Max Mednik
  • Home
  • About
  • Interests
    • Angel investing
    • Magic
    • Scuba Diving
  • Blog
  • Contact

Readings and musings

Notes on The Start-Up of You

3/1/2012

0 Comments

 
Picture
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


0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Archives

    June 2021
    May 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    April 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    May 2019
    March 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    February 2011
    January 2011
    December 2010
    November 2010
    October 2010
    September 2010
    August 2010
    July 2010
    June 2010
    May 2010
    April 2010
    March 2010
    February 2010

    Categories

    All
    Angel Investing
    Cacti
    Cars
    China
    Community Service
    Culture
    Design
    Djing
    Dogs
    Education
    Entertainment
    Entrepreneurship
    Family
    Finance
    Food
    Google
    Happiness
    Incentives
    Investment Banking
    Judaism
    Law
    Lighting
    Magic
    Marketing
    Medicine
    Networking
    Nolabound
    Philosophy
    Professionalism
    Psychology
    Reading
    Real Estate
    Religion
    Romance
    Sales
    Science
    Shangri-La
    Social Entrepreneurship
    Social Media
    Sports
    Teams
    Technology
    Travel
    Turtles
    Ucla
    Venture Capital
    Web Services
    Weddings
    Zen

    Subscribe

    RSS Feed

Picture
Picture
  • Home
  • About
  • Interests
    • Angel investing
    • Magic
    • Scuba Diving
  • Blog
  • Contact