2above.com

So, I have been working on prototyping my niche social site for a while now, after feeling complete at ease and comfortable with my product idea. (That is one of the key reasons that I have not blogged much lately)

Now the new problem arises: how to get the real, full functional site built?

I am evaluating a few options:
1. Outsource through sites like elance.com: however it’s extremely hard to find developers/designers who are capable of building fully interactive, social site/widgets like many we already use.
2. Find a technical cofounder locally, who has the experience and talent: I do have a few great friends who are smart, solid, experienced. However I am leaning toward to get the site built for a public beta test first to proof the concept, get the users before promising other great talent with equities that I am not even sure about.
3. Invest my time and money to find really talented developers through virtually/physically social with who have been there, done that.

The third option is a little unusual comparing to 1 and 2. I am a loyal audience for Mixergy’s interview like this one because Andrew always humanize the otherwise mysterious early stage of any startup efforts. Watching his interviews simply gives me more access to not only those who already succeeded, but also those who are just like me, are building for the future. For example, One of Andrew’s newest sponsor is called loseitorloseit.com. I checked it out, and love the site (not that I need to lose weight). It’s almost impossible to find developers on elance to be able to build something like this. Loseitorloseit.com pointed me to its developers forge38.com, a full stack fast prototyping shop in US. Now, forge38 seems to be the type of developers that I am interested to get my site built.

The benefit working with US, cutting edge shop like forge38.com would be a top notch social site built to function and appeal to US/western audience, good for business. The challenge would probably be the cost. Early entrepreneur like me are tight with money. Every dollar counts. And I am not complaining it. As 37signal.com has pointed out, limited resource is your best friend, not enemy. It helps you build only the epicenter of the product and focus on building the core of the value.

I think I am going through option 3, I need to find out a few top notch developers, figure out the budget, and go all the way. I rather bleed more $$ to come up with a MUCH better site.

Are you a great developers/designers who have a solid portfolio and look for opportunities? I would love to hear from you!

Big boys are the guys who are really good at what they do.

Little boys are the rest of us, who admire big boys.

The mindset of big boys:

1. They truly enjoy what they do
2. They constantly look for new struggles to make them better
3. They ignore competitions
4. They do NOT admire
5. They focus on Now
6. They do not believe in “secret formula”, they do not believe in the answers/solution that can be applied to themselves that are handed by others. Instead, they constantly practice on their own, exchange ideas on the side; and when they find the solution, they are glad to share.
7. They don’t care what “success” is defined, they just keep their heads down, do what they are good at.

The mindset of little boys:

1. They (or we) really admire big boys
2. They keep the little “answers” or “solutions” they learn from “success seminars” to their own, and refuse or do not know how to invent their own solutions for the problem they face
3. They do not really enjoy what they do
4. They focus on “one day”, future. They forget about “now”
5. They don’t truly know “practice makes perfect”
6. They believe in luck way too much.
7. They think about “success” too much

For starters, or aspiring entrepreneurs, it’s important to take that leap of faith: set your mindset as if you are big boys.

I used to admire the hell of every big boy that I can find through reading online (techcrunch, hello?), through my successful friends, even through my windsurf buddies who know how to maneuver every move no matter how vicious (or awesome) the wind is.

The truth was: I believed there are magic solutions out there that I just did not know: if I am lucky, someone might just give it to me.

The truth was: I had no idea what it takes to be really successful is to forget about being successful altogether.

Wake up, aspiring entrepreneurs, stop being a little boy, set your mind to be among big boys.

Do following to set your mind (and yourself) among the big boys:

1. Start working on things that you personally care or have deep experience, or have easy access to.
2. Finding some real world problems within that area.
3. Looking for solutions for those problems.
4. Keep practicing the problem solving skills for your interested area until you find a solution that you are happy with.
5. Once you become happy, you will find more motivation, you will stop admiring, you will start to focus more of your energy on your own. You will become willing to share. You will be constantly above your own game.

So, what are you waiting for? It’s time to grow up!

It’s been 10 weeks since I started “Daily things to do as entrepreneur“. I have probably evaluated no less than 30 different ideas. I have followed so many entrepreneurs’ stories, read so many different blogs, even books, all of which continue to inspire me. The more I read, the more I experience, the more I am convinced that there are really no “correct” answers about many facets of starting up. There is no straight answers about if you should follow your passion, or how to find your passion; no one can tell you how to form a vision; there are no straight answer about whether you should start with a 15 years long term vision, or just stumbling upon ideas that stick; there is no right or wrong about if you need and how to find a partner. You should not believe in either outsourcing your development or doing it yourself, etc. etc.

All in all, every situation is different, we are human being and we all have different stories. I have seen plenty of examples, especially thanks to Andrew Warner’s Mixergy interview like this one, that plenty of entrepreneurs following completely opposite routs but end up all very successful in their own ways.

So, I have been thinking: if every entrepreneur has different successful stories, there must be some common denominator among all that contributes to their success. What is it?!

It turns out, all successful entrepreneurs have dug really deep into the market they chose.

You don’t have to be passionate about the market before you dig deep into it.

You don’t need to keep thinking about how to get a partner.

You don’t need to worry about how to implement the idea, just yet.

I have adopted following methods/ideas to help with digging deep and defining what to work on. Everything else will follow.

1. Narrow down to a few markets to enter
Keep a pen/paper or PDA on hand at anytime to jog down worthy ideas when they surface. I have collected ideas this way in the past 10 weeks that provided a good mix of breadth and depth. I then work on narrowing down to ideas that I either personally WANT to do, OR that I am curious to do a bit more digging. It turns out what I want to work on may not necessarily the projects worth working on.

2. Dig Deep:
Once you have narrowed down to a few ideas, it’s time to pay particular attention to the markets that you are already familiar with, even you may not have any interest or passion about.
1) First, you need to research the market size: a very preliminary way to do this is through Google keywords discovery tool. By typing the keywords that are relevant to that market, Google keywords tool will provide you information on global monthly search volume, how competitive these keywords are (to see how many advertisers, or potential competitors are already in the market)
2) Identify and research competitors: Techcrunch is a great place to find out the front runners in the market you are interested. Type in the keywords in Techcrunch.com and it will spit out bunch of blog posts writing about the startups relevant to that market. Once you identified the front runners, read the article, and read MORE the comments. TC blog posts’ comments are the most valuable content because many ambitious entrepreneurs, knowledgeable professional will provide more relevant players in the market.
3) Defining the problems people have and startups are solving: going to the competitors/startups’ website to see what problem they are solving, and how they have been doing. You can easily identify if a company is doing well or not by looking at web traffic level and its growth trend.

3. You don’t have to be passionate about a market
As long as you keep a curious mind and healthy appetite for opportunities, dig deeper on all the markets you have narrowed down to through methods I mentioned in 2. Particularly, I would pay attention to the market I am already familiar with and have been reluctant to dive right in, and pick the top startup/uprising companies to see how they address that market. Read/watch what industry veterans have to say because they have deep “experiences” to the market and they are the most close to the consumers/customers. And learn to think like consumer/customers in that market, try to get into people’s mind, the average people’s mind.

4. Cultivate knowledge, passion will follow
When you have done 3, you will have much better visibility about the consumers’ concerns, hence that market. And market “pain” will surface as a more clear target to you, followed by potential solutions. As problem solvers, we entrepreneurs will get the satisfaction when we find a perfect solution. And we will have incredible sense of achievement, hence happiness from within, that happiness is the source of passion. So, do not worry about it if you already have a passion. Passion follows happiness. Happiness cultivate the passion. Passion does NOT have to be something you LOVE to do in your spare time, it just has to be something you are happy to think about. I am speaking to it from my own personal experiences.

5. Don’t worry those intangible
Let the nature (of business) take control, stop worrying if you have or will find a partner, or resource to do what you want to do. Once passion starts to form and follow you, you will become much more succinct and efficient when communicating that to other people. Always stay connected to people, so when you are truly in need, people will pick up on your clear vision, your assertiveness and your efficiency, and they will follow you. Leadership, partnership, working relationship will form naturally this way. I would go one step further to say: if you find yourself struggling with finding your first partner to take your first step, you are probably working on a solution looking for that market, not a real market problem.

All of the above are what I have been doing, thinking and concluding. They are still evolving, but they are very helpful to my personal struggle. And I hope this can shed some lights to other entrepreneurs as well

Once you have a clear vision, it’s time to think about the key elements needed to build your products with such vision. Online social apps or websites, in particular, should possess the following key elements in today’s competitive environment.

1. Create something people want

It’s easy said than done. We, as regular people, often don’t really know what we want, or need. But human is amazing on recognizing “good stuff” when we see them. That is why quality brands and products, movies, books etc. are recognized by our society. Good creators, entrepreneurs are able to discover/create things and anticipate the “demand” for its value. Take an example of an iphone app called Glee helping you better sing Karaoke. Why do I need to sing Karaoke? – that was my first question, I don’t need Karaoke! – that was my conclusion. Wait until you read this blog post on tuaw.com and watch this video. 

Now, I want Smule‘s Glee iPhone App because I want to be like that guy! Amazing app, isn’t it!

2. Speak to the specific needs of target audience

Don’t be afraid to only speak to certain audience (moms, women, soccer players, football fans etc., athletes). I find targeting at specific audience makes everything easier, including vision, product development, business model etc. Amazon started as a an online bookstore, as we all know. If you are not convinced, think about the following case:

Imagine there are 100 men writing personal ads on newspaper targeting at 10 women who will read, the goal is to get a woman on a date. 95% of men are imagining they are the prince charming chosen, their ads are perfectly written, some polite, some smart, some even attached photo. Needless to say, better looking, more articulate guys will take the attention of most women. The chance for average Joe isn’t good. However, Bob is an average guy, he figured the chance to be that 10% to win a date is too slim, so he changed the strategy, wrote a personal ads targeting at women who are into tattoo. Imagine there are only 2 women like tattoo, although Bob only target at these 2 women, his odds to win a date is much bigger. Now he is the number 1 contender. Of course, he could end up with nothing if none of the women like tattoo at the first place. But changing strategy increased his odds. (if you know a bit probability or decision science, you can come up with an actual number to prove this)

3. Has to be dirt cheap: 99 cents cheap

Most of social apps are free to use. However, to make a business out of it, at some point, you will either introduce advertising, or sell some sort of product or subscription. Don’t be greedy. Make it as affordable to consumers as you can, provided you have done your math to generate positive cash flow in the long run (1 year since launching paid model). Smule’s Glee App is dirty cheap: 99 cents, I bought it right away after watching that video. I think there are certain threshold for people to begin thinking about price. For iphone apps or songs, that number is probably $1.49. Anything less than that people will buy without 2nd thoughts.

4. Have bragging rights: easy to share with friends

Social apps should make sharing among friends or even strangers a snap, Let’s say if you are the guy in above youtube video, wouldn’t you want to brag about your singing skills to your friends? Make sure it’s easy to share.

5. Bring apps to where users live: social network login +  game element (zoosk) + iPhone app

New generation social apps strive to bring functions to where users already live: be it your desktop, iphone, facebook, twitter etc. They do whatever they can to make it easy to use the app wherever, whenever you want. Take wildly successful social dating site Zoosk for example, this new generation dating site has all the social elements from the get go. Facebook connect login, social chat, status update, simple UI, points and game elements, iPhone app, desktop dating app.

6. Old idea ain’t useless.

Don’t be afraid to build upon existing ideas. In fact majority of ideas are not really original. I am sure many blogs have written articles like this one. But only this blog comes from my own understanding.

7. A nurturing Environment

To continue to get inspired and motivated, you need to be in a nurturing environment. I find Bay area is an incredible place for entrepreneurs, while I was away for three weeks, I felt the hunger for affinity to the ideas, the people, the environment that is unique to the bay area. Find your own environment that you can get excited, motivated constantly. The juicy ideas and productivity need a nurturing environment.

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.

Since last week, I have done a few things differently from norm (or my intuition) to keep my mind occupied, focused and clean. A clean mind is a clear mind with more focus. Early entrepreneurs tend to have lot of ideas going on at the same time, I did following and found they are incredibly helpful for me to be upbeat and focus.

1. Focus

I already said I am working on a personal recommendation system. It sounds easy but it is a profound field that challenges many scholars. By using both Google, Aardvark, Linkedin etc., I have discovered many folks who have similar interests, I am also able to have deeper understanding about the field, and how mathematics can be applied

2. Talk (to smart people)

Usually, Entrepreneurs are loners, in some sense. They keep heads down and hide themselves in the cave to crank out great things they believe in. Is that enough? Since last week, I have started to chat with smart people more. It was not anything serious. But the results were astounding. The wisdom from combined brain power is exponential to ones own.

3. Organize

Starting from my home page at igoogle.com, which was a big mass of blog feeds from variety of blogs I subscribe. It kept growing and getting messier everyday, to the point that I don’t really know what I am looking at. So starting last week, I have re-organized igoogle feed reader into three columns with thought leaders’ blog focusing on entrepreneurship, technology trend, and niche fields. After a few glance, I immediately have a healthy dose of entrepreneurial insights, technology news, and new development in the niches field. I find it sets me in a great mood with more confidence and happier attitude. I recommend everyone do this exercise

4. No rush

Entrepreneurs have sense of urgency, they are the people trying to get stuff out of door and “make it”. I used to be always like that but it has not really worked. As Simon Sinek, the author of Start with Why said to me “I firmly believe that struggle is the single greatest source of innovation. And entrepreneurs are the ones who innovate from struggle. Entrepreneurs solve problems then share the solution.” and struggle is the reason entrepreneurs do what we do, it’s not for money, it’s for the “why” or the “cause” that are personal to ourselves. And when one does things to the right cause, one can not rush it. As I pointed out, the biggest struggle these years for me is to find the right people to do the right things, and this struggle is leading me to what I am working on.

5. Team

Wisdom is an exponential function of number of intelligent, experienced individuals. Instead of working alone, searching and inspiring people to work with you, even it’s a struggle to find the right people. If you have not found the right people, read what other successful entrepreneurs are doing. Andrew warner’s mixergy, and Paul Graham’s website, in particular the incubator Y-combinator that he started, are great places to get inspired, stay focused, maybe even stay connected with potentially like-minded people.

6. Read

Entrepreneurs tend to think they are smart enough to do things on their own, they don’t have to go to classes, they don’t have to read books. They are the ones who write the history, isn’t it!

The short answer is “No”. Last week, I broke my reading norm which tends to be fictions, bought two books from Amazon (not kindle version, I still love the feeling of flipping the real pages next to the fireplace in a cloudy day), one is Simon Sinek’s “start with why”,  the other is Paul Graham’s “hackers and painters”.

I think above things are what I did slightly differently from what I usually do on weekly/daily basis. And I feel good about it. So, I encourage you do a few things slightly differently, get some new flavor injected into your life, I think you might like it.