Serial Entrepreneurs are favored by everyone because of their experiences and record
A lot of people talk about how important it is to have experienced entrepreneurs who have successful exits to run a startup. I definitely agree. You would not bet money on a guy who’s playing a video game for the first time ever. If he has beaten a similar game before, he has much better odds. After all, everyone of us would be better than ourselves right now 10 years later.
Unproven Entrepreneurs tend to have more drive and work more crazy hours
However, experienced entrepreneurs who have successful exits in the past may also lose their drive compared to the first time they try. After all, they now have a comfortable life and it’s subconsciously it is fine if they lose. First time entrepreneurs don’t have that luxury and have a much stronger drive just because they might be living on their savings. They have to succeed. They are also looking to prove themselves while the successful entrepreneur has already proven himself successful.
Find good mixes of both
I think a good combo would be one founder with successful startups in the past, and another founder who is unproven but has the drive to push everything over his limit. Obviously successful entrepreneurs are difficult to find, so another good combo might be people who have failed 1-2 startups. They have the experience of what works and what doesn’t work, they spend a couple years developing relationships, and they still have the eagerness and drive to push themselves to the limits. The fact that they could fail a few times and get back to it shows their commitment.
If you are a successful entrepreneur who has strong exits in the past, make sure you don’t lose your drive. Always push yourself to the max regardless of how comfortable your backup is like. After all, you are there to make a bigger impact and create a new legacy.
I have been crazy busy with the Viralogy.com launch and traveling to LA lately. That explains why I haven’t been able to update my blog as often. That’s why I am starting to Vlog more now. It is not as good for SEO because there is very little text, but at least I keep you guys engaged 🙂
Viralogy has been incredibly successful though. We just launched 4 weeks ago, and we already have unique visitors in the mid five-digits, with 30% of that from direct traffic. That means people are recognizing our brand and going back to our site. I’ve also been meeting people who have heard about us at almost every single event I went to, so that’s a good sign too.
I think at this point we are still very far away from success, but we have already built a small plane, went through the runway, and took off. We’ll need better planes and better pilots to make sure we get to our destination, but we’re at a good start. Right now our company of 10 has been extraordinary, and my job is to make sure it stays that way 🙂
Lesson in the Video
If you want to market to teens, you can’t rely on market data and research. You have to be there where the teens are. Play their games, join their chat rooms, hang out with them. That’s the only way you can understand what they really like.
That’s like trying to buy a present for a kid. If you just have tons of research about the kid’s demograhic, chances are you won’t buy a birthday present for a kid that he loves. BUT if you were his uncle that plays with him often, you have a very good chance to buy that birthday present that he loves.
In the social media sphere, most people use Compete.com as a nice standard to evaluate the popularity of a site. Sure, there’s Alexa and a few other sites out there that measure traffic too, but lately I’ve mostly been hearing people talk about Compete.com traffic instead of the other ones.
Quantcast offers more accurate data because it is actually based on scripts that is embedded in these sites, but because of that, the sites it covers are also limited.
How Compete.com evaluates traffic
Compete.com evaluates each site’s traffic by a sample group of roughly 2 million internet users (what they say is 2% of all internet users) based on ISPs, ASPs, Opt-In Panels and the Compete.com Toolbar.
Through some complex statistical calculations, they roughly estimate how many people really go on your site from this sample group.
Twitter takes time to adapt to. Most people who first go on Twitter have no idea why anyone would use it, and that Twitter is something for those who have too much time and nothing to do. Not for me.
Then they would hear about Twitter again from a friend or some media source, and decide to try it out again. They create 2 more tweets, and still feel that life is wasting away. Finally, they hear that a good friend or Obama is using Twitter too, and finally gives it another try. That’s when they become glued.
The fact is that Twitter is actually a very useful and fun (we call this very FD) tool. Its not necessarily for people who have too much time, but it actually is for busy people who need a better way of communicating with people.
Just like the In’N’Out menu, where they keep everything as simple as possible with hidden menu items, Twitter keeps everything as simple as possible. Even Twitter Search is hidden at an non-obvious location. Finally, there are over 400 Twitter Apps out there that make Twitter better that could help with your Twitter experience. You should know a few good ones.
For this reason, here’s a guide for the beginner to “get” Twitter and become a Tweeter.
1. Create a Twitter Account with your real name
Registration is simple. If you don’t know how to create a account once you go to twitter.com, you probably shouldn’t be on Twitter. However, I want to remind you that almost in all instances, you should put in your real name. Twitter is about building relationships with real people for who they are, instead of meeting Surferdude24s.
Also, keep your Twitter username short and easy to remember. This is so that people can Retweet you easier without hitting the limit, and people can type in your name without other references.
This is a short clip titled “Validation”. Its about 16 minutes long but I think every minute is worth the watch (I rather you watch it instead of reading this blogpost).
This film touched me because I felt a lot of empathy towards the main character, and it triggered some of my hidden emotional reactions that I didn’t even know was there.
I have always tried to make others in my life happier. When I was in kindergarten, I felt that because people around me (especially my family) were living such sad lives, I had no right to be unhappy and drag them down.
Empathy towards a guy who had no right to be unhappy
I had to be happy, because peoples’ happiness depended on me. When everything is falling apart in life, I at least would be that pillar of happiness that holds everything together. Consequently, whenever I cried during my childhood, I felt ashamed and hid from others.
Today, my friends say that I’m one of the most optimistic people they know. They tell me that talking to me makes them happy, no matter how down is the situation. They also say that I am extremely emotionally stable, and that’s because I do not want to ever be an emotional burden to others.
I needed to be the one who is calm and happy when others are down. If I ever become emotionally unstable and need others to help me feel better, I feel that I not only failed in my responsibilities, I have become a burden to others.
My goal in life is to make others successful, and its like a sharp blade through my heart whenever I know I’m being a burden to people instead.
People who seem happy all the time would still appreciate the right to be upset
But the truth is, sometimes I do become upset.
Sometimes I feel that people take advantage of my constant attempts to put others before me, and I occasionally would express that unhappiness to people.
The sad thing is, whenever I do express such unhappiness, people are not used to it coming from me, and they become very defensive, asking “what in the world is your problem?” When people confirm my sad belief that I have no right to be sad, it depresses me even more.
Why should the child who cries all day get whatever he wants, while the child who also wants to cry but recognizes that her parents already have enough troubles in life for them to worry about her get nothing? And when she finally can’t stand it and starts to cry about something, her parents might not understand her unnoticed pains but just become angry at her for raising more problems (she should know better!), while they appeal to the other child who cries all day.
Facebook Imports Twitter’s Streaming Layout, along with its Fail Whale
I recently noticed that Facebook has had a lot of downtime after they created their new “News Feed”. Even as I write the post, Facebook is down.
I checked out the Twitter Search Stream for Facebook and it seems like hundreds of people are complaining about the same thing.
It looked like Facebook not only copied the Twitter Stream, but also imported the Fail Whale into their system. Maybe they can call it the Face Whale?
Facebook changed its format to combat Twitter
It’s no secret that the reason why Facebook made its switch is because it feels a little bit threatened by Twitter. Not too long ago, Facebook even tried to buy Twitter with their $15 Billion valuation stock”. Unfortunately, Facebook got a cold rejection.
This is in one sense logical, because Facebook does have a lot of user data, and I sometimes hear people say “why would I want to use Twitter when I already use Facebook?”
So now your feeds and even your Facebook Wall look like Twitter’s Tweet Stream. Is Facebook the best thing in the world now?
Not really.
Even though Facebook and Twitter try to serve very similar purposes – becoming more connected with people you care about – they are completely different animals. Twitter’s uniqueness still lies in:
It is cleaner and more refined
It is more open and exploratory
It highlights relationships based on merit, not friendship
It is a constantly engaging game of gaining more merit and creating value
1. Twitter strips out a lot of automated junk and presents cleaner information
Compared to Twitter, we all know that there’s a lot more stuff you can pull from the Facebook Stream because of all the activities that are going on in Facebook.
However, nowadays we don’t necessarily lack information. We lack the tools that help us refine information.
The truth is that a lot of the interesting things on the internet does not happen on Facebook. When you look at the Facebook Feeds, there’s a ton of auto-generated stuff that are exclusively about Facebook. You rarely find good articles on Facebook through the Facebook Feeds or some breaking news hours before it is covered by a news source because all you see on the FB Feed is how many pictures your friends uploaded and who changed their profile pictures.
In Twitter, people pull in all kinds of information, sites, news, and resources from all over the internet. These are things they have deemed worthy of their followers to consume. And since people can easily opt-out of your Tweets (will cover later), everyone actually has some sort of quality control pressure, unlike Facebook.
Twitter clears out all the photo uploads, events, Zombie bites, and just tells you what your friends want to tell you in 140 characters.
2. Information on Twitter is more open than Facebook, making it more adventurous
The Twitter platform is way more open than Facebook. On Twitter, you get to know exactly what’s been discussed in the Twittersphere immediately. You can find out what’s on the mind of people in that community at any given moment.
On Facebook, you have to be peoples’ friends to know what’s going on in your circle. Obviously that’s not a bad thing because a lot of people just care about their real life friends.
However, Twitter allows you to explore a whole new world of cool stuff, cool people, and opportunities for you to discover and absorb. Through tons of Twitter Apps, you are able to find interesting people in any particular industry, in your location, celebrities that you care about who won’t friend you on Facebook, and all sorts of fun information.
Being on Twitter is definitely more like an adventure compared to Facebook’s Shire-nature of hanging out with your Hobbit friends.
3. One-Way Followships on Twitter Enhances Experience for both Tweeters and Followers
Another unique advantage Twitter has is the one-way followship. On Facebook, there may be a lot of information that you don’t really care about from friends. However, since most of them are your real friends, its not very socially acceptable to opt out of that by unfriending them.
On Twitter, since people follow each other based on merit more often than existing friendship, you follow people because you enjoy what they tweet, instead of if you are acquaintances in real life.
If someone starts to tweet a lot of junk, its an easy unfollow for everyone. You only see what you want to see.
On the other hand, because people can easily unfollow you if you are tweeting trash, people on Twitter have more pressure to tweet out things that are more interesting…at least according to themselves.
Every time you Tweet, you risk someone clicking the unfollow button. This makes most people tweet seriously.
4. Follower Acquisition makes Twittering a constantly-engaging game
Because of the one-way nature of Twitter, a lot of people begin to treat this as a fun game to “earn” the followship of more followers.
On Facebook, if you invite a lot of people, you will probably get a lot of friends. But on Twitter it doesn’t work this way. You can follow everyone, and no one needs to follow you back.
In that sense, having a follower on Twitter is way more meaningful than having a new friend on Facebook. You “earn” your right to become follow-worthy, and I can guarantee that seeing a new follower on Twitter feels MUCH better than having a random guy request to be your friend on Facebook.
Because of that, there are a lot of people who work very hard to seem interesting, tweet out quality information, and find funny/witty things to say, all just to delight and entertain people so they can become more “follow-worthy”. No one works this hard to get friends on Facebook.
Conclusion: Different Tools for Different Purposes
I actually don’t dislike Facebook. I use it and like it a lot. However, by nature, Facebook will not (and I will argue never) replace Twitter even if it has the same layout and function.
On the other hand, Twitter will not replace Facebook either. They should not even try by adding in more information, a larger profile page, and allowing more pictures. The beauty of Twitter lies in its limitations, instead of how much it encompasses.
Facebook is about maintaining a stronger relationship with existing friends, whereas Twitter is like an engaging game where you are constantly learning new things, exploring new fields and attracting new followers.
I’ve always believed that there are three phases of a startup, and they are:
I. You run the business
During this time, you are setting everything up. if you work harder, the business moves faster; if you don’t work, the business does not move at all. You can still deal with fulltime jobs, school, or other things since there is a lot of flexibility.
II. The business runs you
After a certain point, you start to lose control of the progress of the company. Tasks arise by itself in the business: your customers are demanding service, your employees need direction, problems need to be solved. At this point you can’t choose to stop working or work slowly, because this world does not wait for you, and being slow on progress simply means death for the company.
III. The business runs itself
Hopefully, after a lot of hard work, you will reach the point where the business runs itself. Systems are set up, revenue streams in, employees not what to do. If you take a vacation and come back, the business would become stronger itself. This is when you can fully work ON your business, not IN your business (thank you Michael Gerber). Sadly, very few business actually get to this state.
