Great quote from a great entrepreneur

I met a fantastic entrepreneur the other day and in the middle of our conversation he had a line that really got stuck in my mind:

“If you start a career as a doctor, you’ll probably end it as a doctor. If you start a career as an entrepreneur, you’ll probably end it as an entrepreneur.”

My Interview with Knowledge@Wharton

Just saw this press release about Knowldege@Wharton, which is Wharton’s online business journal.

“K@W Launches YouTube Channel

Knowledge @ Wharton has launched a YouTube channel which includes an extensive array of video offerings.  Segments include interviews with Kevin Roberts, CEO Worldwide of Saatchi & Saatchi; Prof. Jeremy Siegel on “Bear Stearns, the Rate Cuts and Inflation”; and Boris Silver, a Wharton School sophomore whose start up has become one of Facebook’s most popular applications.”

I’m honored to be in a press release with those guys.  I did an interview with K@W earlier in the year about my interest in startups, technology, and entrepreneurship.  Here it is:

 

History, Business, and Reading

I think the easiest way to gain knowledge and perspective is through reading. On a daily basis, I mostly read news/blogs and in the past couple months, I’ve made it a strict habit to grab a copy of the Wall Street Journal print edition just to get a pulse on the public markets outside of sports/technology. In terms of books, I don’t usually read too many fiction books and given my limited time lately, I try to stick to nonfiction books in areas like history, science, business, philosophy, etc.

One book in particular that I happened to pick up recently and think a lot of people would enjoy is “The Book of Entrepeneur’s Wisdom” by Peter Krass. Peter Krass is an excellent author who writes on business subjects like biographies of moguls/tycoons, business history, etc. (I actually read my first Peter Krass book when I was a junior in high school writing a thesis paper on Andrew Carnegie and Peter Krass was nice enough to let me interview him for my thesis paper.)

This book contains short essays written by some of the world’s most famous businessmen/innovators of all time. It contains the hard earned wisdom from household names like Michael Bloomberg, Andrew Carnegie, Conrad Hilton, Sir Richard Branson, Steve Jobs, Henry Ford, Benjamin Franklin, and the list goes on and on…. basically, a treasure trove of information, history, and wisdom. It’s all neatly compiled into one book — having such access to the written accounts and experiences of such people is fantastic. I really enjoyed the format as well — I get bored easily and it was refreshing to have a new style, tone, and author every 5-15 pages. Some of the essays do go into a lot of contextual advice which is probably inapplicable for many people/situations, but the vast majority of the reading is both inspirational and informative. This book is a must read.

Election ‘08 hits Downtown Philadelphia

Two days ago I was downtown in Philadelphia and it was absolutely nuts. Hillary Clinton was visiting. There were Obama and Clinton supporters all over. Volunteers were yelling for voter registration sign-ups and groups were walking around handing out posters/flyers. All around me were people with highly visible pins declaring their allegiances. It was exciting. I didn’t care who people were voting for. I just enjoyed the passion around me. The energy. The vibe. Downtown Philadelphia was bristling with people who were alive. It felt like something big was happening.

And I just saw this come through on Yahoo! News/Reuters (it made me chuckle a bit):

“With eight months to go before the U.S. presidential election, the candidates have raised almost $1 billion to fund their campaigns — more than the size of the economies of several African countries.“

That’s a hefty sum for this election. Looks like they’re playing high stakes politics.

I’m heartbroken by UCONN

1 point loss to a 13 seed in overtime.  There’s always next year, but my expectations are super high for everything and that includes the sports teams I root for.  I grew up rooting for a dominant UCONN, hopefully they’ll return to form soon.

Still excited for the tournament.

College Hoops Time. U-C-O-N-N

Every year March Madness comes around and every year it feels like my first time.  The excitement.  The new teams.  The old teams. The last second buzzer beaters.  And then there’s UCONN.  I grew up in Connecticut at a time when UCONN basketball was dominant.  I’m talking about guys like Emeka Okafor, Ben Gordon, Charlie Villanueva, Rip Hamilton, etc.  The deep runs in the tournament every year, the nail biting wins over Duke, and the unforgettable 2004 championship wins by both the Mens and the Womens program.  I’m talking about the ever winning program led by Coach Jim Calhoun. It gives me a rush to watch these games and the competition is beautiful.  So while my UCONN pride blinds me, I still get a rush from every game and every beautiful display of pure basketball skills.  I even find myself appreciating the play and heart of teams I would never admit to rooting for.  I can’t wait to see how this one turns out.

Here’s a nostalgic relic from the 2004 championship run by both the mens and womens teams of UCONN..

Solicitations done right

Something really caught my eye today in my inbox. Among the typical daily solicitations I get for my company, I got a highly personalized solicitation from another business looking to work with us. Everything about the e-mail stood out: the subject, the e-mail itself, and the proposition offered to me. I could tell that someone put in effort to understand my business, someone took the time to play around with our products, and someone took the time to write a personalized e-mail. That person got a prompt reply from me and I’m excited to work with them. Now that’s solicitation done properly; that extra effort pays off in the end.

The Power of Live Music

Now that I’m not in school, I’m working like crazy on my company.  But this also means I have more time to travel, go out and have memorable/incredible experiences.  I had the chance to see my first notable live concert in about 3 years at Philadelphia’s Electric Factory.  Luckily for me, I saw one of the top 15 live acts in America as rated by Rolling Stone — Gogol Bordello. Wow is all I have to say.  I completely forgot about how powerful the experience of a live concert is.  I felt like I was 12 years old again.  I even remember my first live concert — the one hit wonder SR-71 with their hit “Right Now.”  I used to love going to concerts from all sorts of bands and just experiencing the energy of the band, the crowd, and the general atmosphere.  Gogol Bordello is just phenomenal.  They’re pretty insane and theatrical, but the performance that they give is worthy of praise.  The crowd fed off of their energy, which in turn made the band go even more intense, etc.  It was a positive feedback loop where the energy of the whole just amplified beyond words.  It got to the point where the crowd was exhausted and yet the band kept going and going and going.  The crowd just couldn’t keep up with the energy of the performers.

All in all, it was an awesome experience and I’m looking forward to my next concert.

My Interview with Developer Analytics

Just did an interview with Developer Analytics — a rising player in the social application analytics space. I talked about my experiences building my company and some of the things I’ve learned about social applications. They’re building really cool stuff centered around an analytics platform for developers and a nice community for application developers to come to. One of the co-founders, Jing Chen, is a former Wharton graduate, so maybe I’m a bit biased. I expect big things from these guys and I think whoever can really nail the analytics behind social applications is going to profit big time. Should be interesting to see what they’re able to do.

New website up and rolling

Check our our new Sport Interactiva website: http://sportinteractiva.com/

I’m really proud of my company and what we’ve been able to do with just the 2 of us in only 8 months.  Here’s to many more good months !

Know your business. Don’t delude yourself.

My friend and I were discussing the idea of building a business using short term vs. long term strategy.  We hit upon the idea of building a business as a quick profit generating engine as opposed to a long term profitable business.  The former occurs in most cases with smaller scale businesses that exploit a particular opportunity and usually don’t scale into enormous companies.  The latter is more along the lines of a Google or Facebook type play where you build a high growth company that loses money in the short term with hopes of dominating a market which will allow you to earn above market profits in the long term.

Both types of companies can be a lot of fun and bring a lot of value to an entrepreneur, but we came to the conclusion that it’s important not to delude yourself into thinking you’re building one type of company when you’re really building the other.  It seems obvious, but we felt there were plenty of companies out there that don’t think this way. You don’t want to build a small business (known as a lifestyle business) for 3-5 years generating negative profits while telling yourself you’re building the next Google.  Similarly, you don’t want to try to build the next Google and get frustrated when your company is running on negative.

Think the bottom line here is to as always know your stuff.

Real time Super Tuesday

I think this is one of the coolest things I’ve seen in a long time: Google has teamed up with Twitter to show a Google Map filled with real time updates of people from across the world as pertaining to the voting on Super Tuesday.  Twitter lets people send out updates in real time up to 140 characters long.  Imagine Facebook status updates, but the whole site is just everyone’s status updates.  I never really got the utility of the site, as Twitter is mostly a communication tool used by VCs, tech geeks, entrepreneurs, etc.  None of my friends are on it.

But I have to say, this map is the coolest thing I’ve seen in a long time.

Check it out

Crank that Product. Product. Product.

The past 3 months feel like they’ve been a year. Everything in the Facebook business game moves at the speed of light. After experiencing a lot of early success with my company, I started getting flooded with offers from all sorts of people. From journalists to advertisers to marketers to other companies, etc.  My e-mail inbox, my Facebook account inbox, my company’s e-mail inbox — everyday with new people/offers. Just non stop bombardment of offers. Most of it was a waste of time right off the bat and I just ignored things, but I still spent a lot of the past 3 months heavily engaged in business development (i.e. revenues, working on partnerships, advertising, raising capital, etc.) It’s been really draining and it’s definitely shifted my focus away from the end goal of my company: PRODUCT.

I’m really going back to just doing what I excel at: identifying needs of users, designing product, and launching applications. Product. Product. Product. All the other business stuff just makes you lose track of what made you start out in the first place: Product. Ok, I think you get the idea. I’m still going to put in time on business development (in a startup you have to wear many hats), but I will always know my priority is making sure we have outstanding product.

Back in July of 2007, my mom sent me an article from Inside Facebook which interviewed one of the makers of Quizzes in the early stages of the Platform (feels like just yesterday I was launching my first application). Here’s part of the interview, which I think really hits home with me now:

**IF: Have you been receiving offers from potential acquirers?

JW: Yes, we have received numerous interesting offers from outside organizations and individual investors. We are exploring the different opportunities being presented, however, at this time our priority is still focused on the continued development of our products.

IF: What is your advice to other application developers hoping to emulate your success?

JW: Focus on your product. There has been much discussion about scaling issues, acquisition offers, revenue generation, etc., etc., but as the developers behind Quizzes, we have decided to concentrate our efforts on improving our application. We think that this mindset is very important for the success of any application developer and we highly recommend it.**

My end lesson is this: don’t lose focus on how you gained success. In my case it was by making exceptional product and providing service/value to the customers/users on Facebook.

And now I’d like to end with a quote from the famous Rick Ross:

“Everyday I’m hustling”

Traveling time is over

I haven’t taken a real vacation/break in far too long.  These past few weeks, I took myself off the grid.  It was fantastic to get away from everything and to travel outside of the US.  Met a lot of great people and made some fantastic memories.  Learned a bit about myself and learned some interesting perspectives about the world.  To keep it short and sweet: my travel time rocked.

It feels nice to be back home, but I’m going to let the feeling of travel sink in a bit further before I pour myself into a nice overflowing inbox and a seemingly infinite list of unread news articles / RSS feeds.

Then it’s back to the hustle.  Back to the flow.

Mark Cuban: Golden Lessons

3 straight posts from the one and only Mark Cuban. 3 straight slam dunks. I read as much as I can about successful companies, successful people, and business. I especially love reading about people with passion, fire, and unstoppable drive. Mark Cuban still has more than enough of all 3 after all he’s done, and he’s a billionaire.

His past 3 posts are reflections from his earlier days when he first ventured out and started working for himself. Some fantastic lessons and really good reading. My favorite by far is his 11 page Success and Motivation post. I religiously spend the first 2 hours of each day reading, but of course Mark Cuban has me beat:

“To this day, I feel like if I put in enough time consuming all the information available, particularly with the net making it so readily available, I can get an advantage in any technology business. Of course my wife hates that I read more than 3 hours almost every day, but it gives me a level of comfort and confidence in my businesses.“

I’ve always valued reading (especially the news/blogs), but this post really helps emphasize the idea of knowledge advantage and puts it in perspective for me. Just one of the many lessons he talks about. Here are all 3 of his posts:

Success and Motivation (one of my favorite posts of the year)

The One Thing You Can Control In Life: Effort

The Best Equity is Sweat Equity

Tailgating. Football. Patriots. Awesome.

Finally got to come home from Penn and go see the Patriots in action for Week 15 against the Miami Dolphins, sold out.

I felt like I was 10 years old again, except I can’t pull the “I’m a cute kid card” to get better seats. Not much of a game (let’s not kid anyone, the Dolphins are 1-14 for a reason), but I still felt the thrill of going to a live game.

I still feel awesome about getting the full Patriots/Boston football experience:

• Got to listen to authentic Boston local radio game talk on the way up to the game.
• We tailgated in the parking lot with some crazy Patriots fans from South Boston. They had the full Boston accent to go along with the ridiculous amount of food they brought to the tailgating. I felt like they were all people from the movie The Departed.
• It was 28-7 by halftime. I only stayed to see if Tom Brady and or Randy Moss would break the all time touchdown records for Quarterback and Wide Receiver (respectively). Brady just kept bombing it in the 2nd half to Moss into triple coverage — what was he thinking? Just move the chains down the field with the wide open guys and then score those TDs!
• Listened to some fanatical Boston local radio on the way down — some people are borderline delusional with their Patriots love, but nothing wrong with being a hardcore fan

I love football and sports.

Life is awesome.

Delicious Juice Marketing

I purchased a bottle of Odwalla juice with my lunch today. Odwalla is a premium fruit juice company. One interesting thing caught my eye, so I snapped a picture of it on my phone — “enjoy by.”

Normally on things I buy, I see either “sell by DATE”, “use by DATE”, or just “DATE.” Such labels are boring, cold, and not customer centric. They make me worry about making sure I use something before a particular date. Telling me to enjoy it by a particular date automatically imprints in my mind that I will enjoy no matter what, and that I need to do so by a particular date remains an afterthought. Talk about good marketing and attention to details. Well done Odwalla.

Entrepreneurship as a lifestyle

I was speaking to a journalist today and the question came up “What do you want to do after college?”

I answered it without much thought, “I’d like to continue working with startups and small companies.”

Only afterwards did I realize the mis-step in my answer. I think we’re conditioned by our environment and society in general to automatically think of ourselves as “doing something.” i.e. I do startups or I do banking or I do medicine.

The way I’d like to really answer that question from now on is with an answer that describes not what I’d like to do after college, but rather how I want to live and who I want to be. Entrepreneurship isn’t a job. It’s a way of thinking, a way of breathing, and moving through life. A way of living.

To me it’s being able to do what I want, when I want, how I want, and being able to create valuable, meaningful, significant contributions to the world around me. But at the end of the day, this isn’t something I do from 9-5 and then go home — this is something I strive to embody in every action and thought in my life.

To me, entrepreneurship is more of a lifestyle choice on how you live your life. The same mindset applies across relationships, sports, etc. It’s all about really getting what you truly want out of life and enjoying all that life has to offer to the max. This is how you create positive meaningful relationships in your life, how you improve your 5k time, how you grow a loving family, how you grow a successful company, etc.

So next time someone asks you what you want to do after college, think to yourself:

who is the person that I wish to be?
what traits do I wish to embody in every breath?
how do I want to live?

Rock climbing and I are in love

I finally got to go indoor rock climbing over the weekend and I think I’m in love.  I think I like it for the same reasons that I love long distance running — it’s just me against myself.  In running it’s all about how hard you want to push yourself, how much you’re willing to give, and most of all answering a question I like to keep taped to my wall “Do you have what it takes?”  I’m really internally competitive with myself — I always like to challenge myself.

I first started out with free climbing, which is known as “bouldering.”  Here, you don’t have ropes or any equipment.  You just climb.  It felt good just climbing with the knowledge in the back of my head that I had nothing keeping me from falling.  I was calm and relaxed and really focused on using my legs to keep my arms from fatiguing.

The real fun though came in climbing with a belayer, which is someone who controls a harness/rope combination to keep the climber from falling too much.  Having the rope attached meant I could climb the higher routes which went all the way to the top of the wall.  Every now and then, I would find myself at a juncture where I was not tall enough to reach the next grip.  Usually, this meant I could not really observe the nature of the next grip and thus had only a guess as to how my hand would need to be positioned in order for me to hold onto it.  When I got to these points, I had to take the leap and have faith that I would grab hold of the next grip.  That moment where I was just in mid air far above the ground felt surreal.  Mix of adernaline and pure concentration on getting to the next level.  It felt awesome. Period.

One time, I missed the next grip and that feeling of instant free fall gives such a rush — as does the feeling you get when you look down as you’re literally floating in mid air being held only by a rope.

I love the uncertainty in taking risks and jumps.  I love calculating risks and jumps.  I love risks and jumps.

I’m going again soon as I finish with my finals.

Dial those digits

I primarily use SMS texting, Facebook messaging, and e-mail to communicate… I mean, everyone else probably does too…. right?

WRONG.

A really helpful individual who I met regarding my company gave me their business card about 1 month ago. After following up with them by e-mail as we had agreed to in our meeting, I received no response. It took a wise older person to give me a big hint: use your phone.

I felt silly that I hadn’t tried reaching them by phone, so I called and left a voice message. Next day my inbox had 3 e-mails from the person.

So in case you’re like me and you forgot that some people don’t always use e-mail/SMS/Facebook, give the phone a try.