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Building a vision is THE most important thing to do for an entrepreneur. A vision is a cause, a statement of your product (in larger sense, it’s you as the founder, inventor) that speaks directly to the heart of your users. No matter how big or small of a problem you aim to address, the clarity of your vision will make everything comes more naturally: mission statement, product development, marketing, etc..

Step 1: Understanding Vision

Everyone understands vision differently, I personally think vision comes in three forms.

1. Personal Vision: it comes from founders’ personality and behavior pattern. Legendary visionaries/entrepreneurs  like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Sam Walton, all  found their calling because their non-failing pattern of  doing things their own way, Steve being the innovator, Bill being the problem solver, Sam being the one who is “for people”. Many generalist entrepreneurs found their vision by simply doing things they naturally are inclined to do.

2. Industry vision: it comes from deep expertise. Google’s vision is to “organize the world’s information”. A generalist can not build something like Google. They might be able to build Dell, but not Google. Google vision comes AFTER two Phd students founders discovered a new way for more effective search that was built on scientific research. Many technology companies with a B-2-B model were founded by industry veterans who have been around certain fields long enough to deeply understand the “pain”. These types of companies are usually started by researchers or industry veterans.

3. Opportunity vision: many companies were founded to solely target one narrow area, such as many online ad networks, facebook/twitter apps, even lot of iPhone apps. They are stripped down version of industry vision because it requires less industry knowledge, hard skills to get it off ground. Many social web 2.0 phenomenons were also products of such visionaries, including Digg.

Step 2: Find your own vision

Since finding vision is so critical for you to happily, rightly go on your entrepreneurial journey, you must find who you are, and what your vision could be.

Since I am still at the early stage of evaluating and planning my startup, I have thought about projects of all three types of visions. I thought about using my professional background (search engine marketing, web analytics), or academic background (mathematical modeling, data mining), I also looked at short term projects such as some twitter or facebook apps; In fact, I spent about 6 months last year building something off twitter API, could it be accepted by some people and maybe sell for half a million dollar, it very well could be if I continued. But I could not find the passion to continue, I could not find the reason “WHY” I was doing it, I quickly gave up that effort.

Today, I am focusing on being myself, learn from my own mistake, look at my past, behavior patterns to see what my “heart” tells me to do. The following is some of the findings (I am still searching, not finished yet)

1. I am not type A (aggressive) business man, nor am I a scholar.

2. I am easily influenced by my environment, more so, by my friends. In fact, most of my achievements (if any) I did it because some of “smart friends” did it before me and I didn’t want to fall behind. I am almost elevated by my environment, because of it, I gained confidence, I aimed higher, I obtained the desire to be original, inventive. Without environment and people who I am exposed to, who I know, who know me, who I admire, I would not be able to dream high.

3. I am an average person: meaning, I like attention, I am not a great listener, I offer unsolicited help but I know the boundary and limit, I can work harder but I am slightly lazy.

4. I am always optimistic (or laid back), I have become ambitious.

5. In real life, I am the “go-to” funny, party person among friends, coworkers, etc., in fact I might be easily a stand up comedian, IF, I don’t speak bad English, which I do. And I am obviously self-obsessed, and can be shallow…Arn’t we all?

6. I like to know what others think about me, in fact, I care a lot what others think of me.

Knowing who I am, Would it be nice for me to invent tools to facilitate my own personal growth? For example, making it easier to be exposed to the motivated environment, quality people? Would it be nice to know what others think of me and make it easier to grow to be better person? Whatever I am inventing, I want to invent tools that I feel deeply connected to, only then I can feel passionate about it and devote to it.

Step 3: Refine your vision

Enough about myself, if you are an aspiring entrepreneur, try step 1; Depending on your vision type, you might need to go through different “self discovery” for step 2 when you are looking for your vision. I think the key is to refine your vision constantly till you are fully convinced. This process may take just a spark, it may take months. Never give up, always pay attention.

Don’t forget, it’s extremely important to think your steps out loud, write them down, because it actually helps you organize your thoughts and get to where you want to be quicker. There is an old Chinese saying: sharpening your axe before cutting the trees.

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I asked Cyan Banister, founder/CEO of Zivity.com, what she thinks herself more of: founder or CEO? She said “first and foremost, founder, inventor…likes to create new things”.

When you start to think yourself as entrepreneurial “inventor”, you will start to add higher standard to everything you do with long term vision.

Along this line, I continue to discover and use the best web products (does not cost more money), following is just a list of a few. It’s not important for you to actually use these products, but it’s critical for you to understand it’s your job to discover the best, and learn from the best, and be the best that you can be.

Listen to Music: lala.com

I use lala.com almost exclusively to discover new music. The system lets you randomly discover music from other people, lala will then mix them up to play you non stop “random” songs, you can add them easily into your collection. When Apple (its vision is to change the status quo, and make us think different) buys a company, you know it’s a good one. Lala’s vision is to discover music differently. It fits in Apple’s vision, it also challenges Apples’ iTune platform, which in this case, it’s the status quo. Lala is the best, lala is the innovator.

Read books : Goodreads.com

I discovered Goodreads.com through its users who tweet ferociously. It’s the best social network for readers. Its vision is to “get people excited about reading”. It has an amazing book discovery engine and people are passionate of using it.

“Admire” people: formspring.me

Not actually. Formspring.me provides intimate, anonymous, totally controlled ways for people to ask each other questions. I find people are lot more willing to answer/reply you on formspring than on twitter. It has apparently “invented” something that twitter did not. Its vision is to “connect individuals”

Remember everything:  Evernote

If Google organizes the world’s information. Evernote organizes people’s life: your ideas, what you see, what you hear, what you want to say, how you cry, how you laugh. Every moment of your life can be jogged down, organized on Evernote. Its vision is clear, people love it.

It’s no longer easy to create another generic “social network” that millions people would adopt. Or is it? In the past 6 months, two “side projects” have captivated millions of people’s imagination, and continue to grow stronger everyday. We are not talking about 10k visitors/day, or even 100k/day, we are talking about an app pulling in 1million visitors on an average day. That is viral.

I am talking about chatroulette.com and formspring.me.

I am sure you have heard of them, and I am here to explore what we can learn, as entrepreneurs, about us, and human behavior in general from these two apps and find the common denominator and minimum requirements for any apps entrepreneurs are working on in order to achieve this level of success.

1. We love attention

Formspring.me puts individual in spotlight for anyone to throw questions at them. Human can be self-doubt, self-assured etc., but we love others to give attention to us. As Readwriteweb.com (lately I have not been a big fan for them)’s Jolie O’Dell puts it, it’s our “our deep and insatiable love of self-reference”.

2. We are curious

As human, we are curious about what is “next” for us. On Formspring.me, we are curious to see what the “next” questions or attention will be thrown at us. As askers, we are curious how far we can push the person we admire to answer my “next” personal question. On chatroulette.com, we are curious about the next person showing up in the webcam: the amount of suspense while the other party’s webcam is on and whether you two can have a “conversation” is incredible nerve racking, or ridiculous, driving us to want for more.

chat roulette from Casey Neistat on Vimeo.

3. We like to be in control

On formspring.me, anyone can ask question to anyone else, who in turn can choose to answer or ignore any questions. On chatroulette.com, anyone can “next” anybody: that is the way how average human feels “empowered”: to deny or receive other human

4. We like odds

Odds is randomness. In real life, Odds to win something drive people to do stupid things. Chatroulette.com at its core is meeting “random” people through webcam. (what is the Odds to see some pretty women stripping, any straight male might think, for example.) Formspring.me lets you connect people through personal questions, what is the “odds” that s/he will answer my question (without knowing who I am, hahaha), you might think.

5. We like intimacy

Both chatroulette.com and formspring.me provide ways to connect two individuals directly on a personal level. And we love the closeness with people we admire or good looking funny people we don’t know.

6. We like it simple

What more to say, both apps can be built in a day or two for a barebone structure. But the key is: it’s very intuitive to use for any average Internet users.The UI flow could not be simpler.

7. We love ourselves, we love attention.

It’s the first and foremost human trait.  And it’s the most important lesson for us entrepreneurs to understand if we were to build a popular social apps.

We often hear entrepreneurs attribute their success to “gut feeling”. We often heard people persuade us “to listen to the heart”.  Have we ever wondered what the gut feeling really is, scientifically? It turns out, as Simon Sinek’s book “Start with why” explores, it is more of a biological fact than “feeling”. In fact he wrote the whole book and build a whole business to “inspire people to get inspired”, based on this biological fact. I have so far covered the first 6 chapters of the book and I can say this is by far the best business book I have ever read, beyond tipping point, built to last etc.. Why? Because it’s relevant to us entrepreneurs, and it’s actionable.

So, this week, the 4th week since I started the series “daily things to do as an entrepreneur”, I am practicing “gut feeling” to all my ideas and see which one sticks the most.

Step 1: Read “start with why” by Simon Sinek

Get the book “Start with why” and read it, at least the first 6 chapters. If you can’t wait for book to arrive, watch this interview with Simon Sinek to get a glimpse of what he has to say. To us entrepreneurs, building something “people want” and “trust” is the key. To get there, we have to start with the basic: set out to define our mission to see if it resonates with average people. Simon examined the way Apple defined/built its first iPod as “1000 songs in your pocket (wherever you go)” instead of “a mp3 player” (which is what iPod really is). It feels “right”, people hence love it. As entrepreneurs, we must find our mission.

Step 2: Finding your mission

I often hear entrepreneurs succeeded by developing something out of his/her personal hobby or passion. It intimated me a lot because I could hardly find any hobby that I am truly passionate about. But I am over it. I now realize that finding your startup mission or cause is different from finding your hobby or passion. We may never have a true passion or hobby per se, we definitely should and can find our entrepreneurial mission, ie. why we are doing our project, and why people should use thing we build. That mission has to be personal to average people, it has to strike people’s gut feeling, it has to “feel right”.

Step 3: Evaluate all of your ideas using “gut feeling” test

With “evernotes” iphone App, I collected bunch of ideas on regular basis, they started as “what it does” for people. But now I throw question “why should people use it” and see if the answer comes natural, feels right, before I even consider to spend time thinking about how and what to do to build them.

Step 4: Practice makes perfect

Practicing step 3 often enough, you will soon discover that entrepreneurial projects passing your “gut feeling” test all bear certain common traits. It’s no longer a matter of “if people would use it?” (because you will find people who like and use your product), it has become a matter of “how many people will use it” (or market size problem because your product may only address a small problem)

Step 5: Carry on

Once you have defined mission, everything else become crystal clear. It’s time to get down to work, finding partners, hiring, building, or DIY. It’s only the beginning.

I am having fun go through this steps, I hope it’s helpful for you as well.

Last Monday, I went to a popular venue in San Francisco called Elbo Room where a few bands took turns to play on stage. The first band’s members dressed all like rock stars, completely rocked out on their electrical guitars, they even had a girl on stage at any given time hitting a hand drum; it was exciting, it was very loud. I thought it was good but I couldn’t remember any songs seconds after. Everybody else present was also clapping, nodding, being polite. Moments later, another band was on stage: three guys all in plain clothes, seemingly all just rolled out of their sleeping bag. But the miracle happened a few short minutes later: the entire house rocked out, people were on their feet, people were singing after the sleep-walker like singers…the songs stuck in my head right away!

So, two bands: one was showy with full nine yards of techniques, the other band was simple but memorable. Which one do people choose? The latter.

I think entrepreneur ought to work hard to be like the 2nd band. Be the band that creates melody, not technique.

Contemplating

It’s about knowing yourself. Before picking the ideas, you need to think if you have strong vision about certain ideas/areas, or if you are willing to work on any ideas as long as you can become successful. Knowing you as a visionary or opportunist could bring a clarity to your struggle to success.

Idea

Create simple but powerful ideas. How do you know your idea is powerful? Talk to the people who you think could be your future users. Randomly choose 10 of them from your office, coffee shop, while you wait in line for a movie, etc. talk to them in plain English. If 80% of people think it’s very useful from your less 30 seconds of elevator pitch, you probably are onto something people want. Otherwise, move on to the next idea.

Standard

I mean: set up high standard. Just because idea is simple it does not mean you have to execute it to a lower standard. Always, always set up the highest standard for your product originating from your idea. Be the Porsche of your idea. Be the best that you can be.

Narrowing

I am talking about narrowing your options. If high standard means needing more resources to make fewer things right, then focus on the fewer. Don’t try to make everything right, because you will either stretch your resources too thin to create something with true high standard, or you will focus on getting more resources which will lead to possible delayed failure. And a perfect market for your idea does need good timing. Work on the purest part of your idea first, the essence that got you excited at the first place, create the melody for it, strike a tune, give them to your target users. You will quickly find if they like it or not.

Fun

Great songs makes us happy. If your idea is a great one, you should feel the fun creating, delivering it. If you are no longer having fun, time to stop and go back to first step “contemplating”, starting all over again.

To embark on a successful entrepreneurial journey, we must know who we are. Vivek Wadhwa had a popular article on techcrunch called “Can entrepreneurs be made” analyzing schools of thoughts on this subject.

I think there are only two kinds of entrepreneurs: visionary and opportunist.

What is a visionary?

The most memorable definition of “visionary” that I heard was a talk given by Ctrip.com (largest Chinese travel site) founder and chairman James Jianzhang Liang, a 39 year old man with a net-worth of $300+ million. In the entrepreneurial context, James thinks one sets out to do something because he has a vision. He then casually defined “vision” being something one gains from deep understanding/experiences within certain fields. As such, visionary is a person with a vision.  Because of the unparalleled domain expertise needed, Start-ups founded by visionaries usually are funded by high profile Angels or VCs and have longer cycle before it gets to profit or sustainable business model. Google, Aardvark, Twitter are visionary-founded companies. Paul Graham’s Ycombinator encourages entrepreneurs to start project that people want as if it’s “non-profit”, do not think about business model. Hence, Ycombinator produced many great technology startups with deep vision that aims to change the world.

What is opportunist?

Opportunist is a daydreamer, someone with a lot of ideas, restless, unsettled. If visionary is someone with superb intelligence and expertise, opportunist is somewhat plain in comparison, but could be relentlessly resourceful. Someone who is so motivated s/he will go to the end of the world, or skip all sleeps to seize an opportunity. Entrepreneurs who are opportunists often do not necessarily want to save or change the world. They started up due to sheer desire to make it better for him/herself, family, to be independent, or they stumbled upon an opportunity so good that they carried on and became a runaway success. Companies started up by opportunist usually do not have ground breaking technology, and often case, they were not funded by high profile VCs before they even reached profitability. VC’s money, if any, simply worked as a weapon to reach bigger economy of scale. “Lemonade stand type” entrepreneurs are usually opportunists. Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Michale Dell (dell.com), Kevin Rose (digg.com), Gurbaksh Chahal (sold startup to become later valueClick.com, now working on gWallet), and many other non-technologist entrepreneurs in the tech fields created many great firms that make the world better place. Entrepreneur turned Angel Mark Suster thinks it’s critical to “Validate that you can make money before starting.” in his popular blog post “Why the ‘fail fast’ mantra needs to fail”.

Ask the question: Am I a visionary or opportunist?

You have to dig deep into you soul to find out who you are and go for the entrepreneurial path that suites you the best.

Entrepreneurship aside, I have long remembered what one of my math professors told me: “you are opportunist, I am confident you can find a solution”.  She was talking about the dilemma I was in back in 1999 when I got admitted into Stanford without any financial aid or scholarship, and she thought it would work out for me just fine. Easier said than done. I had never been a hard working good student and having Stanford accept me was a huge honor, I had no hope whatsoever to get any kind of scholarship. After working for the entire summer 1999 in restaurants and summer camp, I still did not have enough money to cover the book cost let alone the tuition and living expanse. Almost forced against wall, I approached 200+ professors at Stanford, only 4 replied back and I secured 2 interviews with them and got one job as research assistantship which covers all expanses. The rest became history.

Now that I pretty much figured out I am the opportunist type, Now what?

Evaluate and find the projects that speak to my “Opportunist” nature.

I had a LOT of mathematical training, I admired “visionary” and wanted to become one. I did not want to waste my “knowledge” learned from stochastic, probability, network analysis, optimization algorithms, decision sciences etc. Among the projects I was evaluating, I tended to lean towards the one that could “change the world” using these advanced methodology, connecting academia with reality. Little did I know, the gap between the two is beyond my capability, my “schooled knowledge” had become “sunken cost” that should not have been taken into consideration when I decided what to tackle. Instead, I should focus on the ones that people really want, maybe reproduce proven concept in different fields, because that suites me being an opportunist, that suits me being a non-technologist, non-scholar.

How to start your entrepreneurial endeavor: Be authentic, Be you.

Starting up requires a lot of preparation work: defining project, scoping project, finding partner (or not) etc. I find there is no one answer from others that is perfect for me. I find it’s absolutely possible to startup with only one founder through hiring programmers, given idea is not the only thing you can give your potential hire. To me, I don’t enjoy coding, but I am perfectly capable to define project scope, product spec, database modeling, logic flow chart. Unless you are super lucky to find one superb hire who does everything for you including archetype, you will need to translate your idea into something feasible. To be authentic, it’s critical that you truly are solving a problem in real world that people want AND you deeply understand.

As an early stage entrepreneur, I made ton of mistakes, the biggest one was to jump into conclusion too quickly and only resulted in delayed and painful failure. No matter how much people emphasize execution, a solid idea is still number 1 thing. It’s like talking about maintaining a great marriage after you picked the wrong girl (or guy): at some point, crap will hit the fan. I have learned to spend the time to evaluate  the right idea before executing it. And I find doing following is hugely helpful.

1. Discuss

If you have friends who are successful entrepreneurs, don’t be shy, ask them for help and input. It’s even better if they are close friends. I had a tendency not to discuss business with friends. Only after I geared into “entrepreneurial desperation mood”, that is, the determination to become successful entrepreneur, I started to throw my ideas at them and see their responses. To my surprise, many of my “revolutionary ideas” are not that relevant. But you have to open up and discuss with people to know that. As what Gurbaksh Chahal told Andrew Warner, “One key thing is, don’t think you have a revolutionary idea – that’s just the starting point. 1%. 99% is all execution. Go out, and get it done. And get it done masterfully.”

2. Focus

Let’s face it: your time is limited. One hour more spent on unnecessary things is one hour less on getting to your goal, provided you are well balanced and have a rested mind. So, what do I do: I cut half the time I read techcrunch or other technology news site, focus on doing things that are directly beneficial to bringing my entrepreneurial mission to life.

3. Adopt

Instead of reading news about which startups are getting how much venture funding, try identify a few popular ones and adopt them to your daily use. Only when I started using new popular products on daily basis, I was able to “feel” the essence of it, in some cases, think about how I can learn from them. Following are just a few software products that I have been using in the last week.

1) Evernote (iphone app): it lets me record my thoughts wherever, whenever, however I want. In a rainy Sunday morning while I was still in bed checking iphone emails, a few ideas struck me and hit “voice” and recorded them. I often use it to capture the momentary inspiration while walking, eating. Evernote is also a beautifully made product, great execution.

2) Disqus: it’s a blog comment product.

I have not been a big fan for widget product. But that is the presumption that an entrepreneurial mind should not have. After seeing both Andrew Warner and Howard Lindzon use the product, I gave it a try. It is the social commenting made easy, you will be notified with people reply to your comment, especially the author you commented on. It’s “comments” delivery service. Another perfect example of what Aardvark did for Q&A world: bringing your product to where users live, be it email, IM, Cell phone etc.

3) Try your friends’ product

If your friend made a successful product, you should be the first one jump into using it and see why it’s popular.

4) Try 2 to 3 other new products each week

This past week I also tried using TwitCasting and Foodspotting, although I am not sure how big they can grow, I am so very surprised by how well both products are executed. Using them is like a dose of fresh air.

4. Simplicity

Stick to the rule of 30 seconds elevate approach. See if you can use one sentence to “pitch” your idea to others and get a “wow” answer. If at the end of 30 seconds, they are like “hmm, uhhh…”. It’s time to go back to drawing board.

5. Dare

Dare to scratch your entire idea or product. Before pulling the trigger to make something, strive to “make something people want”.

6. Timing

Timing is important. When you or someone brilliant spotted a new industry success, think about overall the key success factors and if you can incorporate some of the attributes that are part of the proven success. Each year there are usually a few hugely successful products coming out of nowhere followed by ton of copy cats. (Groupon, remember?) I am not telling you to be a copy cat, but do something that much smarter than just being a copy cat. There is hardly any revolutionary or completely new ideas, almost all ideas are related to each other one way or another. But the key is the few, the proud. Take a look at chatroulette.com, and think what you can learn from it.

7. Leverage

Leverage is a beautiful word, it comes with the value. If you create value to others, you have the leverage. If you do someone a favor, you have the leverage. I am not asking you to think about “leverage” before interacting with other human being. I am saying when you do something you care deeply about, such as entrepreneurship for me, I find it natural to comment on others’ blog entry with more thoughts in it, and as human being, we love to know what others think of us, hence love to see my blogs or products or whatever are getting others’ attention. And when I find your comment valuable to me, I feel the necessity to communicate with you. This often creates unparalleled opportunity to open discussion channel between celebrity bloggers and new comers, even nurturing a healthy professional relationship. That is the leverage. You should create social leverage as a human being, and your product should even more so on focusing on creating social leverage to other people. Only this way can we “make something people want”.

As a side note, do you think iPad will be a hit? Just ask yourself a question: would you want one? If so, it will be a hit!