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!

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

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.