Notes on The Start-Up of You

Reid Hoffman has been an incredibly successful Web 2.0 investor and the founder of LinkedIn, and so I was interested in reading his book when it came out. The Start-Up of You is actually not about entrepreneurship but about managing your own career using the principles of entrepreneurship. I think that was an interesting perspective, and the book contained many valuable lessons.

As an entrepreneur though, I was more interested in hearing about his advice for entrepreneurs, not traditional job seekers, and the book didn't have much advice along those lines. What it did have, though, were little anecdotes and details about how Reid uses his network to vet entrepreneurs (when he wears his VC/investor hat) as well as his own career path to becoming the founder of LinkedIn, and those details I found very interesting.

Reid also recently gave a TED talk on these concepts; hopefully it will be posted soon.

The book at times seemed cheesy with concepts like "I to the We" and "Invest in yourself." I also thought the book was too LinkedIn-centric and felt that many of its lessons passively persuaded the reader to use LinkedIn more. I was able to not pay much attention to these things and focused more on the stories and details in the book that I found interesting.

My full notes are below.

Ch. 1: All humans are entrepreneurs

• No more traditional career paths
  
• All humans driven to create
  
• Professional loyalty to horizontal network, not vertical employer
  
• 2 forces: globalization and technology
  
• Every individual is a small business
  
• Detroit innovation and growth of car industry
  
• Then lost entrepreneurial drive, got too comfortable
  
• Risk averse bureaucracies
  
• Great companies failing too
  
• Duration in S&P500 down from 30 to 10 years
  
• Silicon valley model of entrepreneurship
  
• Netflix
  
• Didn't initially get traction due to slow shipments and pay per DVD; improved distribution and did subscriptions and got traction
  
• Stays nimble, no planning
  
• Permanent beta, continuous personal growth 
  
• It's always day one
  
• Finished is an f word
  

Ch. 2: Develop a competitive advantage

• Better
  
• Faster
  
• Cheaper
  
• Find your local niche
  
• 3 puzzle pieces
  
• Assets. Aspirations/values. Market realities. 
  
• Assets are what you have now, soft and hard
  
• Aspirations are core values and goals

Ch. 3: Plan to adapt

• Hard to plan and know self
  
• Flickr adapted and pivoted
  
• Sheryl Sandberg had lots of career pivots
  
• Ride the big waves
  
• Adaptive planning
  
• ABZ planning
  
• Opposite of What Color Is Your Parachute? approach
  
• Plan A is the plan you're doing now
  
• Plan B is what pivot to based on alternatives
  
• Plan Z is fall back position of stable reliable plan
  
• Certainty of Z allows risk in A and B
  
• Prioritize learning over profitability
  
• Focus on soft over hard assets
  
• Learn by doing, test hypotheses by trial and error
  
• Offer to help out in other departments or companies for free
  
• Establish identity separate from employer
  
• PayPal pivoted from mobile payments to payment txr service
  
• Product market fit more important than UX
  
• He went to Prod Mgmt role from UX at Apple
  
• Transitioned by offering to do work for free
  
• PayPal pivot due to eBay use case
  
• He worked at PayPal
  
• Shift not only from failure but from seeing other opportunity
  
• Be ready for industry inflection points

Ch. 4: It takes a network

• Empathize and help others first
  
• Better negotiators spend longer searching for shared interests
  
• Weak ties valuable if offer new info or opportunities
  
• Max number of relationships 150
  
• Business intros need to be within 3 degrees
  
• Research a person and tailor request to use phrases like "I noticed," "you mentioned," "I'm curious" (from OKCupid research)
  
• Blend of cohesion and creativity (strong and weak ties)
  
• Microloans to groups because groups have peer pressure to pay back
  
• Give inexpensive thoughtful gift like article, intro, market insights that are hard to get
  
• Trying to reconnect with old classmates
  
• One hour lunch better than 10 emails
  
• Precommit yourself and allocate money for travel to meet and stay in touch with people
  
• Interesting People Fund
  
• $5000/yr
  
• Status differences need to be respected in work
  

Ch. 5: Pursue breakout opportunities

• Be curious
  
• Open yourself to chance encounters and serendipity
  
• Scientists meeting in coffee houses about ideas
  
• Rotary clubs
  
• SF homebrew club
  
• Meetup
  
• Corporate alumni groups
  
• PayPal mafia (full member listing in book)
  
• Hustle

Ch. 6: Take intelligent risks

• Part-time, intern work great
  
• Fast learner better than experienced
  
• Recession timing lower risk
  
• Frequent risk taking and freelancing teaches hustling, ability to absorb shocks gracefully
  
• Say yes more

Ch. 7: Who you know is what you know

• People help filter books, opportunities, intel for you
  
• Search literacy
  
• Network literacy
  
• Ask targeted questions to individuals
  
• Or poll a wide swathe of network with general question
  
• Sort people you know into 3 categories
  
• Domain experts
  
• People who know you well
  
• Really smart people
  
• Start with domain experts then people you know then other smart
  
• What's the most interesting thing you've learned over the past few months

Conclusion

• Website has advanced strategies and good summary
  
• Good list of reference books in conclusion