Most people starting a business (and engineers are especially prone to this, hence the term Engineer's Disease) do it in the following order:<ul><li>Build a product you think people will like.</li><li>Go out the door, wave it around and ask: “Who wants this?”</li></ul>And then they get sad when no one wants to buy this awesome thing they’ve spent months building. Here’s what people like Noah and Alexis say you should do instead: Talk to potential customers first, figure out what problems they already have and then build something that helps them solve those problems!

The Engineer's Disease: Starting Backwards

Three lessons from Without Their Permission to help you bring your own internet startup to life:<ul><li>All startups have to solve a real problem, but it doesn’t have to be a well-known one.</li><li>The internet can amplify anything, so be careful what you put out.</li><li>We have to fight to keep the internet open and uncensored.</li></ul>

The Three Key Takeaways

<ul><li>We all carry ideas we are passionate about, voices that need to be heard and projects that need to spread. And since we have access to the Internet, we have no excuse not to take action.</li><li>This can be incredibly empowering to some and absolutely frightening to others.</li><li>In an online world that doesn’t require permission, why are some of us still waiting for it?</li></ul>

The Power Of The Open Internet

Whether you’re a solopreneur or you lead a growing team, if you want to make the world suck less, you need a kickass support team. Sure, they need to be competent and driven and quasi-entertaining (that’s a plus). But more importantly, they need to take pride in their work.Even if you end up never starting something of your own, the skills you learn in development are highly sought after these days.

Just Do It: Becoming A Solopreneur

Forget about billion-dollar markets or reaching 1 in 7 people on the planet, like Facebook (even they started with just college campuses). 
Focus on a problem that’s personal, close to you, and is unique to a small group of people, and you’ll do just fine.

A Problem Close To You

The digital revolution is forcing all of us to step up our game, BIG time. It forces us to develop skills that fall outside of our comfort zones. It forces us to stop apologizing for high standards and expectations. And it forces us to push ourselves, stop making excuses, and start making the world suck less.After all, the open Internet is a gift and an opportunity.

The Digital Revolution

A father and son duo from Australia invented a way to get honey from their beehives without having to open it and tranquillize the bees. Thanks to their simple system the honey just flows out, literally on tap. 
Not a pretty common problem – yet <a href="https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/flow-hive-honey-on-tap-directly-from-your-beehive-environment--5#/">it managed to gather over $13 million on IndieGoGo</a>, a crowdfunding platform.

Get The Honey But Save the Bees!

<ul><li>The open Internet has levelled the playing field. If you have a connection and a laptop, you can build your ideas exponentially and share your work with the world.</li><li>The open Internet is not a magic wand, but as a technology, it has the potential to do tremendous things – to allow awesome people to reach their full potential.</li></ul>

The Open Internet

<ul><li>Sixteen months after Alexis graduated from the University of Virginia, he sold Reddit to Condé Nast and became a millionaire.</li><li>Alexis founded a social enterprise (Breadpig), launched a travel search engine (Hipmunk), and has invested in more than sixty startups and advised hundreds more.</li><li>As an avid proponent in the fight for our open Internet, Alexis fought against two evil legislative bills – the Top Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA). He continues to champion the fight for our online freedom.  </li></ul>

The Rockstar Author, Alexis Ohanian

The internet can amplify anything overnight so be careful what you put out.In 2007, Greenpeace started a campaign to track a whale via satellite, to bring awareness to Japanese fishers still hunting these creatures and protest against an expedition set out to hunt down 50 whales. To engage their activists, Greenpeace held a poll to name the whale. When the poll ended up on Reddit somehow, the community ended up voting for a name 20,000 times – and it won by a landslide. Mr. Splashy Pants ended up generating so much media coverage, that the Japanese government ended up cancelling the hunt.

The Great Amplifier

The Language = Programming.  If you want to become The Maker, you might want to follow these 3 steps:1.) No more excuses, like… Programmers are kids, not 35+. I’m too old. And I’m not geeky enough to be a hacker. Do I need a snippet of JavaScript tattooed to my back first? 2.) Develop your arsenal of tools. If you truly want to operate without their permission, then you need to empower yourself. If you’re ready for a challenge, take advantage of the growing number of free tools and resources available to you:<ul><li>Codecademy</li><li>Code.org</li><li>Rails for Zombies.org</li><li>Dash</li></ul>

Become The Maker: Learn The Language

The Power of the individual and the open internet

A WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER As Alexis Ohanian learned when he helped to co-found the immensely popular reddit.com, the internet is the most powerful and democratic tool for disseminating information in human history. And when that power is harnessed to create new communities, technologies, businesses or charities, the results can be absolutely stunning. In this book, Alexis will share his ideas, tips and even his own doodles about harnessing the power of the web for good, and along the way, he will share his philosophy with young entrepreneurs all over the globe. At 29, Ohanian has come to personify the dorm-room tech entrepreneur, changing the world without asking permission. Within a couple of years of graduating from the University of Virginia, Ohanian did just that, selling reddit for millions of dollars. He's gone on to start many other companies, like hipmunk and breadpig, all while representing Y Combinator and investing in over sixty other tech startups. WITHOUT THEIR PERMISSION is his personal guidebook as to how other aspiring entrepreneurs can follow in his footsteps.

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Technology & The Future

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Entrepreneurship

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Books

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Society, Arts & Culture

As Alexis Ohanian learned when he helped to co-found the immensely popular reddit.com, the internet is the most powerful and democratic tool for disseminating information in human history. And when that power is harnessed to create new communities, technologies, businesses or charities, the results can be absolutely stunning. In this book, Alexis will share his ideas, tips and even his own doodles about harnessing the power of the web for good, and along the way, he will share his philosophy with young entrepreneurs all over the globe. At 29, Ohanian has come to personify the dorm-room tech entrepreneur, changing the world without asking permission. Within a couple of years of graduating from the University of Virginia, Ohanian did just that, selling reddit for millions of dollars. He's gone on to start many other companies, like hipmunk and breadpig, all while representing Y Combinator and investing in over sixty other tech startups. Without Their Permission is his personal guidebook as to how other aspiring entrepreneurs can follow in his footsteps.

Just Do It: Becoming A Solopreneur

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