Master of 500 Hats

RethinkHawaii.com (Nov 1-5): Come Get Your Geek On.

Sometimes we all need a little time to Think. Time to get in touch with our Inner Geek.

Time to get in touch with Water, Land, & things Blue-Green.

Time to meet friends across the Pacific in the Middle.

It's time to...

RethinkHawaii.com

Come join us Nov 1-5 in Oahu for tech, green, clean, and mean social media... register now using code REDPILL, and save over $600 off the normal conference fee.

RethinkHawaii will feature a conference of mini-conferences around:

• Startups & Startonomics
• Sustainability & Clean, Green Tech
• Social Media & Business
• East Meets West (Internet Asia)
• Hawaii Unconference

Check out who's coming... including Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay and the Omidyar Network.

hope you can be there with us, to think about what's coming next :)

Gordon Gekko 2.0: Flipping is GOOD. (aka Memo to Jason Fried: Sorry, You're Fucking Wrong.)

[clarification: i was a private angel investor in Mint's A round back in early 2007, when i was also doing some marketing consulting for the company. i was not directly involved in the Founders Fund investment in Mint's C round a few months ago. the comments below are primarily drawn from my personal experience with the company before i joined Founders Fund]

[disclosure: the views expressed below are my own, and do not in any way represent the official position or perspective of either Mint.com or Founders Fund.]

Dear Jason Fried:

Sorry, You're Fucking Wrong.

    Flipping is GOOD.

Let me explain...

In a poorly-researched post titled "The Next Generation Bends Over" (cute) penned a few weeks ago by Jason Fried, founder/CEO of 37 Signals, the author attempts to make the case that:

1) VCs behind Mint.com forced founder/CEO Aaron Patzer into $170M acquisition by Intuit

2) it's a growing trend "indicative of VC-induced cancer that’s infecting our industry and killing off the next generation"

3) young entrepreneurs should be more bold, audacious, go all-in on their vision, in order to "kick the ass" of the collective incumbents / dominant players

In order, these assertions are:

1) Fucking Wrong, and Irresponsible Conjecture & Hyperbole

2) Completely Wrong, and in fact Exactly the Opposite trend is going on, and finally

3) Wrong in most cases & crap advice for young entrepreneurs.

I'll now address each point specifically, and explain why Jason Fried -- although in his own right, an accomplished entrepreneur, whose products i use and respect -- is full of shit in this particular instance.

The VCs behind Mint.com Did NOT Force a Sale. Do Your Damn Homework Before You Speak.

First & foremost, while i respect Jason's opinion and right to post whatever the fuck he feels like, his article was -- by his own admission -- not based on any fact-checking.  At the beginning of his post, Jason states "i don't know the full back story, but i bet this sale was encouraged by a Mint investor."  IMHO, this is just incredibly irresponsible: you're a *very* visible figure ripping other folks on mere conjecture.

Perhaps you might want to contact one of these investors -- who, like me, are all publicly listed in Mint's entry on Crunchbase -- and ASK one of them, before you blow such a wild assertion out of your ass? You probably know several of them, and certainly through your connections it would be fairly easy to reach one of them to confirm or deny your suspicion. While i don't expect folks who aren't breaking-news bloggers to follow basic journalistic principles, making such an accusation without the tiniest shred of evidence is lazy at best, and borderline slanderous at worst.

Or, if you're simply too damn lazy to do some basic research, maybe you could just ask any experienced entrepreneur or venture investor why in the hell would it make any fucking sense for Series B investor Benchmark to encourage a sale that's likely only 4-5x its investment, or Series C investors who just put money in 30 days ago?  or do you somehow think the seed or A round investors were controlling Aaron's actions with a car battery attached to his balls? if you had any knowledge of Aaron whatsoever, you would know that he is one confident sonuvabitch who RARELY lets anyone force him into doing anything.

In short, your logic here is not only faulty, it's piss-poor and reveals your absolute ignorance of what goes on in the venture world.  Sure, you're absolutely correct there are some VCs that might force an entrepreneur's hand -- however, in most cases IT'S IN EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE SCENARIO of what you suggest. They usually want the entrepreneur to stay in the game, NOT sell, and aim for a larger / later win -- typically by FORGOING an acquisition and instead taking a round of capital -- which, in fact, was exactly what Twitter did when you were hypocritically whining about them last week.

Although there may indeed be examples of VCs forcing an entrepreneur to sell to get liquidity to investors, it's not at all typical and usually the opposite of institutional investor motivations.

The "Growing Trend" in Internet deals is towards More & Smaller Acquisitions.  But it's not because of VCs, or the Financial Crisis, or Sarbanes-Oxley.  It's because the Web is Maturing, and Internet Platform Giants are outsourcing / buying Innovation.

The second point that Fried asserts is that this is somehow a growing trend, and that VCs are changing the industry, "killing off the next generation" of entrepreneurs by forcing premature acquisitions. Again, nothing could be further from the truth... and in fact, the EXACT opposite is the notable trend going on in the industry right now.

First it should be noted that M&A have always outnumbered IPOs, but regardless IPOs basically shut down in tech after 2001 due to the dot-com blowup.  Subsequently, many armchair analysts have stated that Sarbanes-Oxley legislation has made it more expensive to go public. Others have noted the financial crisis ending as a reason for more acquisitions.  Still other conspiracy-theorists like Jason think VCs seeking liquidity for investments are at fault.

While any of these may be contributing factors, the more basic trend is this: there are now tens, if not hundreds, of large online platform companies with millions of users and positive cashflow.  In addition to Google, Yahoo, & Microsoft, there are also eBay, Apple, Amazon, News Corp, Facebook, AOL, CBS Interactive, ComCast, IAC, etc, etc, etc. There are tens of companies that can pull the trigger on a <$500M deal, and 100s that can do a <$100M deal.

What's fundamentally different in the last ten years is that most big companies didn't have a need or facility for acquiring web startups.  They didn't understand them, and couldn't figure out how to integrate them into their business.  However, as the Internet has matured, ALMOST EVERY company is now a web company, and the Internet is both a primary and low-cost distribution channel.  It is now very easy to integrate a web-based acquisition [at least from a technical standpoint... might be more challenging re: politics & fiefdoms].  And since most innovation doesn't happen at big companies, it's almost guaranteed that we'll see more acquisitions of small startups to help grow larger company platform strategies. 

In fact, as more platform companies compete for deals, you'll likely see deal size go down as they try and acquire products & talent ever earlier in the startup lifecycle.  There's no need to wait for companies to become $1billion-dollar powerhouses -- it's much more capital efficient to acquire them after they've proven out basic technology & gotten a little elbow in their customer adoption.  Why buy it for $500M a few years later, if you can buy it for $50M now?  I'm sure this was part of Intuit's thinking about Mint... as soon as they saw the Series C deal go down, they realized if they waited another 2-3 years, the pricetag might go up even further.  So they cut a deal now.

This particular trend is what is scaring the shit out of big VCs right now.  Both lower capital costs for startups and lower average exits for acquisitions are screwing up large VC firm strategy.  Fred Wilson and others have written about this, & experienced investors like Alan Patricof have downsized funds to under $100M to make them more manageable in this "small-ball" environment.

While this trend may negatively affect some VCs, it's actually a very positive trend for angel investors and smaller VC funds, and it's an especially GOOD trend for entrepreneurs.  This creates a great market environment for small investment / small exit deals that are exactly what Web 2.0 entrepreneurs are serving up. In other words: the Future is Bright, Time to Buy Sunglasses.

Why Flipping is GOOD, & Why Young Entrepreneurs Should Probably Sell Their Startup Sooner than Later.

Finally, i'll make an intentionally controversial stmt:

 Young Entrepreneurs Should Sell Out Early (and not Late or Never)

Why?  For the same reason Why Dogs Lick Their Balls -- BECAUSE THEY CAN.

Look, i'm not trying to get anyone to sell their grand vision short.  If you've got a great business to build, by all means give it your all and run it forever.  However, for most entrepreneurs it's not going to be the only business they do in their lives.  And for the young entrepreneur -- particularly those under 30 who've never done it before -- the single best thing you can do to ensure your future success is TO GET A DEAL DONE. It's heroic and glamorous to "go all in", but realize that many times that means you may come away with NOTHING.  Playing well sometimes means you take a single or a double instead of getting thrown out trying to steal home.  And sometimes it means just taking 4 balls and getting on base.  However you play the game, swinging for the fences every damn time may work for Babe Ruth and Albert Pujols, but i'm personally more a fan of Ichiro Suzuki and Billy Beane. Small-ball and MoneyBall can be just as beautiful as a homerun.

it almost doesn't matter how large or small it is (altho firesale acquisitions don't count), the ability for an entrepreneur to have future success is typically judged by historical metrics.  and since most startups FAIL, the fact that you can take a startup to ANY size exit proves you can beat the odds, and that you may have the ability to do it again.  Once you have a deal under your belt -- whether it's a $3M deal, a $30M deal, or a $300M deal, you are bankable.  People will bet on you again. Investors, Partners, Employees, Reporters, etc will all believe you can do it (sometimes to their detriment, because again the odds are most startups fail -- even those by previously-successful entrepreneurs).

In addition, contrary to all these haterz who paint acquisitions as a bad deal or a sell-out, i actually think it's a great thing -- imagine being able to take 3-5 years to build a product, develop it to some level of usefulness, grow customers, build revenue, and then sell to a larger organization that decides it could use that innovation to help their business where it sees new opportunities.  Isn't that awesome?  Isn't that a vision fulfilled?  How about the fact that you can perhaps after a few years go back out & do that again?  Why is it that no one seems to think switching jobs every 3-5 years is a bad thing, but somehow think that selling your business to someone who really wants it and will grow it isn't terrific?

More Transactions Grow The Market. Startup Ecosystem Efficiency Raises All Boats.

Lastly, here's the thing i really want to stress, more than peeing all over Jason's post: more transactions of any kind or size help improve overall startup ecosystem health.

Fact is, startups operate in a financial system that is inefficient, illiquid, and challenging to manage.

Venture Capital exists because startups are generally deemed too risky for debt capital, or for traditional financing. This item is often overlooked by entrepreneurs (and investors) who view the VC field as glamorous and confident, when it fact it is mostly ignorant and risk-averse.  VCs like to maintain asymmetric information advantages over their competitors, and sometimes even over entrepreneurs.  Keeping competing VCs, and even sometimes their own LPs & entrepreneurs in the dark about value and pricing is sometimes in their best interest -- it KEEPS PRICES DOWN.  However, infrequent financing round / transactions and lack of objective pricing actually don't serve the interests of entrepreneurs.  As with most markets, liquidity and transparency provide the enabling mechanisms to grow the market larger and to reward market participants more richly.

This is a non-obvious point. 

More & smaller transactions in the market actually improve ecosystem efficiency, and provide better pricing transparency.  In the long-run, it benefits all system participants for small transactions to occur, because it makes the overall market more knowledgeable -- this in turn, reduces risk and encourages greater investment... which also encourages greater [overall] returns.

In summary, the benefits of selling startups early -- or simply when a transaction is available -- may be a smart strategy for both entrepreneurs and VCs to help improve the market, and reward themselves at the same time.  It may not be the best strategy for Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, or other titans of industry, but it might be a reasonable strategy for 1st-time entrepreneurs under 30 looking to establish their careers & ensure that future endeavors are more likely.

And Jason: now that i've ripped you a new one, i'd like to apologize for all the harsh commentary and say that altho i disagree with you on this issue, i still think you're an amazing entrepreneur, and i still use your products. Happy to buy you a beer and shoot the shit anytime.

Hit it Gordon:

LAST CHANCE for GeeksOnaPlane DC/Europe 2009: Countdown in 7 days...

COUNTDOWN to GEEKS On a PLANE in 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1...

We're getting everything ready for the upcoming GeeksOnaPlane.com trip to Europe, which begins with a kickoff event in Washington, DC next Friday, 9/18.  For you folks making last-minute decisions, better hurry up!  You can register for the tour here if you'd like to join the main tour group.

Note: although some of our events will be available to the public at each local city & venue, many of our meetings are by invitation / priority for those who register with the core travel group (including the DC event at the White House with the Digital Media team & State Dept Innovation team, and also for SeedCamp Week in London).  If you live in one of the tour local cities (DC, London, Amsterdam, Berlin, Prague, Paris) you can also register for individual events on the GoaP website (individual event registration will be available shortly, after we finalize reservations for the core travel group).

An overview of the entire tour is below:
(and yes, we're still interested in more sponsors!)

GeeksOnaPlane DC/EU 2009

View more documents from Dave McClure.

The New Community Rules: Marketing on The Social Web (Tamar Weinberg)

A big hearty congratulations to Tamar Weinberg, who became both an author and a mother recently. 

The baby arrived a little bit early, which made it tough on the delivery of the book, but she managed to pop both out this summer :)

---

I had the very good fortune of being asked to write the foreword to her book "The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web", which i've reproduced below.  My foreword can't compare to the book itself, but i hope it gives you a flavor of the stuff she writes about.

I highly recommend both Tamar and her book, and encourage you to go out and buy a copy right away. 

(by the way, Tamar's annual best-of-online-marketing summary is also a can't miss, and it's free).

---

(Foreword)

The New Community Rules: Marketing on The Social Web

Your lights are on, but you're not home
Your mind is not your own
Your heart sweats, your body shakes
Another kiss is what it takes

You can't sleep, you can't eat
There's no doubt, you're in deep
Your throat is tight, you can't breathe
Another kiss is all you need

Whoa, you like to think that you're immune to the stuff (oh yeah)
It's closer to the truth to say you can't get enough
You know you're gonna have to face it
You're Addicted to Love
 
- Robert Palmer, Addicted to Love (1985)

 

Hello. My name is Dave and i'm a Facebook-aholic ("hi Dave, keep coming back!"). The rest of you may not be addicted to social media the same way i am, but i guarantee you it's only a matter of time.  Now that Oprah & CNN have become run-of-the-mill streetcorner pushers for social media crackpipes like Facebook & Twitter, you can bet the rest of consumer mainstream ain't far behind.  Mark my words folks: we're all being seduced by a dangerous & sexy online mistress named Social.  If you haven't fallen for her yet, you will.

 

This book is dedicated to everyone who has ever read a blog, visited a MySpace page, watched a YouTube video, checked out a photo on Flickr, or clicked on a link in Twitter.  Then five hours later, looked up to check the clock and realized it was 4am.  Admit it, you've been there: heaven help me the baby is screaming and needs a diaper change but gimme a sec i just need to click on one... more... link... aaah.  Now doesn't that feel better?

 

You might be a teenager on Hi5 profile-hopping all the hot girls in your freshman class at high school, or a grandmother anxiously checking YouTube to see if your daughter has uploaded the latest video of your 3-year-old grandson.  You might be a punk rocker adding a new song to your band's MySpace page, or a Harvard grad surfing LinkedIn to see who you know at Google who's hiring.  You might be the Real Shaq Daddy tweeting out nightly box scores and a slam-dunk on Yao Ming, or Barack Obama rallying the faithful to get out the vote via SMS on the eve of the most historic election in American history.  From the largest to the smallest, from the youngest to the oldest, the world has become engrossed, enthralled, and addicted to social media. 

 

Unless you've been in a coma for the last five years, your behaviors and interactions with social media have changed dramatically.  We now spend more time connected -- both literally and figuratively -- than ever before.  Our offline-online existence is fused together into an electronically-enhanced experience that would have seemed unbelievable just over a decade ago, but now seems almost second nature.  One wonders how people ever managed to make plans to meetup for dinner or a night out on the town before everyone had email, eVite, Yelp, or text messaging?  Our fascination and fastened-nation with all things digital has been both a blessing and a curse, enabling people to communicate whenever and wherever they please... even if that means listening to the sales guy in the bathroom stall next to you talking to a customer, and wondering if you should wait till he's done to flush.

 

The first ten years of the Internet Revolution were all about getting computers connected to the World Wide Web.  But the next ten years are going to be all about getting people connected to each other.  There are now over 1 billion people online across the globe, and over 3 billion people with mobile phones who can send a text message.  Imagine how much time we can all waste poking each other on Facebook! 

 

More seriously, this sea change in how people spend their lives and leisure hours has created a challenge for those in traditional marketing roles.  As with the explosion of cable television channels in the 90's and subsequent fragmentation of mass market media & advertising, online behavior in the 21st century has been moving away from large portal mass-produced websites like AOL & Yahoo, and towards a world filled with search engines, social networks, millions of tiny blogs & "long-tail" websites, user-generated content sites, news feeds, apps, widgets, RSS, email, SMS, IM, chat, twitter, bookmarks, etc, etc.  Finding ways to effectively reach customers in the world of Web 2.0 has become a Sisyphean task, requiring a wide variety of online marketing skills and an endless number of communication channels. 

 

And yet there also exists the everyday miracle of one clever, creative individual who executes a very cheap, viral, word-of-mouth campaign that reaches millions overnight.  How can this be?  We are both powerless and powerful at the same time.  We are fragmented and yet unified.  We are solitary shut-ins glued to our computers, but we are powerfully & instantly connected to thousands of others all over the earth.  We are billions of people on the World Wide Web, and we are a billion people blathering on in a billion and one tongues.

 

This is social media.  And like the social beings who create it, 

social media is 

messy 

and  confused.  

It was in the middle of that mess that my personal journey began.

let me explain.

 

...

 

Back in late summer 2001, i had the good fortune of accepting a job offer at PayPal, while the rest of the dot-com world was crashing all around me.  Little did i know, the towers of the World Trade Center in Manhattan would also come crashing down my first day on the job.  While still in shock at a changed world offline, i began putting my toe in the waters of a brave new world online as well. 

 

I had always been a geek of some kind -- music geek in grade school, math major in college, computer programmer after graduating, and a small-time internet entrepreneur in the mid-90's until my company got acquired in 1998.  However, my new job at PayPal was in (developer) marketing -- pretty unfamiliar territory for a geek.  I wasn't even sure how i got the job; a friend who was a PayPal angel investor had referred me to them, since he knew i'd been organizing several Silicon Valley tech & entrepreneur user groups for many years.  I guess PayPal figured i was about as close as they could get to someone who knew how to market to developers, so they gave me a chance.

 

Now just to be clear: there is nothing more anathema to geeks & programmers than an asshole with a business card and a marketing title... well, except perhaps someone in sales; but at least geeks understand salespeople are necessary to make money that pays their salaries. So basically as far as developers are concerned, marketing folks are the absolute bottom of the food chain -- they're assumed to be both clueless and useless, and liars to boot.

As a former developer myself, i realized my job was going to be all about marketing to repressed loner, smart-ass geeks who thought i was a dumb, incompetent liar.  Great.

 

Given the humbling & humiliating task ahead of me, and given my dirty little secret of not knowing one damn thing about traditional marketing, i realized i better come up with some pretty creative tricks / hacks... and fast.  

Hack #1: change the official job title on my business card from "Director of Marketing" to "Director of Geek Marketing" (disguise & subterfuge, become part of the community).  

Hack #2: stop trying to SELL developers on PayPal, and just focus on helping them USE the product & provide tech support, LISTEN to what they were asking for, and see if i could get the product team to fix bugs & build something geeks would use.  

Hack #3: since they probably knew more than me, i appealed to developers to help answer questions, and recruited geek advisors and promoted them as experts to the rest of the community.  

Hack #4: get all of our technical documentation & code samples out in the open on a no-login required site, without requiring anyone have to create a PayPal account to learn.  

Hack #5: start a message board & blog (had to bend some rules and avoid corporate bureaucracy but i did it), and get an open channel of publishing & communication to the community. 

 

I could go on, but i think you get the picture -- let's just say i did some VERY non-traditional marketing in the first year or two.  And i really had to change how i thought about marketing in order to reach the people i was going after.  In fact, much of my success was due to subverting, bending, and even breaking the normal rules of corporate marketing to get what i need to get done.  And finally, i had to become part of the community itself, and i had to create some non-traditional publishing & communication models to engage the community to help me do my job. 

 

Along the way of becoming a mole in the machine, i also discovered a number of other important new trends & techniques in online marketing: search marketing (both organic & paid), email newsletters & distribution lists, blogging, mini-apps & widgets, message boards & forums, RSS, screencasts, instructional video, social networks, and many, many other geeky pursuits which consisted mostly of me goofing off online and somehow getting away with saying i was doing real work.  While it may have seemed like i was screwing around wasting a lot of time (cough, cough... nothing could be further from the truth!), turns out I was getting some world-class on-the-job training in social media marketing.  Who knew?

 

As i spent more time diving deep into this Ocean of Social, i realized something important was happening & changing how people were communicating.  Starting somewhere between 2001 and 2005, a whole bunch of non-geeks were getting computers, getting digital cameras & mobile phones, getting broadband connections, and getting online.  The internet & the browser were just the beginning; by the time YouTube arrived in 2005 the Internet had already been taken over by the masses.  By 2008, your mom or grandmother was probably stalking you on Facebook and trying to find out who you were hooking up with.  

This was not your geeky old Internet -- THIS was the glory of the World Wide Web, and people were doing a WHOLE LOT MORE of the following:

• Browsing the World Wide Web (from iPhones as well as computers)
• Using Search Engines (aka "The Google") to find all kinds of Stuff 
• Reading Blogs, Looking at Pictures, Listening to Music, & Watching Videos
• Creating Profiles & Browsing & Flirting & "Poking" on Social Networks
• Sending messages & links via email, text/SMS, and internet messaging (IM) systems

As each of these activities in turn spawned entirely new ecosystems and communication channels dedicated to legions of fans, online populations similarly dedicated themselves to the creation and consumption of new media / social media in these online environments.  

Not only had we become addicted to The Network, we had BECOME The Network:

We The People, 
In Order to Form a More Perfect Platform, 
Establish Internet Equality, 
Insure Domestic Social Connectedness, 
Provide for the Creative Commons, 
Promote the General Web-fare, 
and Secure the Blessings of Liberty 
to Our Blogs and Our Friends & Followers, 
Do Ordain and Establish this Network
for the .COM, the .NET, the .ORG, 
and the Entire World Wide Web!"

Well, maybe it didn't happen quite like that... but i bet you in a hundred years, people will look upon the creators of the Internet, Search Engines, Social Networks, and some of the more famous websites akin to the way older generations think about our Founding Fathers.  I mean, didn't Al Gore invent the Internets?  

I rest my case.  

And as we begin to explore what social media is about in the Second Age of Aquarius, i can think of no one more qualified to bring you kicking and screaming into the 21st century than Tamar Weinberg.  Tamar is a friend, guru, and colleague who has been swimming in the ocean of search engines & social media for over [ten] years, and her annual "Best Of" list of internet marketing articles is an annual must-read for all things search, social, and beyond.  

With no further ado: 

I bring you Tamar Weinberg, and the Social Web.

http://NewCommunityRules.com

MediaMemo: PAID is Not a Dirty Word

i may swear a lot on this blog and in person, but the word "PAID" is not a dirty word (altho strangely, it *is* a four-letter word ;)

here's interview i did at SXSW with Peter Kafka of Media Memo / AllThingsD:

note to Mom: didn't drop any F-bombs, only a few choice curse words. oops.

15 Minutes of Twitter Fame on Press:Here TV

well, actually less than half that... really only 7 minutes on the new Press:Here TV with Scott McGrew, Sarah Lacy, and Jon Swartz (also segments by Guy Kawasaki & Joshua-Michele Ross).  

hardly my best performance, but hey i'm doing my best to stay on top of the Silicon Valley D-List.

My quote & segment on Twitter from Press-Here TV:

"Twitter is the perfect tool for connecting thousands of shameless attention-starved exhibitionists with millions of shy introverts & curious voyeurs... it's the social network for people who wish their lives were more exciting, and for those who desperately need to share."

Guy Kawasaki:

Joshua-Michele Ross:

Jon Swartz, Sarah Lacy, Scott McGrew:

Tipping Kiva API Story to Techmeme via Twitter

Tipping Kiva APIs to Techmeme via Twitter
Originally uploaded by davemc500hats

cause & effect = cool :)

(also funny/ironic to see Amit Agarwal article right below on "how to make sure Techmeme links to your blog", heh ;)

Some new & old startup blogs & presos i'm in love with

in no particular order, here are links to a few new books, blogs, & presentations i'm falling in love with lately (plus a few not-so-new-but-awesome old ones too).

• Startup Lessons Learned (blog, Eric Ries)
• Customer Development Methodology (preso, Steve Blank)
• Four Steps to the Epiphany (book, Steve Blank)
• LaserLike (blog, Mike Speiser)
• Revenue Metrics (preso, Andrew Chen)
• Futuristic Play (blog, Andrew Chen)
• Startup-Marketing (blog, Sean Ellis)
• Sit, Stay, Click!  Making Users Beg for More (preso, Ted Rheingold)
• Zappo's: Customer Service & Company Culture (video, Tony Hsieh)
• Designing & Optimizing the DNA of a Killer App (preso+sound, Dan Olsen)
• Putting the Fun in Functional (preso, Amy Jo Kim)
• Copywriting Tips for Online Marketing Success (blog, Brian Clark aka CopyBlogger)
• ProBlogger (blog, Darren Rowse)
• Reality Check (book, Guy Kawasaki)
• Groundswell (book, Charlene Li)
• The Altimeter (blog, Charlene Li)
• Almost as Good as Chocolate (Shripriya Mahesh)
• KISSmetrics (blog, KISSmetrics.com)
• Startup Founder Evolution (blog, Tony Wright)

apologies to all the amazing folks i'm forgetting about... i'm sure you are many and wonderful, and i'll remember just as soon as hit publish.  will try to add some more if i can.

Fear is the Mind Killer of the Silicon Valley Entrepreneur (we must be Muad'Dib, not Clark Kent)

Okay folks... i am getting really fucking tired of all your

negative shit. 

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:

• Silicon Valley isn't Wall Street.
• Internet Startups are not mortgage finance companies.
• and... Entrepreneurs are not supposed to be Clark Kent.

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.

Best Strategy Is Speed (Startup2Startup May 2008)

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: stylus.innovation xfire)

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.

I must not fear.

Fear is the mind-killer.

Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.

I will face my fear.

I will permit it to pass over me and through me.

And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.

Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.

Only I will remain.

Resumes are for *Shit*. The 4 Things You Really Need: LinkedIn, Blog, Keywords, Social Media.

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:

Startup Metrics for Pirates: AARRR! (Startonomics SF 2008)

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: dealmaker media revenue)