other sites & services into your blog or social profiles. i'm particularly fond of Flickr (graphics), YouTube (video), and SlideShare (powerpoint), as these services are also destination sites in themselves, and drive their own unique traffic to content you distribute on those sites. many people who do embed rich content also overlook this fact -- that the same content redistributed on multiple platforms can draw incremental users & attention, and that some of these platforms may be better at driving relevant traffic than your own blog or text-based sites/services.
in short, the rich media you associate with your blog and certain keywords also DEFINE WHO YOU ARE and WHAT YOU MAKE / USE / ENJOY. if you can cleverly associate social media -- literally, media to share with other people -- with your persona, and with specific tags & keywords, then you can merge these things into one.
in summary: you become a notable social object by associating rich media & keyword text with the person you are on blogs and social network profiles.
in closing, i include below examples of the graphic, video, and powerpoint content associated with "Startup Metrics" that i typically embed on my blog & social profiles:
I recently happened across SweetCron (via Mona's FF i think), developed by freelance renaissance geek YongFook who lives in Tokyo (gotta meet dude next time i'm over visiting the in-laws). SweetCron looks pretty cool -- "Automated Lifestream Blog Software" -- which i guess is kinda like FriendFeed for your own [self-hosted] blog.
first public release appears to have launched just a few hours ago. congrats to YongFook, pictured at right :)
here are a couple of screenshot videos he did that will give you an idea of how it works:
Admin Panel preview:
Write Panel preview:
just guessing, but i think SweetCron could be pretty Fooking Huge.
UPDATE: more info on Sweetcron on ReadWriteWeb & Podcasting News.
After much work & preparation -- mostly by folks at Dealmaker Media & ACSseo; a bit by yours truly -- Startonomics is coming together quite nicely :)
The new conf site is mostly launched, speakers & sessions are up, and the first Startonomics blog post is now live here:
Hope you can join us for a terrific event... so go register NOW, before your startup goes down in flames!
(hurry up, dammit. daddy needs a new pair of ass-kicking alligator shoes, pronto...)
so i went to a Rock Concert Facebook F8 yesterday, and i had a good time.
yeah sure, the hype machine was in overdrive & some folks were a little underwhelmed (tho others more excited than usual). Jerry didn't show up, but Zuck was a lot more relaxed than last year, and even cracked a few funny jokes. he ain't no Steve Jobs yet, but overall it was a good set. and a few of us not only rocked but grokked the Happy Happy Joy Joy Meaning of It All.
all Love aside tho, we're just beginning the Second Age of Aquarius.
here are 3 Important Signs to recognize on your way to Enlightenment:
Sign #1:
Facebook Connect isn't Single Sign-on, it's Social Sign-on.
Facebook Connect is barely arrived, but it's going to change how people think about the usefulness of social networks, and will have a substantial increase on their value in the marketplace. the FB Connect integrations demo'd yesterday by Digg, SixApart, & CitySearch (wtf? how much did they pay to bump Yelp off stage?) were impressive and very smooth. I believe most people who saw those demos now recognize the potential for using Facebook as a single sign-on option on many consumer websites. (note: i'm not downplaying the significance of competing alternatives MySpace Data Availability, Google Friend Connect, or even OpenID [tho Dick isn't sure]; they're also relevant. currently Facebook Connect appears to be the lead horse in the race... but watch closely).
while the topic has been much discussed over the past few months (years even), it seems only a few people really understand the implications of using a social network as single sign-on service. historically, Microsoft tried to create Passport (aka Hailstorm) as a broad use single sign-on for other non-Microsoft services, but failed rather miserably... in my opinion, as much due to poor UI design as lack of 3rd-party incentive. the strategy had merit, but the tactics & implementation sucked. after a blue-streak chair-throwing incident, Marc Lucovsky is now at Google trying one more time.
these days there *are* functional multi-service sign-ons available from Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, & others, but they haven't been widely adopted by many third parties (yet). OpenID has potential as well, but i don't see it getting traction without major vendor support... and i don't mean just lip service, but also coordinated developer evangelism communication as well.
now the Grand Game is Again Afoot, only this time not just at Microsoft, Google, & Yahoo, but also Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn & other social networks. Why? Because while major platform services have ~200M-500M account logins, the primary social networks are also approaching critical mass in #s of users (critical = >100M, roughly speaking). More importantly social networks don't just have lots of user profile data, they also have functional Friend Lists (with pictures); their users are now socialized and familiar with invitation behavior, and this enables easy viral distribution of content & applications. thus, it's not Single Sign-on, it's Social Sign-on.
Sign #2:
Facebook Payments is Coming... Ready for Social Commerce?
The shoe that *didn't* drop yesterday at F8 was of course Facebook Payments. It's a poorly-kept secret Facebook is working hard on their own payment system, and many of us were hoping they would launch it at F8, but alas that rumor was squashed earlier in the week. Rightly so, payment infrastructure (and fraud prevention that goes along with it) is not something you shove out the door without a lot of testing, if it's not quite ready for primetime, i'd just as soon they wait a bit longer. i'd still expect they will ship before end of the year, but i won't hold my breath.
In any case, once they DO ship it's likely there will be considerable interest by the developer community to integrate payments into a number of apps, in the hopes someone will figure out how to make money. if that scales up, then there is tremendous value in combining an integrated payment service with several hundred million user logins -- each with a hundred or so friends they can share / refer / inform about their favorite new clothes, music, or other commercial goods & services. want to get a discount on that new iPhone? invite a friend to buy one too, and hey maybe you both get 20% off. in other words, this isn't just another e-commerce payment system, it's about Making E-Commerce Viral.
Yeah, i know group buying has been tried before, but this time you've got an audience of millions already used to social networks, news feeds, online shopping, & lifestyle transparency... now they're so used to online voyeurism, it's just a matter of time before someone cracks the nut on this one.
Sign #3:
Search Monetization (Future Intent) gives way to Social Commerce (Past Discovery)
Ok i admit, this one is purely speculative. But it's fun to put on the aluminum foil hat every now & then, and think about how Facebook could beat Google. It certainly won't happen overnight, and Google is already trying to co-opt Facebook's social mojo, but maybe it's not as crazy as you think. Up at Foo Camp a few weeks ago, Danny Sullivan moderated a debate between Tim O'Reilly and Mike Arrington about how & why Microsoft/Yahoo should keep trying to fight Google (or not). While there was a lot of argument on approach, almost no one thought Google could be beaten head-to-head in Search. In fact the big question was whether there was ANY way to make a dent in Google's dominance in Search at all.
well i'm here to tell you: there is a way.
close your eyes for a second, and i will explain. (Let Go Luke... Use the Force!)
Let's think about how most people buy stuff in the real world. Do they do a lot of research? well, sometimes. Do they search around & look for the best price, the best deal? yeah, sometimes they do that too. Do they typically make the decision all by themselves? hmmm no, most people don't just depend on their own efforts... they talk to friends & family, and they rely heavily on word of mouth & opinion. most purchases are social activity: markets are conversations; commerce is communication.
And about all that research... do you really think people LIKE to do that stuff? Aren't a lot of people really just very lazy? wouldn't they cop out on all that search & research if they could just see what other people were doing, and copy their behavior? yeah, that's more like it. i tell ya... most times i ain't the hard-working little pig that builds his house out of bricks. i'm the lazy-ass little pig that just wants to find out what the next guy is doing, do the same damn thing, & get back to watching YouTube and knock back a cold one.
Now let's translate the behavioral observations above into the online world.
What if instead of having to do all the hard work online by myself, i could just see what my friends (or famous celebrities) are doing? What if i could just use my social network & related information services to help me DISCOVER what other people have already bought? Then i could just forget about all that research, and cut to the chase. Imagine if the dominant way to make money on the web changed from using search engines to monetize future intent, and instead transitioned to using news feeds and social networks to monetize discovery & distribution of past transactional behavior?
hmmm... that might create a whole new way for someone to make a Mint out of social networks.
[cue Pink Floyd's "Money" & cash register sounds... then fade to black]
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