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!

In this blog post, I will list the uprising stars in the fitness industry, be they fitness products companies, technology startups etc. I have much deeper purpose beside simply listing them out. There are profound reasons why some are succeeding, some are not.

Physical Fitness Products and websites
1. TRX and FitnessAnywhere.com
Inventor of TRX suspension training. TRX has been wildly adopted in the fitness industry due to its effectiveness, portability, educational support and affordability. TRX is on the track to become a great American brand.

2. FitBit.com
Started by two techies, FitBit invented a tiny ($99) device tracking your fitness & sleep; It has seen great growth since its inception in 2009, Techcrunch has a nice article about it.

3. NextFit.com
A truly inspiring “people story”, NextFit.com was born out of necessity. “Everyone intends to exercise, sometime they just need a little help, that is what we do”. Founder Jeff Heys said profoundly. By offering audio based “personal training advice” mixed with music, NextFit makes it so much easier for average people to get motivated, educated while exercising. This is truly a remarkable company. Tim M has a detailed story about how he looks at innovation adoption for personal trainers.

Training, diet tracking, goal setting website : all these sites have decent traffic and similar adoption rate.
1. Dailyburn.com
Previously Gyminee, dailyburn is a pure website startup tracking your diet, workout to reach your fitness goal. The growth has been decent.

2. DailyMile.com: share your training. The site’s traffic is impressive
3. MyFitnessPal.com: a tool tracking your diet, exercise to manage your weight loss
4. Traineo.com: helping to manage your weight loss program, traffic is much smaller.
5. LifeMojo.com: LifeMojo is a Wellness company, helping people in living a healthier life.

Online personal trainer
1. FitOrbit.com
Although equipped with heavy backer like Ron Conway, and story from TechCrunch, FitOrbit is losing steam. A great product by itself, it offers subscription based “online personal trainer” to people to stay on track and motivated. In real world, Personal training is either done through in person, or through next generation service such as NextFit through constant, affordable training tips tailored to individual needs. Like its dubious name “fitOrbit”, the website product itself is a solution looking for problem to solve.

From above companies in the fitness industry, I come to learn that we as entrepreneurs, have to understand what market needs, where the real problems are. We have to participate, plug into the society, listen to people, identify their pain. In the fitness industry, the biggest pain is the lack of motivation, tracking and expert guidance. We have to understand the pain deeply to create solution for them.

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.

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.

I am at a stage to start a new journey toward entrepreneurial success. I figure it’s a good time to look back at the past: a history of my own may have better lessons in it for me. Following is a quick glance about how unsuccessful, in-authentic, I had become, and my quest to to where I want to be.

1999 – 2006: from top of the class to a dying industry

School is over-rated but I am always grateful to my school: Stanford, where I regained confidence. Nevertheless, I graduated from EESOR program in 2001 without having any clue what I wanted to do with this degree and my life. The dot com era just went busted; there were hardly any jobs left. One day, my friend who was in the linguistic Phd program referred me to a company called Google which was looking for search quality raters to improve their search technology, I signed up and immediately started working on contract base till early 2002. I did not hate it but certainly did not love the job of reading bizarre search queries and results.  I honestly could not figure out why my boss, who was also my neighbor AND a Phd in biochemistry, would want to work as QA manager for Google, which was still fairly unknown among average people back in 2001. I sensed the opportunity rising to stay in Google as full time employee in its quality assurance group, but I left for a later becoming the stupidest journey I ever embarked on in my life: working for the dying US technology manufacturing industry till early 2006: 4 years of my youth! I blamed this on myself and the horrible H1 visa policy toward foreign students like me: should that manufacturer turn down my H1 visa application, I would have stayed at Google and become at least “quadruplet millionaire”.

4 years went by just like that. It was boring as hell! I could not take the manufacturing industry anymore. All I wanted was to get out, but getting out was (still is) difficult when you were tied up with a company because of H1 visa!! You cannot move around freely. It was suffocating.

Colorful 2006: Become a first time entrepreneur

Long story short, there was this big day in 2006 that I jumped ship.  Life is too short, I had become far behind in my career comparing to people of my age to start all over. I wanted to make it up, quick. What would be better than doing startup?

With no job, no money, I started a website in Mar. 2006: It’s kind of shameful for me to admit but it was about online dating: I called it 2above.com, with a hint that 2 is better than 1 (Lame! I know, LOL, but Isn’t that true in life, that 2 is better than 1?). The other inspiration was from site like 37signals, it felt like it was a trend to have a number in your domain name. And 2above also means to be above average, to be the best that I can be.

Well, 2above’s “pay-per-email-to-your-potential-date” model did not work out, although I am still damn proud of the launch party I managed to pull off at mina111 on Mar. 12, 2006, a day when snow fell on bay bridge. It was so cold, but still people lined up to see what this fashion party brought by a startup called 2above was all about.  200+ people including all of my two dozen friends in bay area attended the party filled with talented designers, beautiful models, and I did it with ONLY $400, $900 paid to Mina111 gallery, $500 ticket income. All of the models and wonderful people in our party were volunteers. They were awesome!  (Thank you again, if you are one of them and happen to read this)

Nevertheless, it did not work out.  Months later, I changed that into a group dating site called groupmingle.com (current groupmingle.com has no affiliation with me whatsoever): not only the site itself got some decent traffic within a few weeks after I worked day and night posting information all over the Internet. I also used it to start a great professional mingle group on meetup.com, thanks to the organizer who took over from me, it has become one of the popular professional singles meetup groups in bay area, and it still is today.

Bootstrapping my own website startup was difficult, I did not have expertise, certainly did not have much money thanks to the previous job, still I managed and worked with a dear technologist friend/advisor of mine on the side to set up another venture focusing on video social network just in case groupmingle does not work out. We managed to get a $30k+$20k total $50k angel investment waiting for us to sign the term paper, in exchange of 60%+ equity. Yes, laugh all you can, but that was the only offer that we got for a video streaming project. It was like a term sheet to bankruptcy from day one. We turned it down without hesitation.

I continued to hang on to groupmingle project all the way till the end of 2006, completely bootstrapping without any other side job or sponsor. During that year, I perfected my windsurfing skills whenever I felt stressful, hopeless.

2007: smell of startup money and cruelty

Finally, that day came: the day that all entrepreneurs are scared of – running out of money. Luckily, I was able to convince a search engine advertising startup who was just acquired for $60 million by a much bigger company (allow me to remove the name of it), to take me as who I am and I became their search platform’s product manager. The job got routine-like pretty quickly, although looking for a way out, I did learn a lot about search engine marketing which turned out to be very useful and rewarding experiences.

Another classic day of entrepreneurs came into our shiny office in a beautiful day of San Francisco bay area, rather suddenly, 9 months into the job. The parent company that acquired us sent its CEO and a whole management crew from NYC, fired almost everyone on our team which they just acquired, founders included. The only ones left were a Caltech physics PhD and a MIT graduated director of engineering, allegedly critical to “optimize our revenue platform”. Read this, there is no magic in earning customers’ trust, hence “revenue”, the hedging technique used in search engine bidding war was rather not high tech at all, as the result, achieving sustainable profit from that technique is just not sustainable, much like real estate bubble’s burst. The firing was anticipated, but certainly sooner than everyone thought it would come.

2008 to today: Embracing a growing brand

One thing I am good at is to be optimistic. I never really got nervous when I was out of job, or running alone a startup project; I remember my professor told me that I am an opportunist. I know it sounds better when it comes from an investor, business partner rather than your academic advisor. When I was thinking about what to do next, I took the time to fly my aging parents to bay area all the way from China, showed them this country that has become my 2^nd home.

With deep understanding about search engine marketing platform, I soon got two companies competing  to hire me, while an online shopping company offered me better compensation, I chose the company I have been with till today: fitness anywhere, and moved up to my beloved San Francisco from also beloved Palo Alto. Fitness Anywhere (the inventor of TRX brand) turns out to be an amazing company, an amazing story. And I am lucky enough to witness how a great brand (called TRX) is being born and grows to be a world class one. It teaches me every day the right things to do to grow a startup (Fitness anywhere was funded by one person in 2005/6, now we have become the go to choice for fitness training).

Life has become slight easier and more enjoyable when you have pleasant work environment, friends, comparing to running a venture alone. But I know the real fire inside of me is to become someone who can create. The success of our founder convinces me more: create something valuable for the society, become a fearless person who dares to chase his/her dream, no matter what circumstances are.

2009: Getting onboard with current technology

Starting from the end of Mar. 2009, I started to use this blog to analyze Twitter applications, its eco system and twitter.com itself, which in many sense resembles Google in 1999/2000 in its growth rate. Twitter has grown extremely fast for its simplicity, stories-sharing and viral effect: it’s so easy to share information in real time. As the twitter’s real time information network explodes, it comes with a billion dollar question: how to better use these gazillion tweets? Hence the twitter’s app world is exploding, with a few twitter apps/websites announced each day. Who are the signals, who are the noises? Who are in for the long run with good cause, who are in for the short term, and quick bucks?  For about 4 months time, I did a lot of research about this eco-system, had tons of interviews with notable or nameless twitter app developers which resulted many blog entries. Around summer time 2009, this blog was getting a couple hundred visits a day. And I have become confident about what type of web applications can become sustainable success.

It’s time to strike out. Yes, I am throwing it out there about what I am working on. Yes, I need your help, you, brilliant engineers, and brilliant business guys!

And confident I have become, I am ready to strike out again. This time around, I have been through a lot more in my life, had and still have ton of problems that are personal to me that I want to find solutions for, and of course, I am more experienced about what web entrepreneurship is about. With social media reaches its tipping point in 2009/2010, I feel the timing is right to do something that utilizes this unparalleled momentum and technology available to create something that simply works and give more power to everyday people.

Yes, I am in the game of building a useful recommendation system to connect people. This system will not solely rely on either human or machine, but it’s smart enough to offer manageable recommendations for people to enjoy their life more and connect with each other more.

Thinking back, I am still proud of full ride research scholarship I earned at Stanford business and medical school, working with world class mathematicians and medical researchers. I have gained a little bit exposure in the applied mathematics areas and consider myself a mathematical inclined entrepreneur at heart.

But, I am not a great software engineer, and I am not sure if I am a great marketer. I figure: instead of figuring out stuff on my own, I rather become more social and open to society, let talented people in to become better at what we do to build something useful, influential to the society we live.

I will continue to use this blog to share entrepreneurial insights. I sincerely welcome entrepreneurs, bloggers and engineers to contact me without hesitation to share your insights and stories. I will be gladly publish your opinions should it become obviously beneficial to the circle of entrepreneurs, hence humanity.

And finally, my vote to most inspiring to me

Most inspiring entrepreneur: Neil Patel

Most inspiring startup: Aardvark

With Google buzz rolling out today, Google cofounder Sergey Brin spoke up about why he thinks it’s important. Pay attention: there are lot of hidden wisdom in his words that our entrepreneurs would find valuable.

This one hints social media/personal communication will become extremely lucrative market just like web search.

“Extracting signal from noise is one of our core competencies, it’s one of the key things we do in our web search product every day. And I think that now peoples’ personal communications are getting to be on a scale comparable to that of web search, so those technologies are becoming far more critical.”

This one hints the state of today’s recommendations technology (hence, lot of room to improvement)

Brin says that he’d like to make the recommendation technology more transparent (as opposed to a black box) but hasn’t yet discussed those details with the Buzz team.

This one hints how to have a successful technology (it’s detail, detail, detail, lot of work, not just ideas)

“I think if you look at the history of technical products, there are a lot of details that matter. It’s not just the general idea, oh I have Email and social. And you know maybe, maybe we got the details right, maybe we didn’t, we’re going to see from today on out. Internally I’ve been very happy with the result. There are a lot of detailed things. If you look at the success of the world wide web, you look at Xanadu (an ongoing Hypertext project founded in 1960) for example by Ted Nelson that had a lot of these concepts yet it wasn’t so successful. There are a lot of details, perhaps chance and timing. I wouldn’t discount something because it’s similar to something in the past…”

Let’s look at the three web services Getsatisfaction.com, uservoice.com and followbase.com, see what lessons entrepreneur can learn from them. If you don’t know about them, Getsatisfaction and uservoice are similar web service offering businesses an easy way to get customer feedback and track them, while followbase is a customer service app via twitter. I personally like getsatisfaction and uservoice, and don’t think followbase can be a lasting success. Following are 5 things I use to evaluate the potential of a startup, including projects I personally involve.

1. Is the market (I am trying to enter) big enough?
Getsatisfaction and uservoice mainly target at businesses with a website, which is pretty much all businesses. Every business wants to hear what their customers think about them, and there were not an easy, affordable way to do it. They come in to fill the space and become a runaway success stories. Now think about customer service, does everyone need customer service? Yes and no. Among all services I buy (cell phone, airline, cable, credit card etc.) I probably call customer service once every two to three months, so it’s not a whole lot for me. It’s probably the case for most of people. If I am targeting at everyone, then the problem I am solving should be more than the need for consumer customer service.

2. Is it a niche problem in a big market that really needs some help?
Getsatisfaction and uservoice are solving a niche problem of a big market (all businesses with website) by offering a feedback forum that websites can carry with them wherever they go and easily get feedbacks. I think that is MONEY! Now let’s look at customer service that followbase aims. I already said consumer customer service is NOT a huge market. But are there opportunities? I think so. Customer service is a HUGE headache or issues for most businesses, more so than to consumers. Each industry is different and customer service can get really complex. A twitter based customer service product like followbase is a good idea, but it won’t solve problems for consumers nor businesses. Businesses need an industry specialized service/product to address their unique problems; consumer, again, unless, they really are passionate about certain market, they won’t care it enough to use followbase. I just don’t care about the pains from cell phone services enough to use another service just to complain; but if I am a x-box fanatics, I would care not only about problems of my x-box, but every move microsoft will make to x-box.

3. Can it be successful trying to cover all segments?
Since most of people don’t complain very often about a particular service they purchased, would it make sense to get all services in one site, so it will address everyone’s problem about every services under the sun? Followbase tries to do that. I think there is a chance, but a small one. They will have chance when majority of brands join it to become one stop twitter customer service central. Can this happen? Possibly. But unlikely, unless the service provided to businesses or brands are so appealing (think about cotweets, which can be appealing for brands or businesses).

4. Think again, are you serving opposite parties? (comcast vs. consumer, e.g.) who are you serving: businesses or consumers? (hence the future business model, and oh, forget about advertising for now)
You tend to answer: I want to serve both. Followbase might think it serves both sides. But I tend to think an early, focused startup with big potential has to pick their focus. You either become service provider for businesses, or consumers, hence you provide value to that party and you can get paid by the party you serve. Getsatisfaction and uservoice serve the businesses with a website, and businesses are glad to pay them for that. Would businesses pay followbase, hardly. But it’s very early for them, they can come up with better killer product be it a destination website, or white labeled service. I know consumer would not pay for that any time soon, unless, unless, it’s industry specific.

5. Real time is not enough, Tweets are not enough.
Most twitter apps are half idle. A few super successful of them includes mobile/3rd party clients, twitter visualization or analytics app such as twittercounter.com, twitter multimedia app like twitpic etc.; twitter search engines such as tweetmeme and topsy.com; (even tweepz and twazzup are trending down). Majority of twitter apps pump live tweets into their app. I have news for you: tweets are not enough. Because most of individual tweets pumped through are out of context and meaningless on the app, apps relying on that either have gone completely idle, or limited by growth potential: I liked stocktwits, cheaptweets, they are profitable, they are great. But how big can they be? Twazzup? Well, they are brilliant engineers, but showing tweets alone with some data processing, featured people, photo, tweets is not enough, it isn’t on the same level with big guys like topsy.com and tweetmeme.

6. Which API should I use? Should I develop twitter app, or linkedin App, or iphone App, or facebook app?
My suggestion is: forget about API all together. Think about your unique vision. Vision comes from expertise, project experience, or just repetitive life experiences about things we go through. Rachael Rae’s vision was 30 minute meal, Jack Dorsey’s was information dispatch, hence twitter; Instead of thinking about what APP you can build with what API, think about your vision and life experiences. That will lead you to the problems or pains you see while others don’t. After that, think about solutions to that problem. Technology comes last.

I write this article to help myself to clear my own mind as well. And I find myself no longer trying to ride certain wave to make quick money, rather, I am focusing on what my vision will lead to. That is more tangible and lasting.

I have been thinking about this for a while. I have two kinds of entrepreneurial friends in real life, the first type is dreamer, or I call them A-lister: they have an idea, or a killer technology, they work really hard and set the goal very high, they get the venture money, often from the best VC in the valley, however it’s not uncommon to not having a penny in income, or not profitable at all. But in the case of sale (being acquired by a larger company), they will get boat load of equity ready to cash out.

The 2nd type of entrepreneur is practical type, or B-lister, similar to the ex you broke up with, not romantic enough. Many of them have their own online ad agencies, some sort of ad networks, marketplaces, and are making CASH left and right, some even get acquired – notice they are in general not good candidates for acquisition due to lack of technology, low entry barrier. The success often comes with the relentless pursuit of founder. And it goes quickly with them as well. I saw many of them before.

Thinking of twitter app founders, I can’t help separating them into these two types. Although the scale may not be as big, trazzler and twazzup are more like the dreamers, while many players in the twitter ad network world, be it “contextual”, or “pay per tweet”, or “twitter account name parking”, are actually making cash, even though their future is questionable and they are not as glamorous.

What kind of entrepreneur are you?

Steve Poland recently had a nice post about “how to startup”, from finding the area to concentrate to how to implement/execute, it’s well written, well presented and simple. Since twitter app founders/developers/CEOs are part audience of this blog, I think it’s appropriate to get it out there. Hats off to Steve Poland, and best wishes to his new startup venture “InSeconds”