There are no shortcuts to knowledge, especially knowledge gained from personal experience. Following conventional wisdom and relying on shortcuts can be worse than knowing nothing at all.
Learn to separate facts from perception. Especially when the “facts” seem to dictate a certain outcome, look for alternative narratives and explanations coming from radically different perspectives. Even one alternative, plausible scenario can breathe life back into you and your workforce.

First Hand Knowledge

Running a startup, you only ever experience two emotions: euphoria and terror. You need two kinds of friends in your life: <ul><li>One you can call when something good happens, and they’ll be excited for you.</li><li>One you can call when things go horribly wrong.</li></ul> Treat the people who leave fairly, or the people who stay will never trust you again.

I Will Survive

Sometimes the only way to survive is to purposely go out and fall on your face, so you can learn fast and know what is needed. Whenever a large organization attempts to do anything, it always comes down to a single person who can delay the entire project.
Figuring out the right product is the innovator’s job, not the customer’s job. The innovator can take into account everything that’s possible, often going against what she knows to be true. This requires a combination of knowledge, skill, and courage.

This Time With Feeling

When you are building a company, you must believe there is an answer, and you cannot pay attention to the odds of finding it. You just have to find it. It matters not whether your chances are nine in ten or one in a thousand; the task is the same.

When Things Fall Apart

The ability to focus and make the best move when there seems to be no good moves is crucial. When things get unbearably difficult, and the struggle begins.
<ul>
<li>Do not put it all on only your shoulders.</li>
<li>CEOs Should Tell It Like It Is and ensure informal information and ideas are flowing freely in your company.</li>
<li>You will have to lay people off at some point. Hence, get your head right by focusing on the future of the company rather than the past.</li>
</ul>

The Secret Of A Successful CEO

It is crucial to create a good work environment. It’s important that the people who spend most of their waking life at work have a good environment to exist in while there. Being a good company doesn’t matter when things go well, but it can be the difference between life and death when things go wrong. When things go well, there are many reasons to stay at a company: <ul><li>Your career grows as the company grows, attractive jobs naturally open up</li><li>You’ll be impressing your friends and family. </li><li>Your résumé gets stronger by working at a blue-chip company.</li></ul>

Take Care of People, Products, and Profits

<ul>
<li>Hire for strength rather than lack of weakness.</li>
<li>Have clear expectations of who you are hiring with a realization that there is something seriously wrong with every employee in your company (including you). Nobody is perfect.</li>
<li>Involve multiple people in brainstorming but make the final decision solo. Consensus-based decisions tend to sway the process away from strength and towards weakness.</li>
</ul>

The Three Keys Of Hiring

Being a big company executive is very different from being a small company executive.  Big company executives are driven by interruptions, while startup executives know that nothing happens unless they make it happen. A big company executive has an incredible number of incoming demands on his time, whereas in a small company without a massive push, the company will stay at rest.

Big Company, Small Company

<ul><li>Hire people with the right kind of ambition; otherwise, your company would turn into the political equivalent of the U.S Senate. </li><li>Maintain strict policies and processes on organizational design, performance evaluations, promotions, and compensation</li><li>Promote experienced employees by measuring results against objectives, management skills, innovation, and their ability to work well with others.</li><li>Ensure one-on-one meetings between employees and managers. These are an excellent platform for employees to discuss their as yet unheard brilliant ideas, pressing issues, and chronic frustrations.</li></ul>

The Growing Concern: How To Minimize Politics

A startup should focus on what needs to be right rather than worrying about what is wrong. One of the most difficult challenges is keeping your mind in check. You need to be able to move aggressively and decisively without acting insane. To calm your nerves, find someone you can talk to who understands what you’re going through. Put your ideas, challenges, and fears on paper for a better focus on where you are going and not what you are trying to avoid. There is a fine Line Between Fear and Courage — People who watch you judge you on what you do, not how you feel.

Losing The Way

There are no rules in business. Things may seem to be going well, but they can change in an instant. You need accountability and creativity to succeed in business. Accountability is the key for effort, promises and results. The hard things will always be hard; courage and grit are the keys to success.

There Are No Rules

“Hard Things” gives an insider’s perspective on what it’s like to lead and scale a startup.

Ben Horowitz, cofounder of Andreessen Horowitz and one of Silicon Valley's most respected and experienced entrepreneurs, offers essential advice on building and running a startup—practical wisdom for managing the toughest problems business school doesn’t cover, based on his popular ben’s blog. While many people talk about how great it is to start a business, very few are honest about how difficult it is to run one. Ben Horowitz analyzes the problems that confront leaders every day, sharing the insights he’s gained developing, managing, selling, buying, investing in, and supervising technology companies. A lifelong rap fanatic, he amplifies business lessons with lyrics from his favorite songs, telling it straight about everything from firing friends to poaching competitors, cultivating and sustaining a CEO mentality to knowing the right time to cash in. Filled with his trademark humor and straight talk, The Hard Thing About Hard Things is invaluable for veteran entrepreneurs as well as those aspiring to their own new ventures, drawing from Horowitz's personal and often humbling experiences.

entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship

business

Business

startup

Startups

books

Books

leadershipandmanagement

Leadership & Management

Ben Horowitz, cofounder of Andreessen Horowitz and one of Silicon Valley's most respected and experienced entrepreneurs, offers essential advice on building and running a startup—practical wisdom for managing the toughest problems business school doesn’t cover, based on his popular ben’s blog.While many people talk about how great it is to start a business, very few are honest about how difficult it is to run one. Ben Horowitz analyzes the problems that confront leaders every day, sharing the insights he’s gained developing, managing, selling, buying, investing in, and supervising technology companies. A lifelong rap fanatic, he amplifies business lessons with lyrics from his favorite songs, telling it straight about everything from firing friends to poaching competitors, cultivating and sustaining a CEO mentality to knowing the right time to cash in.Filled with his trademark humor and straight talk, The Hard Thing About Hard Things is invaluable for veteran entrepreneurs as well as those aspiring to their own new ventures, drawing from Horowitz's personal and often humbling experiences.

Ben Horowitz is the cofounder and general partner of Andreessen Horowitz, a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm that invests in entrepreneurs building the next generation of leading technology companies. The firm's investments include Airbnb, GitHub, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Previously, he was cofounder and CEO of Opsware, formerly Loudcloud, which was acquired by Hewlett-Packard for $1.6 billion in 2007. Horowitz writes about his experiences and insights from his career as a computer science student, software engineer, cofounder, CEO, and investor in a blog that is read by nearly 10 million people. He has also been featured in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the New Yorker, Fortune, the Economist, and Bloomberg.

Ben Horowitz

The Hard Thing About Hard Things

<ul><li>Almost all overnight successes took years of grinding behind the scenes before the pieces clicked into place</li><li>Every great business idea starts with the belief in one’s own self, but that alone isn’t enough</li><li>Once you have a good idea you have to move forward with the process of validating that idea with concrete evidence</li><li>Your belief in what you sell will take you much farther than a desire for profit</li><li>If all you care about is profit, there are easier ways of making money than being an entrepreneur</li></ul>

Key Quotes: Seven Terrible Traps That Entrepreneurs 

“A lot of times seeing something new and exciting is easy to go toward because it’s new and exciting. When you get into the grind, and you’re actually in the inner workings of this business that you once said yes to, well, that starts to become a drag”

Oftentimes, we give up right at the inflection point.

<ul><li>Every great business idea starts with the belief in one’s own self, but you can’t just stop at pure belief </li><li>Once you have a good idea you have to move forward with the process of validating that idea with concrete evidence</li><li>Dive deep into discovering what the problems, and the pains, and the concerns are, of your target audience. And this means yes, doing some research upfront.</li></ul>

Bias And Assumptions

<ul><li>The most cost-effective method of diving deep is simply having conversations with your target market to see if they like what you’re thinking about.</li><li>On the flip side, some people are too cautious and will research their market without taking decisive action thinking that they must prepare for every possible scenario</li><li>The biggest lessons often come from being in the field rather than strategizing plans from the armchair.</li></ul>

Deep Diving: The Details

Just-in-time learning means allowing yourself to only learn about the things and get excited about the things that are related to the next thing that’s on your list.To avoid missing out on lucrative opportunities, bookmark those ideas for later and after your current goal, you can delve into them.In most cases, you’re not going to go back to them. By the time you’re ready to move on to something else; guess what? There’s even better and newer material that comes out.

Just In Time Learning

The time you save by outsourcing tasks to people who are more efficient at it will make you more money than the money you save by doing it yourselfYou have to understand that your time is precious and that there are likely other and more important things to do.This applies to non-business related activities too. You may not even realize the time you’re spending on social media every day, every week until you have the numbers staring at you.For example, If you hire someone to take care of the administrative tasks you can free up time to focus on expanding and being even more successful.

Doing Everything On Your Own

Comparison is incredibly useful in discerning different experiences and lessons other people have learned, but not when it’s used for negative purposes.When you get involved in a business community, especially in the beginning, you may wonder why you’re not as successful? Avoid that sort of thinking.Every single person is at a different point in the journey of their life.We need to be comparing ourselves to ourselves yesterday, to ourselves last week, to ourselves last month.

Comparisons With Others

How are you improving and getting better each day?You don’t have to go from amateur to master immediately; a 1% improvement every day will lead to exponential results.

One Percent Every Day

<ul><li>Entrepreneurs don’t have a true ‘clock-out’ time and that’s why it’s mandatory to enforce it yourself.</li><li>Even supremely confident entrepreneurs who view themselves as unstoppable machines must recognize that machines must be maintained or they break down.</li><li>This doesn’t mean you can’t occasionally put the pedal to the metal when the time calls for it though.</li></ul>

Overclocking Yourself

Mistakes And Traps That Entrepreneurs Fall Into

#435: On this session of the SPI Podcast, I give you a heads up about seven terrible pitfalls that entrepreneurs often encounter. Podcast show notes available at https://www.smartpassiveincome.com/session435See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

podcasts

Podcasts

Pat Flynn from The Smart Passive Income Blog reveals all of his online business and blogging strategies, income sources and killer marketing tips and tricks so you can be ahead of the curve with your online business or blog. Discover how you can create multiple passive income streams that work for you so that you can have the time and freedom to do what you love, whether it's traveling the world, or just living comfortably at home. Since 2008, he's been supporting his family with his many online businesses, and he's been openly sharing his wins, his losses, and all the lessons in between with the community of energetic but humble entrepreneurs who follow him. Self-proclaimed "crash test dummy of online business", you'll learn about building authority online, email marketing, building a team and outsourcing, content marketing, podcasting, search engine optimization, niche sites, social media strategies, how to get more traffic, creating online courses, affiliate marketing, and productivity tips so that you create something amazing without burning yourself out. It's a mix of interviews, special co-hosts and solo shows from Pat you're not going to want to miss. Hit subscribe, and get ready to change your life.

The Smart Passive Income Online Business and Blogging Podcast

SPI 435: 7 Terrible Traps Entrepreneurs Fall Into (And How to Get Out of Them)

7 Terrible Traps Entrepreneurs Fall Into (And How to Get Out of Them)

The idea is sound, the product has been tested and you’re confident with your focus group research that consumers are ready. So, what is the best way to launch your new product? This is a very good question and one that the serial entrepreneur right through to multi-billion dollar, multi-national companies get wrong. What is the secret to new product success? While it is different for every product, here are some basic tips for getting your product launch right.

First steps in launching a product

Timing is everything for a product launch. There are certain times and days to avoid such as Christmas or New Year’s Eve for example, but perhaps more relevant is to look at both the macro and micro-economic factors around your industry and the broader market before launching.

Timing

Many a product has failed because the pricing strategy has been wrong. Whether you want to be a luxury product or you are launching a product priced slightly below your competitor’s, make sure you undertake thorough research to ensure consumers will be willing to pay the price you are asking.

Price

Packaging comes in many different forms and whether it is a consumer good designed for the shelf of a retailer or a new app that you have just finished designing, it needs to be attractive and welcoming to the human eye. Do your research on what colors people like and are receptive to.

Packaging

While it is good to be different, don’t make the name so cumbersome people can’t pronounce it or too similar to an existing product, so the consumer gets confused. By all accounts make it simple and original like Google for example that will leave a lasting impact upon the consumer.

Your new product's name

You can have the best product in the world but if no-one knows about it, how will they be able to purchase it? Understand the variety of marketing channels available to you to promote your product and do your research as to which channels will work best. A mixture of at least two different mediums will be required.

Promotion

You should definitely be aware of what your intended audience like and don’t like. There should be no guesswork going into your marketing campaign. Thorough market research should be undertaken so your target market will respond positively to your product launch.

Know your target market

You really need to have done this several times beforehand. Nothing will kill your product launch quicker than launching to market with something that doesn’t work properly or breaks upon opening. Don’t frustrate your target audience with something that should be 100% error-free upon launch.

Test your new product repeatedly

Equally important is to be aware of your competition’s marketing strategies and range of products. You don’t want to launch only to find out that your competitor is bringing out a newer, cheaper (or more prestigious/expensive) product the next day.

Know your competition

In today’s consumer-led world, it is important to get reviews – positive ones will always work in your favor – but equally important is to find out what can be improved. It may be something you need to slightly tweak that will make all the difference to it being successful or not.

Seek reviews

Not every product flies off the shelf immediately. You may need to re-work your marketing strategy, alter your price or even re-launch because of a change in circumstances. Having a strategic and flexible marketing strategy will enable you to successfully keep changing tack slightly if need be to ensure the ultimate product success.

Be strategic and patient

Some important basic things you should have in mind when creating the strategy for a product launch, whether you own a company or you have the power to take important decisions. These are also important topics you may be asked in job interviews for management positions.

The idea is sound, the product has been tested and you’re confident with your focus group research that consumers are ready. So, what is the best way to launch your new product? This is a very good question and one that the serial entrepreneur right through to multi-billion dollar, multi-national companies get wrong. W

marketingandsales

Marketing & Sales

10 Things You Must Know When Launching A New Product

Build a company around a problem that you yourself have.

To 10x your chances at startup success: Fix a problem that you yourself have.<ul><li>Make a list of 15-20 problems in your life </li><li>Rank them by the most painful </li><li>Build a product that solves one of them</li></ul> This is crucial because: <ul><li>You’ll have a familiarity with the problem which will help you design a solution</li><li>You’ll have knowledge of existing solutions and what they lack</li><li>You’ll know about the space</li><li>Youll know about your target market and customers</li></ul> Building a company for a problem you have is better than building a company for financial reasons.

10X Your Chances Of Startup Success

When building a company, launch earlier rather than later. By launching early, you’ll get feedback from customers sooner and will be able to make adjustments to improve the product.Refine and refine your solution to better solve the problem your customers face

Building A Startup

When looking for your first hires, you need to find people who are as passionate about solving that problem as you areIf you’re trying to build a startup in the software space but don’t have any coding experience, find a cofounder that doesNot every company has to be a venture-backed startup. You can build a successful small company that’s an awesome cashflow machine.

Recruit An Amazing Team

At a certain point, your company will be too big for you to do everything. That’s where delegation comes in.If you’re too much of a control freak, you won’t let others blossom and you’ll limit the growth of your company.When you delegate, you won’t get 100% of the results you want, but you will get 90% of the results with only 5% of the work which is an excellent tradeoff.

When To Delegate Work

Why did James move from San Francisco to Los Angeles? <ul><li>James felt there were more creative individuals in LA than SF</li><li>SF was an engineering-focused space that was very financially driven</li><li>The relationships in SF tend to be more transactional than anything else</li><li>The culture in SF was a serious city that didn’t value humour in people</li><li>In SF, there are 200-300 investors for every great idea which lowers returns and makes it harder to get into a deal</li><li>James believes that in 5 years, LA will become the creative capital of the world</li><li>LA already has a lot of amazing companies such as Snapchat and Honey</li></ul>

Find A Better Playground For Your Creativity

From the drawing board to fruition: A comprehensive guide to Startups.

problemsolving

Problem Solving

communication

Communication

The Startup Collection

Founder quotes and tricks for building a great product.

https://bit.ly/Go_BelowtheLine  Hit the show hotline and leave a question or comment for the show: 424-272-6640, email James questions directly at askbelowtheline@gmail.com or follow us on Twitter @ twitter.com/gobelowtheline James opens the show giving the #1 piece of advice he would give to founders to multiply their chances of startup success 10 fold. He then takes answers voicemail questions about how founders should decide how to to delegate their time and the strategy founders could take in the early stages of their companies. He closes the show by expounding on why he moved away from Silicon Valley to Los Angeles, despite the large network effect that exists for founders in the Bay area. Support Our Sponsors Magic Mind https://magicmind.co Tech Meme https://www.techmeme.com/ Tiny Capital https://www.tinycapital.com/belowtheline   About your host, James: James Beshara is a founder, investor, advisor, author, podcaster, and encourager based in Los Angeles, California. James has created startups for the last 12 years, selling one (Tilt, acquired by Airbnb), and invested in a few multi-billion dollar startups to date. He has spoken at places such as Y-Combinator, Harvard Business School, Stanford University, TechCrunch Disrupt, and has been featured in outlets like the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Fortune Magazine, and Time Magazine. He’s been featured in Forbes, Time, and Inc Magazine’s “30 Under 30” lists and advises startups all around the world. All of this is his “above the line” version of his background. Hear the other 90% of the story in the intro episode of Below The Line.  “Below the Line with James Beshara" is brought to you by Another Podcast Network.

Host James Beshara is an angel investor, advisor, founder, & general startup-helper in Los Angeles, CA. He has started three companies, sold one (Tilt; acq by Airbnb), and invested in multiple billion-dollar startups in his career. Now he's talking openly and honestly with others about what's going on "below the line" — the 90% of the story you don't read about or hear about anywhere else.  Below the Line has evolved into a powerful weekly show that consistently takes a deep dive into the real journeys, the unspoken perspectives, and the psychological side of creating, founding, and learning.

Below the Line with James Beshara

#89 — How to 10x Your Chance at Startup Success

How to 10x Your Chance at Startup Success

The most successful companies these days aren’t creating content, they’re curating it.

Founders & startups fail when they try to solve problems they’re not connected to or haven’t personally experienced. For a product to be viral, the founder has to:<ul><li>Make it so great that it advertises itself.</li><li>Embed growth within it.</li></ul>

A Viral Product

If you work really hard at something, you can achieve great things. New York embodies that for sure. Everyone here is dreaming, everyone here is doing. You pull anyone over on the street and they’ll tell you what they’re excited about and what they’re moving towards. At the end of the day, if someone really has a vision and they’re serious about it, I think you have to be in the middle of everything to make it work. In places like New York, San Francisco, and LA… you’re just surrounded by all of these like-minded people.

The Value Of Serendipity

If you have an idea: Take action, make something, work hard, and watch what happens.

So many of the brilliant, creative minds of our generation came from Tumblr. Creative directors at massive companies, and people running their own agencies, all recognize themselves as Tumblr kids. <ul><li>Tumblr is all about curating other people’s content, as opposed to creating your own (and there aren’t many social platforms out there that encourage this)</li><li>Putting out your own content can sometimes be intimidating, while simply sharing someone else’s is much easier</li><li>In a way, content curation empowers those who aren’t creating to still be creative</li></ul>

Tumblr: The Creative Dark Horse Of Social Media

If you decide to build a startup but can’t relate to the problem, you’ll constantly be spending time on market research. But, if you can relate to the problem, YOU ARE the market research (and the customer). Often, your intuition can tell you things that would be impossible to measure with dataWhen looking for a co-founder, find someone who has the skills that you lack.

Solving Problems We Don’t Relate To

A framework for assessing ideas:If you and your co-founder both agree on an idea, one of you should still play devil’s advocate (even if you’re a solo founder, try coming up with several reasons why the idea might, in fact, be a bad one).

Assessment Of Ideas: Devils Advocate

Before I even present an idea, I have run it through the wash… and I try to kill it. And if that idea is still with me a few days after, it’s probably time to raise it.

You don’t have to be an engineer anymore to build a software company. You just have to know how to give explicit details and draw a sketch of what you want – then, you can hire someone to build it. However, one of the best skills you can learn is coding. Coding and petroleum engineering jobs will be some of the last to be automated by AI.

Learning To Code

You don’t have to be completely original to succeed in life: <ul><li>Google built off of other existing search engines.</li><li>Wikipedia wasn’t the first online encyclopedia.</li><li>Bitcoin was far from the first cryptocurrency.</li></ul>

Being Original Is Optional

A Podcast about Making your Product Viral and Successful.

My guest today is Andy McCune, an entrepreneur and creative who co-founded Unfold, a mobile design tool kit for storytellers that was acquired by Squarespace. He also runs an Instagram account called Earth (@earth on Instagram) with 1.1 million followers. Andy is one of the very most talented people I know. And he has a more intuitive, make-it-and-test-it way of working than most of the people on this podcast. I’ve built a friendship with him as he’s flown under the radar for years. I remember talking to Andy about Unfold back when it was just a small side project, and it’s been a joy to watch Andy grow and scale the business. Please enjoy my conversation with Andy McCune.

product

Product & Design

A deep dive into the stories, habits, ideas, strategies and methods that drive fulfilled people and create enormous success for them.   Guests are diverse, but they share profound similarities. They’re guided by purpose, live with intense joy, learn passionately, and see the world with a unique lens.   Guests include Neil deGrasse Tyson, Seth Godin, and Tyler Cowen.

North Star Podcast: Hosted by David Perell

Andy McCune: How Products Go Viral

There’s no need to go into this too much as for any business owner, this is 101 - but it is always the foundation of getting your pricing strategy right. Ensure you understand how much your product has cost to develop, how much it will cost to deliver and how that cost will scale as more clients come on board (more servers, more support staff etc).

Understand your costs

Now, just because you're in the same market as your competition, it doesn't mean you have to copy their pricing strategy, nor should you look at competing on price. However, you should leverage the work that they've done to understand their buyers, and the psychology behind it. Look at how they've segmented their customers (small, medium, enterprise ...). Understand how their pricing scales. Do they increase pricing based on:<ul><li>features</li><li>users</li><li>business size</li><li>other consumption-based metrics</li></ul>If there's a well understood theme across your market, you should probably consider adopting it.

Understand the market

So many technology companies go to market competing on price rather than value.You definitely don’t have to be the cheapest, however, you also don't need to be the most expensive. This largely comes down the phrase "If it's that cheap, it must be rubbish" - I've seen it time and time again, where SaaS companies have struggled by going to market with a super cheap pricing model, then had massive success by raising their prices considerably! Who knew?!

Perceived Value

I got a call from a large global business that liked the product, and wanted an unlimited license for their 10,000 employees and £500k/mo wasn't the budget they had in mind! Nor should it have been!Our pricing model needed to adapt to allow businesses of different sizes to pay more, but scale relative to the value the solution was delivering them. We implemented a system where you had Up to 5 users, Up to 15 users, Up to 50 users and More. The price ceiling is about understanding the amount of money you're saving the client. Most B2B SaaS solutions top out at about £10k/month/problem solved.

The Price Ceiling

Think of this as putting yourself in the shoes of the company exec pitching their budget - what saving or benefit will they need to demonstrate to win the approval of the CFO? Importantly, which exec will be the one to best position your product to get the green light on budget?The top tip here is to work out where the money will come from in your target clients - which line item in which budget is going to give you the revenue you need, and who is in charge of signing it off - you'll sometimes be surprised, because it's not always the person you think it is.

The Existing Budget

If you're about to launch a SaaS platform, you can't really go wrong by analysing how some of the most successful businesses have approached their pricing matrix. I know it's cliché, but they will have spent a lot of time and money in understanding the customer, their psychology, the market, the budgets and many other factors.SalesForce are masters for pricing; at first glance you might think that their pricing model is simplistic - fundamentally it boils down to a bronze, silver, gold style model. However, the way they've constructed the matrix heavily encourages you into the next level.

Taking inspiration

After saying all of this, you don't have to, and probably won't get it right first time. When you first go to market, irrespective of how well prepped you are, how well understood the market is, the chances are your pricing model will need to adapt as you grow and the market changes. The top tip that I would advise to here is that it's a lot simpler to reduce your prices than it is to increase them!

Test and Adapt

When you first take your product to market, beyond the price, clients also want to see proof points and case studies. If they're the first customer, this will always make them nervous, particularly if there's a lot of money on the line. This is where the old adage of "No-one ever got fired for buying IBM" comes in. Choosing the ‘safe’, known option as opposed to the challenger is a defensible position for the person signing off the budget.Don't be afraid to battle and do deals to get your first 20 clients in and using your product. The information you'll get from them will be invaluable.

Don't be afraid to deal to get going

Peter Rossi, Co-Founder and Strategy Director at Equals Collective


Yet when they actually go to market with their product, their pricing strategy has had very little thought and is always a mad scramble to get in place.

8 tips on setting the right price for your tech service

Smartcuts (smart shortcuts) are tools to shorten the path to success. There are several basic categories of smartcuts. 
First, you can find ways to shorten the job, cutting out unnecessary steps, people and processes. Once you’ve abridged the task at hand, you can use your energy more efficiently and maximize your effort. Finally, use your momentum to soar, gaining momentum so that you never stop.

Smartcuts: How Hackers, Innovators and Icons Accelerate Success

College students play a game called ‘Bigger and Better’, where they start trading small objects(like a toothpick or a snack bar) and eventually trade up to bigger stuff like a stereo in their hands.Playing the game and paying your dues is really a trap that results in you getting stuck. This is a new day, and the old paradigms don’t work anymore. We need to be college students continuously trading up, trading bigger and better. We need to jump sideways like cheetahs. We need to think like entrepreneurs. We need to hack the ladder.

Bigger And Better: Trading Up To Hack The Game

Waiting for a mentor is like waiting for a charming prince. Pursue your goal, and if you happen to find a good mentor, cool. If not, cool. Study the people who went before you. You can’t always get a mentor, but you can always learn from history. Jimmy Fallon’s manager was his personal mentor, but Fallon also looked for inspiration from comedians who came before him, even though he didn’t know them. Louis C.K. struggled and eventually, he did find a mentor in George Carlin, and consciously studied and mimicked Carlin’s delivery. After he adopted this strategy he quickly rose to stardom.

Don’t Wait For A Mentor

Feedback doesn’t usually work, because people are too self-conscious to take it to heart. And if feedback makes us self-conscious, it can make us perform worse. Nevertheless, negative feedback can be immensely helpful, if we can manage to focus on the task rather than on ourselves. It’s hard to be objective about ourselves and our performance, but that’s exactly what we must do — put egos aside and accept the feedback. To learn from negative feedback, you’ve got to get comfortable with failure.

Feedback: Fail Fast, Fail Often

Famous scientist and mathematician Freeman Dyson doesn’t think schools should teach kids math; rather, schools should teach kids the tools they need to do math. Instead of memorizing multiplication tables, kids should learn to use calculators. It turns out that hands-on learning makes us want to learn.  Similarly, platforms help us master the basics much quicker. What we all need is to learn to use platforms. Platforms can be tools like calculators. They can also be environments, like schools. More innovation happens in urban areas, because cities are platforms.

Leveraging Platforms

First movers have a high failure rate. Early leaders do not. The first movers have to do all the heavy lifting, like getting the infrastructure set up. Early leaders can then come in and get a free ride. But sometimes the first wave is the best one, after all. Sometimes hard work isn’t enough. Sometimes you have to get in the water and know which wave to ride.

Waves: First Movers

Imagine you’re at a party where you don’t know anyone. If you’re outgoing, you might walk up to someone and start talking to them. If you’re an introvert, you might wait for someone to talk to you. Either of these tactics might lead to conversations with a couple of people. Now imagine you have a friend at the party who is outgoing and talkative. Your friend introduces you to everyone she thinks you should know, and you end up talking to 12 different people. Your friend has played the role of a superconnector.

Superconnectors

Wealthy people get depressed once they no longer have anything to work toward. Astronauts have this problem as well. So it turns out that people in dead-end jobs and really successful people have more in common than you might guess: they both get depressed because they feel they aren’t progressing or moving forward. People need to feel progress and feel they are moving forward. In fact, momentum is more important than quality or financials or most anything else. And sometimes the perception of momentum is as good as momentum itself.

Constant Momentum

To innovate is to do something new. Disruptive innovation is when something new changes the game so completely as to eliminate all the established players. Disruptive innovations usually save either time or money. These technologies are simplifiers. They make things easier; they make things simpler.

Innovation

Innovators have a talent for simplification, for zeroing in on what matters, and for focusing on the important challenges that they face. And innovative geniuses eliminate unimportant decisions from their lives. Steve Jobs, for example, always wore black turtlenecks and one style of jeans so he didn’t have to waste time deciding what to wear. Having to make multiple small and inconsequential decisions can sap a person’s subsequent self-control, and deplete patience and willpower. Clearing out the clutter of minor decisions can improve the quality of big decisions.

Simplification: Removing Decisions

Entrepreneur Elon Musk sold his first video game at age 12, and by 31, he had started and sold two companies. With time and money on his hands, he began to study space travel. The kind of smartcuts that drive Elon Musk’s success is called 10x Thinking — the art of taking a big swing. To really make big improvements, you have to change things, sometimes drastically. And to do this, you have to let go of some assumptions. You can’t just look for improvement, which will get you just 10% better. You’re looking for 10x better.

10x Thinking

These hacks help you face a situation that “everybody knows” how to solve

teamwork

Teamwork

Think Outside The Box

The way to grow and move upwards.. faster.

Entrepreneur and journalist Shane Snow (Wired, Fast Company, The New Yorker, and cofounder of Contently) analyzes the lives of people and companies that do incredible things in implausibly short time. How do some startups go from zero to billions in mere months? How did Alexander the Great, YouTube tycoon Michelle Phan, and Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon climb to the top in less time than it takes most of us to get a promotion? What do high-growth businesses, world-class heart surgeons, and underdog marketers do in common to beat the norm? One way or another, they do it like computer hackers. They employ what psychologists call "lateral thinking: to rethink convention and break "rules" that aren't rules. These are not shortcuts, which produce often dubious short-term gains, but ethical "smartcuts" that eliminate unnecessary effort and yield sustainable momentum. In Smartcuts, Snow shatters common wisdom about success, revealing how conventions like "paying dues" prevent progress, why kids shouldn't learn times tables, and how, paradoxically, it's easier to build a huge business than a small one. From SpaceX to The Cuban Revolution, from Ferrari to Skrillex, Smartcuts is a narrative adventure that busts old myths about success and shows how innovators and icons do the incredible by working smarter—and how perhaps the rest of us can, too.

moneyandinvestments

Money & Investments

Entrepreneur and journalist Shane Snow (Wired, Fast Company, The New Yorker, and cofounder of Contently) analyzes the lives of people and companies that do incredible things in implausibly short time.How do some startups go from zero to billions in mere months? How did Alexander the Great, YouTube tycoon Michelle Phan, and Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon climb to the top in less time than it takes most of us to get a promotion? What do high-growth businesses, world-class heart surgeons, and underdog marketers do in common to beat the norm?One way or another, they do it like computer hackers. They employ what psychologists call "lateral thinking: to rethink convention and break "rules" that aren't rules.These are not shortcuts, which produce often dubious short-term gains, but ethical "smartcuts" that eliminate unnecessary effort and yield sustainable momentum. In Smartcuts, Snow shatters common wisdom about success, revealing how conventions like "paying dues" prevent progress, why kids shouldn't learn times tables, and how, paradoxically, it's easier to build a huge business than a small one.From SpaceX to The Cuban Revolution, from Ferrari to Skrillex, Smartcuts is a narrative adventure that busts old myths about success and shows how innovators and icons do the incredible by working smarter—and how perhaps the rest of us can, too.

Shane Snow is an accomplished writer whose work has resonated with readers around the world. Shane Snow has published several books that explore a range of topics, from fiction to nonfiction, and has received critical acclaim for the ability to weave compelling narratives. Shane Snow's writing style is known for its depth and authenticity, and has earned quite a loyal following of readers.

Shane Snow

Smartcuts

Smartcuts: How Hackers, Innovators, and Icons Accelerate Success

In the early stages of a new business, it is usually the founder who takes on many tasks themselves. With progress over time, the goal is to delegate secondary tasks so that the executives can focus on the 20% of tasks that will generate 80% of the results to scale the company.The main objective is to be able to answer yes to the question: “If I were not present, would my company still generate money?” That’s an excellent indication of whether or not you are financially independent.If you have several sources of income, you will get that much closer to becoming financially independent.

1. Achieving Financial Independence

It is important to make sure that your first business is mature and developed enough before you start focusing on an eventual second source of income. However, I believe it is also important for entrepreneurs to always have an ambitious attitude and seek new sources of growth.Having multiple sources of income can decrease your risk of losing it all. If the business to which you’re dedicating all your efforts goes bankrupt or fails, you will lose your only source of income, and you will be left empty-handed. When you have several sources of steady income, that worry is reduced.

2. Greater Stability And Safety

Everyone wants to live their dream life, but not everyone is able to achieve that goal. If you are smart and manage more than one source of income, then you have a real chance of creating the dream life you want. The more time and effort you put into building your sources of income, the greater the chances you will achieve financial freedom to live the life you want.You may decide to invest more freely in your time and personal development, you could choose to continue building additional sources of income, or you may want to travel the world and enjoy it with your family.

5. Living Your Dream Life

You’ve likely heard the expression,“Wealth begets wealth.” Essentially, higher amounts of money and income will attract more money and ROI. Having multiple sources of income will allow you to invest a greater proportion in both your primary company and other new sources of income. In short, you will likely be able to scale faster because it is a virtuous cycle.

3. Scaling Faster

Multiple sources of income provide you with a wider safety net and the chance to achieve financial freedom.

 Five Benefits Of Having Multiple Sources Of Income As An Entrepreneur

Find 100+ Facts about Entrepreneurship - Curated from inspiring sources like Books, Podcasts & Articles - Genuine Insights from like-minded Users like You!

The Hard Thing About Hard Things

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10 Things You Must Know When Launching A New Product

How to 10x Your Chance at Startup Success

Andy McCune: How Products Go Viral

8 tips on setting the right price for your tech service

Smartcuts: How Hackers, Innovators, and Icons Accelerate Success

Five Benefits Of Having Multiple Sources Of Income As An Entrepreneur

4 ways to perfect your business model

What Should You be Looking in Your Co-founder?

It's time to
Read like a Pro.

The Hard Thing About Hard Things

7 Terrible Traps Entrepreneurs Fall Into (And How to Get Out of Them)

10 Things You Must Know When Launching A New Product

How to 10x Your Chance at Startup Success

Andy McCune: How Products Go Viral

8 tips on setting the right price for your tech service

Smartcuts: How Hackers, Innovators, and Icons Accelerate Success

Five Benefits Of Having Multiple Sources Of Income As An Entrepreneur

4 ways to perfect your business model

What Should You be Looking in Your Co-founder?

It's time to Read like a Pro.

It's time to
Read like a Pro.