Sean Findley.com

Archive for the ‘Entrepreneurship’ Category

Summary of What I Wish I knew When I was Twenty.

Important: In writing this short critique (and summary) I am merely engaging in my own thought process. Truly would I never be so arrogant as to suggest that my ideas are better than people far more highly educated and experienced than I.

The title of this book is interesting because had it been called “What I wish I Knew When I was Thirty”, it still would have been applicable to me because I am over thirty.

However, the philosophy of the book is something that I am strongly against. Hindsight is always 20/20, one can never go back and change things. You are who you are today because you are the sum of all your experiences, both good and bad. This book requires a summary, so here it is:

Seelig begins her book by describing the “five dollar challenge”. In this challenge students at Stanford were required to innovate in order to get the highest ROI. Some students came up with unethical ideas, such as scalping tickets, but others sold their presentation time and made over $600. Now, this was a five minute window at Stanford, where a five minute ad shown to the world’s brightest minds is worth $600. Could this have happened at your garden variety university? Probably not, or probably for not near as much. Although this exercise had good intentions, innovation simply doesn’t happen in a two hour window in the real world. Real entrepreneurs with bold intentions are innovative, but it requires a lot of time to become introspective, which is a requirement in order to innovate. As an example, some shady inventor might develop the “slap chopper” in two hours or the ginzu knife (I actually bought a set), but these are niche products.

It’s just my personal opinion, but proper innovation takes time, and the type of innovation one engages in a two hour window will be far different than say, developing a plan to sell inexpensive shoes to the underprivileged for a few pennies over cost (and still retain a small profit).

Seelig then suggests that “attitude” is perhaps the biggest determinant of what we can accomplish. I suppose she really means that if we “think we can’t, we can’t”. She follows this with an anecdote about Jeff Hawkins, the developer of the Palm Pilot. He had problems since the very beginning of developing this revolutionary hand-held computer. One innovation that Jeff developed was handwriting recognition software, which allowed the palm pilot to become much more consumer friendly. Jeff is an example of someone with a good attitude, because he faced his problems directly and turned traditional assumptions on their head. Seelig later admits that Jeff possesses a one of kind mind and stresses that few are capable of such feats. Considering that this is true, what purpose does it serve to a mainstream audience to use a statistical outlier as an example?

That logic reminds me of those who always claim that you don’t need a college degree; after all, just look at Bill Gates! My reply is always to say: “well, you aren’t bill gates.” I don’t mean to be rude, but it’s true. Bill Gates is also a statistical outlier, and like Jeff, the inventor of the palm pilot, is not a good example to use for a mainstream audience.

In contrast, though, her section on “Do-Bands” was well played. The Do-Bands was a project where people started to trade rubber bands. It was designed to create positive social change through self-empowerment. The goal of the project was to be innovative, to convince others to support your cause by accepting a do-band. They then passed the do-band around to their friends, and apparently tracked them through the internet (each band had its own ID). The do-band project was a success, some people even ended up contacting long lost relatives, which was probably an unpredicted side effect of the project. But again, this was at Stanford, which is a school that caters to statistical outliers. You are at Stanford not because you are mediocre, if you know what I mean.

Another part of the book that I did like was her analysis of the types of risks. She describes five primary types of risks: physical, social, emotional, financial, and intellectual. Some people are more comfortable taking physical risks while others are uncomfortable taking emotional risks. She asks her readers to map their own risk profile, to gauge exactly where their risks lie according to this risk spectrum. Personally, I am not a physical risk taker – you’ll never see me skiing unless it’s on the Xbox 360. The other areas I tend to take big risks, especially intellectual risks.

Seelig then mentions her colleague at Stanford (surprise!) who is an expert in the field of risk management. This expert suggests that when you analyze a risky situation, you should define all of the possible outcomes, and guess the odds of each one. You then need to create a plan for each eventuality. I strongly disagree with this. I would never advise another to take a foolish risk, but you can’t ever unravel uncertainty. An entrepreneur / innovator is constantly faced with uncertainty, and it is his quick analysis of the battlefield and his ability to quickly innovate a solution is what separates him apart from his competition. One must constantly surmise the risks that lie ahead but to think too deeply about them might motivate one to take no risk at all.

Most of the book is filled with similar anecdotes which don’t resonate with a mainstream audience. One has to be realistic. I hate to sound negative but it is unlikely that most of us will ever develop a cadre PhD friends at Stanford, like Tina Seelig. We aren’t going to be invited over for tea at Jeff Bezo’s house, nor will Obama call us up and sit us down to share a beer over a perceived racial injustice incidence. The majority of us will need to innovate; certainly, and innovation is the thesis of the book. But in reality we will create strong niches and develop our own social networks, but these are unlikely to include statistical outliers. I am not going to say that it can’t happen, it is unrealistic to expect or even to desire for it to happen. Surely you might one day get on Oprah and receive the Oprah hug, but you don’t require such extreme social climbing to market your personal brand, your zephyr, and your niche.

Unfortunately, Tina’s book just doesn’t connect with a mainstream audience. Well, it simply didn’t connect with me.

I prefer ME 2.0 by Dan Schwabel, who was a regular guy who worked his way to stardom. He wasn’t a professor at Stanford when he wrote the book, he was struggling to find his way just like the rest of us.

What is entrepreneurship, really?

There is a lot of discussion of what constitutes entrepreneurship within the myriad social media channels out there. What I’ve been reading echoes what I’ve read before, and what has been written about even centuries ago. This new wave of social media interaction is breeding mediocrity, or rather, hideousity. I’ve clicked on countless twitter profiles in which I generally come to the conclusion: “I’ve seen this before.” Those without true innovative talent manipulate social media in order to sell something. The mediocre entrepreneur is like a miner during the gold rush, panning in the same streams as everyone else, using the same tools, and desperately hoping to get very lucky. Sound familiar?

And indeed we have seen one person after another brand themselves as an entrepreneur.  It’s easy to do, for it doesn’t require any credentials. Rather, it requires a bold proclamation, often emphasized on the front of a business card. The fact that market barriers don’t exist to potentially bar one from becoming an entrepreneur simply means that mediocre talent is likely to be the rule.

Unfortunately, mediocre entrepreneurship talent takes many forms. The first form is evidenced with the supposed entrepreneur never having an original thought in his life. The Entrepreneur (and I use that word oh so loosely) merely catches the next economic wave (in this case, it appears to be social media) and sets up shop. Suddenly the person is an expert, and along with his comrades, offers his services, usually by mass marketing them. It is unlikely that the entrepreneur and his team are experts; rather, they are expert salesmen. They know how to wind up a pitch and throw it faster than Nolan Ryan, the grandfather of the 100 mile an hour+ fast ball.

Again, what is entrepreneurship, really?

Forget all the jive about taking risks. Everyone takes risks every single day. There is a higher probability of dying from an automobile accident TONIGHT than most would wish to believe. Risks, schmisks. True entrepreneurship has very little to do with risks over the long run. Getting sucked into what everyone thinks entrepreneurship should be will guarantee that you’ll end up thinking just like them.

Entrepreneurship is a commander in a battlefield in which his men are clearly outnumbered. The probabilities of success are low, they are surrounded by all sides, and the enemy has superior technological capability. The commander is essentially in a no-win situation. The enemy takes no prisoners, the result of defeat means slavery or certain death. With time running out, the commander has to abandon his previous battlefield plans and in an instant adopt a new strategy. His men are on the line. He chooses to adopt a strategy that is so unexpected, the commanders on the other side are unsure of how to react. This lack of action, even for a moment, creates a window of opportunity. This hesitation communicates to the losing commander potential weakness. If this weakness is exploited, the other sides’ battle plans and system begin to break down. Although previously winning, in struggling to re-adapt, channels of communication are lost and the other side flails.

If the outnumbered commander repeats this a few times in quick succession, what was once an impossible battle turns into a victory.

A solid, modern entrepreneur is much like that battlefield commander. He knows that the odds are against him but he doesn’t care. His mind is capable of throwing precious plans out the window. He can invent new plans very quickly or has other alternatives. It’s not just that he’s an out-of-the-box thinker, but he exists on a planet where boxes are contraband. It might be a stretch to say that potential competitors are his enemy.  That’s too easy. His real enemy is any old, deprecated system. It’s the barriers that naturally come his way when he sets out to try something innovative.

Thus, a really talented entrepreneur knows how to hack social systems and be adaptive.

A true entrepreneur is a social ninja.

Zephyr

What is a Zephyr? Doesn’t it sound like a word rarely used save for the dreaded GRE exam? While researching what should encompass my blog and my personal brand, I came across the word “zephyr” while studying for the GRE. The word rolls off your tongue, is aesthetically pleasing, and has internet-meme potential. So what does it mean?

     1. a gentle, mild breeze.
     2. (initial capital letter) Literary. the west wind.
     3. any of various things of fine, light quality, as fabric, yarn, etc.

The most frequent use of “Zephyr” is to suggest a gentle, mild breeze – the type one might feel just after sunrise in the desert at any time of the year. The still air becomes kinetic, slowly building upon itself; the air grows in complexity, eventually sweeping up large swaths of sand; then, aggregates and collects the sand to form patterns such as dunes or sand ripples. Often, at first the air wasn’t noticeable, neither was the wind. What became noticeable were the patterns left by the wind and the sand. Summarily, these patterns are representative of big changes, naturally aggregating from gentle, mild breezes. In short, Zephyr is synthesis.

It is from this observation about life that I was motivated to start this blog.

Our society is the product of evolutionary principles. There is an immense amount of variation in how we go about doing business but over time very little of that variation remains in our social structure. Importantly, what remains are tried and tested patterns that work for a given society in a given environment and seldom are there big changes.  Many small changes are attempted, with the result being that few of them are naturally selected by the social and physical environment.

Today, there is great inequality regarding the distribution of wealth. Those with more wealth become wealthier, and those without either stagnate or eventually become poorer. This trend is a great social injustice, in that fewer people are able to access capital and to provide the variation that our social environment uses to naturally select. By sequestering billions of people throughout the world from access to capital, wealth, education, and other modern tools needed for wealth accumulation, we are effectively starving innovation.

Notably, Capitalism is here to stay and has been selected by our social environment as the most efficient means of wealth distribution.  To pull one’s teeth (without anesthesia) over which economic system we should adopt is immaterial. There isn’t going to be a quick, dramatic change in how we distribute wealth, or how we will provide others equal access to building wealth.

However, we will eventually see change, where people will have equal access to opportunity and wealth accumulation, but the changes will be small—at first.

These small changes can be witnessed on the internet. With the internet, there is an increasingly democratic and non-hierarchical set of methods for information exchange. Social evolution for thousands of years has been dependent upon information exchange, but until the internet, exchange has been slow and cumbersome. Now, the internet acts as a hub to aggregate and spread anyone’s message, however small it may be, and does it instantaneously.  The internet acts as The Great Equalizer. It takes small winds of change, processes them, and forms patterns. These patterns are then used by influential Zephyrs to make big changes.

This is why the concept of “Zephyr” is important. Small winds in aggregate can bring big changes. A Zephyr personified is one who seeks to set loose their own personal wind, to network with other Zephyrs, and to collectively bring big changes.

As such, the purpose of this blog is to assist and add value to the Zephyrs wherever in the world they may be. I’ve divided the blog up into several categories which are simply the tools the Zephyrs will need to start their quest to launch their small winds of change. All of the information in the categories will be derived from tweets, blogs, articles, and whatever sources of information I find to be relevant. I’ll hand pick the streams of information, acting as an editor, hoping that what I add to my blog adds to your personal Zephyr.

The first category is Entrepreneurship, which will contain relevant information about small business, finance, accounting, leadership, and everything that a Zephyr needs to get business started with a small budget.

The second category is Personal Branding. This is a vital concept. A Zephyr not only needs to discover what their personal brand is, but they need to continually refine it and use it to separate themselves from the others who have similar, but less refined ideas.

The third category is Non-Profit. Non-profits typically are hubs of Zephyrs, each collecting their small winds for a greater purpose. As such, non-profits are vital to create larger winds that bring about change. Often, non-profits assist others who have been sequestered by society, enabling them to regain ground and rediscover their Zephyr potential.

The fourth category is Social Consciousness. Included within this category are streams of information to assist Zephyrs to raise their level of social consciousness and to give them the impetus to add value to society.

The fifth category is Social Media. Social media includes information about facebook, twitter, linkedIn, and other relevant internet applications. When one forms their personal brand and is ready to become a Zephyr, it is then necessary to network with others possessing similar goals. Tips, tactics, and techniques will be included here.

The Sixth category is Web Development. Learning how to do basic web development is vital if one wishes to become a Zephyr. This includes general knowledge of photoshop/graphic techniques, as well as HTML, programming languages such as PHP, and database development using a platform such as MYSQL. One doesn’t need to become an expert, but it is important to gather enough knowledge to be dangerous. To be dangerous is to be competitive and to gain oneself an advantage against other less refined Zephyrs. The social environment will always be naturally selective, and those Zephyrs lacking the necessary tools to begin to create a small wind will be weeded.

The Seventh category is behavior analysis, which is my personal altruistic cause. Behavior analysis provides technology for autism, disabled people, and others with significant behavior problems. The techniques are scientifically verifiable; essentially, they work.

The last category is Zephyr. Zephyr is a small wind that in aggregate can form patterns and thus, great changes. Zephyr is also synthesis. We are currently in information revolution 2.0, where online is interactive and global networking is exponential. On the horizon is information revolution 3.0. This will encompass basic artificial intelligence where networks adapt to us using semantics. Semantic adaptation equals synthesis. Zephyrs will need to constantly be ahead of the curve regarding information synthesis, so anything relative to Web 3.0 will be included in this category.

Lastly, the site is organized to where relevant tweets from a variety of Zephyrs are included at both the top and the footer of the site. I built an application that streams a large number of tweets and I hand pick the very best tweets from this stream and file them in the proper categories. Additionally, I will be writing original posts that will synthesize academic information, to be distilled so that all can benefit from the synthesis. Other posts will include my take on other excellent blog posts that I feel will be beneficial for you to become your own Zephyr.