Starting tomorrow, travel writer Rolf Potts will embark on a trip that will take him around the world without using a single piece of luggage. This post will explain how he’s going to do it, and there’s a kick-ass giveaway at the end…
For six weeks he will explore 12 countries on five continents, crossing the equator four times, without carrying so much as a man-purse. The few items he does bring will be tucked away in his pockets. Though he’s a seasoned minimalist traveler (famous from his book Vagabonding), he usually travels with a single overhead-bin-perfect backpack, the Eagle Creek Thrive 65L. It’s been his go-to bag for the last 3-4 years.
So why attempt to travel the world with no luggage at all?
Rolf sees his journey as a real-time experiment in traveling ultra-light, and “a field-test for a more philosophical idea — that what we experience in life is more important than what we bring with us.”
While circumnavigating the globe with no luggage sounds like a clear enough proposition, it can raise a few semantic issues. What, for example, counts as a bag? Rolf has set up a set of ground rules to guide his own journey, including:
- No bags on the journey (not even a man-purse or grocery store bag, unless the latter is used en route to a meal).
- No borrowing items from his cameraman or using his cameraman as a pack mule.
- Borrowing or buying items along the way is permitted but excludes bags.
Since most people don’t travel with a film crew, Rolf’s advice for the average no-baggage traveler is a bit broader than the rules he’s set for himself. Here are 8 key tips from Rolf on how to plan and execute a no-luggage journey.
In Rolf’s words…
1) Manage the journey from your mobile phone.
A smartphone could well be the most important tool for a baggage-less traveler. It can store your boarding passes and other important documents, make phone calls from virtually anywhere in the world (with a swappable SIM card) and even act as a miniature blogging tool.
I recommend an iPhone with a foldable Bluetooth keyboard, which allows you to fit your mobile office inside a single jacket pocket. The iPhone can be loaded with a series of applications to replace everyday day items carried on a normal trip. The Kindle app lets you leave behind bulky books, and Genius Scan lets you use you iPhone’s camera as a makeshift scanner so you can quickly save receipts and email them to yourself on the fly. Wikihood utilizes the phone’s GPS to serve location-relevant Wikipedia articles, which is a unique and interesting alternative to a guidebook. Throw in your favorite currency converter, phrase book, and flight tracker, and you’ve got a single device in your pocket more powerful than its dead-weight paper counterparts.
With no bags, the only shoes you’re going to want to bring is whatever you’re wearing from day to day.
I’m traveling with a pair of Blundstone boots I bought in Australia in 2006. I’ve worn these boots all over the world the past four years, from Paris to Ethiopia to the Falkland Islands, and they’ve served me great. They work for hiking in remote environments, yet they’re easy to slip off and on at airport security.
Some travelers might prefer Chaco or Teva sandals (if nothing else to save packing socks) — and I won’t fault them for that — but my Blundstones look nice enough that they will get me into places where sandals might seem too informal. You are on your feet constantly when you travel, of course, so whichever footwear you choose to bring (be it sandals or boots or running shoes), make sure you aim for comfort, simplicity, and durability.
(Note from Tim: I opt for darker-colored Keen Newport Bison Leather Sandals. If you use black or dark socks, since they have closed toes, you can easily get into restaurants or even pass for business casual if you tuck the tightening strings in.)
3) Buy or borrow certain items as you go.
An old vagabonding adage goes, “Pack twice the money and half the gear.”
The same notion applies to no-luggage travel — even if you’re only packing a tenth of the gear. If a journey takes you to a beautiful beach region, odds are you can buy rubber flip-flop sandals there for a few dollars. If a given city is rainy, cheap umbrellas should be in plentiful supply — and if you get sick, the world is full of pharmacies (many of which are better-suited to cure local ailments that whatever medicine you might have packed).
Should you travel your way into cold weather, thrift stores are a good place to buy a warm jacket (which can be given way to a needy person or left in a hostel swap-box when you leave). You can also borrow things from other travelers along the way. You don’t want to be obnoxious about this, of course, but most travelers don’t mind sharing a spot of toothpaste or a couple of aspirin, and asking for these kinds of things can be a great way to strike up a conversation at the hostel or on the hiking trail.
4) Be disciplined and strategic with what you choose to bring along.
Packing light can be enough of a challenge when you have a small backpack, let alone when you have to keep all your gear in your pockets. This in mind, don’t bring anything you’re not going to use every day.
Nail clippers can be borrowed along the way; rain ponchos can be purchased on rainy days. I left my razor out of the equation (it was better to let my beard grow and then get a hard razor shave in Morocco), and before the trip I cut my hair so short I won’t ever need shampoo. Any big-box retailer should have bins of tiny deodorants and collapsible toothbrushes to keep your toiletries micro-sized. Camping stores will sell 3-ounce snap-top storage bottles that work well for toting concentrated laundry detergent or multipurpose liquid soap. Err on the side of minimalism; you can buy or borrow items along the way.
5) Wear travel gear with strategically located pockets.
If you travel without any bags, this means whatever gear you bring will have to fit in your pockets. My journey is co-sponsored by ScotteVest, an Idaho-based sportswear company that specializes in travel clothing with multiple pockets.
Most of my gear fits into the ScotteVest Tropical Jacket, which has 18 pockets of differing sizes. A majority of these pockets are accessed from the inside, which (a) is a nice deterrent against pickpockets, and (b) saves me the “dork factor” of looking like I’m traveling the world dressed like a confused trout fisherman. I can carry a majority of my gear in this jacket without looking ridiculous — plus the sleeves zip off, so I usually wear it as a vest. I’m also wearing a pair of Ultimate Cargo Pants from ScotteVest, though I’ve packed light enough that I rarely have to use the large cargo pockets. ScotteVest isn’t the only company that makes travel gear with utility pockets, of course; your local camping outfitter or travel-specialty store should provide you multiple gear options, and you can choose the clothing that best fits your needs.
6) Use a minimal rotation of clothing.
Essentially, you’ll want to travel with little more than the clothes on your back — but you will want to bring a few spare clothing items to keep things fresh and ensure you won’t get too stinky.
Given that I wear cargo pants, a travel vest, socks, underwear, and a short-sleeved t-shirt under a long-sleeved shirt on a typical day of my trip, I keep one spare t-shirt, two extra pairs of socks, and two extra pairs of underwear in my pockets.
Each night I wash the day’s socks, underwear and t-shirt in the hotel/hostel sink, and these items are dry enough to pack by morning. I’ve been washing the cargo pants about once a week (and I have yet to wash the travel vest). Some people take short no-luggage trips with even fewer clothes, but my arrangement isn’t bulky and ensures that I always have a rotation of fresh socks, underwear and t-shirts.
7) Utilize the postal system for souvenirs and extra gear
With airlines baggage fees quickly spiraling upward, many travelers these days are saving money and hassle by mailing certain items to one or more destinations along their itinerary.
If, say, you’re traveling from warm climates into cold climates, you can mail your warm clothing to the first cool destination (just make a pre-arrangement with the hotel you’ll be staying at in that location). On that same token, traveling without luggage doesn’t mean you have to forgo buying souvenirs — if just means you won’t be able to carry them. To solve this problem, just hit the local post office and mail that Balinese mask or Latvian amber or Syrian silk home.
This is actually a strategy that can be employed when you’re traveling with luggage: The souvenirs you find along the way might be nice, but there’s no sense in dragging them along with you. It’s worth the expense to ship them.
Remember: Travel is about the experience, not what you bring with you.
In the end, that remember that going without luggage and packing ultra-light need not be an extreme act. It isn’t a contest, or a rite of travel-superiority: It’s just a great way to eliminate distractions and concentrate on the experience of the journey itself.
Freed of baggage, there’s little to forget or lose on the road. You don’t have to stow anything, guard anything, or wait for anything (aside from the occasional train or bus): You can just throw yourself into the adventure and make the most of your travels.
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Question of the Day (QOD): What tricks for light travel have you learned along the way? Please share in the comments. The more detail, the better.
Prize of the Post: Leave an answer to the QOD by this Sunday at midnight PST (8/22), and one of the best comments (hard to objectively say one is “best”) will get a Sonos ZonePlayer 120 ($499 retail) and two Klipsch speakers ($389 retail)! Just download the Sonos app for iPhone/iPod Touch, and you’ve got a killer home stereo system that can play just about anything, including Pandora and Rhapsody.
The goodies will ship directly from me in an S5 box (as I now have a new S5 setup). Look forward to your tips!
Correction: Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev is credited with the modern Periodic Table of Elements, not Primo Levi, who wrote a book entitled “The Periodic Table.”
If you eliminate recruited athletes and the children of the rich and famous from this pool — categories that receive special consideration — these numbers become even starker. In short, for the average, middle-class American high school senior, applying to Stanford is like playing the lottery.
Which is why Michael Silverman proves baffling.
When Michael, a student from Paradise Valley, Arizona, applied to Stanford, his G.P.A. put him in the bottom 10% of accepted students. His SAT scores fell similarly short. "Standardized testing isn't my strong point," he told me. Perhaps more surprising, Michael avoided the crushing course load that diminishes the will of so many college hopefuls, instead taking only a single AP course during the dreaded junior year. He kept his extracurricular schedule equally clean — joining no clubs or sports and dedicating his attention to no more than one outside project at any given time.
Michael's rejection of the no pain, no gain ethos surrounding American college admissions is perhaps best summarized by his habit of ending each school day with a 1 – 2 hour hike to the summit of nearby Camelback Mountain. While his peers worked slavishly at their killer schedules, Michael took in the view, using his ritual as a time to "chill out and relax."
Despite this heretical behavior, Michael was still accepted at Stanford. To understand why, I will turn your attention to a little-known economics theory that changes the way we think about impressiveness. To get there, however, we'll start at an unlikely location: the competitive world of professional opera singers.
The Opera Singer and the Valedictorian
Juan Diego Florez cemented his reputation as a top operatic tenor during a 2008 performance of Gaetano Donizetti's La Fille du Regiment. Among professional singers, Donizetti's masterpiece is known as "the Mount Everest of opera"; a reputation due, almost entirely, to a devilishly tricky aria, "Ah! Mes amis, quel jour de fete," that arrives early in the first act. The aria demands the tenor to hit nine high C's in a row — a supremely difficult feat.
In his 2008 performance of Donizetti, at the Metropolitan Opera House, Florez hit all nine notes. The acclaim was so overwhelming that he was summoned back to the stage for an encore, overturning the Met's long-standing ban on the practice.
As a top opera singer, we can assume that Florez does well for himself financially (likely on the order of 5-digit paydays per performance), but not lavishly well. Put another way: he's well-off but not wealthy.
Then there are the superstars.
In 1972, a young tenor by the name of Luciano Pavarotti also made a name for himself performing Donizetti at the Met. Like Florez, he too hit the high C's. But there was something extra in Pavarotti's voice. The audience at the Met in 1972 did more than demand an encore from Pavarotti, they weren't content until he had returned to the stage seventeen times! In writing about Florez's 2008 performance, the New York Times noted: "If truth be told, it's not as hard as it sounds for a tenor with a light lyric voice like Mr. Florez to toss off those high C's…[I]n the early 1970's, when Luciano Pavarotti…let those high Cs ring out, that was truly astonishing."
In other words, both Florez and Pavarotti are exceptional tenors, but Pavarotti was slightly better — the best among an elite class. The impact of this small difference, however, was huge. Whereas we estimated that Florez was well off but not wealthy, when Pavarotti died in 2007, sources estimated his estate to be worth $275 to 475 million.
In a 1981 paper published in the American Economics Review, the economist Sherwin Rosen worked through the mathematics that explains why superstars, like Pavarotti, reap so many more rewards than peers who are only slightly less talented. He called the phenomenon, “The Superstar Effect.”
Though the details of Rosen's formulas are complex, the intuition is simple: Imagine a million opera fans who each have $10 to spend on an opera album. They're trying to decide whether to buy an album by Florez or Pavarotti. Rosen's theory predicts that the bulk of the consumers will purchase the Pavarotti album, thinking, roughly: "although both singers are great, Pavarotti is the best, and if I can only get one album I might as well get the best one available." The result is that the vast majority of the $10 million goes to Pavarotti, even though his talent advantage over Florez is small.
Once identified, The Superstar Effect turned up in a variety of unexpected settings, from the sales of books to CEO salaries. It was found to apply even in settings that have nothing to do with financial transactions. In a particularly compelling example, a researcher named Paul Atwell, publishing in the journal Sociology of Education in 2001, studied the Superstar Effect for high school valedictorians.
Atwell imagined two students both with 700s on their various SAT tests. The first student was the valedictorian and the second student was ranked number five in the class. Rationally speaking, these two students are near identical — the difference in G.P.A. between the number one and number five rank is vanishingly small. But using statistics from Dartmouth College, Atwell showed that the valedictorian has a 75% of acceptance at this Ivy League institution while the near identical fifth-ranked student has only a 25% chance.
In other words, in many fields, it pays disproportionately well to be not just very good, but the best.
Hacking the Superstar Effect
Taking a step back, we likely agree that it's an interesting finding that being the best has a hidden advantage. If reaping this advantage, however, requires becoming class valedictorian or honing a brilliant singing voice — both staggeringly difficult feats — it doesn't seem all that applicable.
This is where Michael Silverman reenters the picture.
The details of his story reveal a crucial addendum that makes the power of the Superstar Effect available to most people. I call this addendum The Superstar Corollary, and it's here I turn your attention next.
I discovered The Superstar Corollary in an unlikely setting: the extracurricular lives of high school students. I was researching a book on students, like Michael, who get accepted to outstanding colleges while still living low-stress and interesting lives. During this research, I kept noticing the same trait in these teen-aged lifehackers: they had accomplishments that triggered The Superstar Effect, but which revealed on closer examination to not require a rare natural talent or years and years of grinding work.
For example, consider the details Michael's story. Starting as a freshman, he focused all of his extracurricular energies on a serial string of environmental sustainability projects. He started by submitting a model of a green house to a competition. This led him to discover that a local energy company offered a grant program for local high school students. He won a modest grant, and used it, with the help of a retired engineer from his hometown, to retrofit a golf cart to run on biofuels. Leveraging this success, he earned another grant which he used to install solar panels on his school's maintenance shed. This earned him press coverage, and the resulting Superstar Effect helped wow the Stanford admissions department into overlooking his borderline scores.
Notice that nothing about Michael's rise to stardom required a rare natural talent or overwhelming work load. His projects required, on average, less daily time investment than participating in a varsity sport. Yet, he was the best at what he did among all applicants to Stanford, and the resulting Superstar Effect earned him a disproportionate reward.
Michael wasn't alone in his success at hacking The Superstar Effect. Consider, for example, Maneesh Sethi (featured recently inTim's lifestyle design case study competition), who got into Stanford on the strength of having written a popular computer programming book, or Steve Schwartz, who got into Columbia by taking on the role of press officer for a student-run environment advocacy group. Both found uncontested niches that required only a reasonable amount of effort investment to conquer, but still triggered the full impact of The Superstar Effect.
I formalize this idea with the following corollary:
The Superstar Corollary
Being the best in a field makes you disproportionately impressive to the outside world. This effect holds even if the field is not crowded, competitive, or well-known.
In other words, becoming valedictorian or a sustainability guru both generate the same Superstar Effect, but the former is much harder than the latter.
[Post publication addition from Tim] From the comments following this post, here is a comment from former Ivy League admissions officer, Peggy Hanefors:
Thank you both for a great article… I was at the University of Pennsylvania for three years. Top schools do indeed love these “super stars”. Students who can easily do the academic work required but who really shine in some way. Why? Well, I think there are a few reasons. Of course most basic is the need of building a diverse class. How boring it would be to have a university filled with all valedictorians who are also tri-sport captains with near perfect SATs!
But beyond that is the need for good stories; interesting students to talk about in promotional materials and alumni magazines. Students who will make campus more exciting simply because they are there. Students who won’t join an investment bank or consulting firm upon graduation because that is the traditional way of “making it”. Michael is one of these interesting students.
Michael has two abstract traits that all selective admissions offices travel the world to find: passion and an ability to take advantage of opportunities they come across. Michael clearly cares about the environment, even hikes a couple of hours a day. His interest rings true, are consistent (common across several of his extra curricular activities and over time), and he could probably demonstrate his passion in his essays and interview.
Michael also took advantage of opportunities that he came across. Teenage students’ interests often change, but the unique ability to take that interest a step further does not.
The one thing I would add to the definition of “The Superstar Corollary” is an ability to do the unexpected. The courage to do something contrary to parental, societal and cultural expectations and stereotypes, including the unknown personal stereotypes of the admissions officers. This ability makes a person that “superstar”. Cal does not tell us what Michael’s parents do, but if one of them works with environmental sustainability Michael’s accomplishment suddenly becomes less impressive. Similarly it is more “cool” if an Hispanic student is a champion of Bharatanatyam dance, a traditionally Indian art form, if an African-American is a violin virtuoso as opposed to someone of Asian heritage, and if someone whose parent is not a Mayor leads a local political initiative. Fair? No, admissions never is.
The Superstar Corollary and Lifestyle Design
Let's move beyond high school students and broaden the applicability of this powerful idea. The Superstar Corollary hacks the neural circuity responsible for producing feelings of respect and impressiveness, yielding a huge return on effort invested. As detailed below, this makes it a perfect tool for lifestyle design.
For the employee seeking liberation…
Triggering The Superstar Effect in your employer provides a valuable bargaining chip when trying to inject mobility and flexibility into your work schedule. Employers don't mind upsetting hard workers, but they fear losing stars. The Superstar Corollary gives you an efficient route to this workplace stardom.
Imagine, for example, a programmer in a web development shop. The Corollary might inspire her to become a top contributor to some new, up and coming, open source technology. Becoming known as a world expert yields more impressiveness than if she had invested the same hours into simply working overtime on her existing projects.
To give another example, imagine an entry-level employee at a non-profit. By taking on responsibility for tracking the organization's web site visitors, and then mastering enough Google Analytics to present beautiful analyses to the board, the employee will be seen as the technology guru of the organization — a star who is helping them understand their audience in new ways. This aura of stardom outstrips what's achievable if he had instead invested his efforts only into being a conscientious, efficient, hardworking, and replaceable employee.
For the owner of a muse looking to increase his rewards-to-effort ratio...
For the post-liberation, muse-owning lifestyle entrepreneur, The Superstar Corollary provides a powerful tool for ramping up returns without ramping up the work invested.
Writer Chris Guillebeau, from The Art of Non-Conformity blog, provides a perfect example of the Corollary at work in a lifestyle business. Instead of starting yet another site offering generic lifehacking hints, Chris found an uncontested corner of his field to conquer. Specifically, he set out on a mission to visit every country in the world. The scope of this quest transformed him into a star among travel/lifehacking bloggers, and his site quickly become a lucrative success.
Applying The Superstar Corollary
Applying The Superstar Corollary in your own life can be tricky. Here are some ideas to facilitate this effort.
Idea #1: Sloganize.
To sloganize is to transform your conquest into an easy-to-describe and immediately interesting quest. For example, Chris Guillebeau, mentioned above, sloganized his conquest of the adventure travel writing by focusing on the catchy goal of visiting every country in the world. Similarly, in my above example of a web programmer mastering a new open source technology, she might sloganize her efforts by writing a definitive eBook on the subject. To say that she literally "wrote the book" on the technology gives the expertise extra power.
The power of sloganizing is clear: it maximizes the superstar impact of your conquest.
Idea #2: Apply the $1000 Wager Test.
Two years ago, I had a series of conversations with my friend Ben Casnocha about the possibility of writing an eBook. Both Ben and I had written and published successful books on the side, and we were exploring the idea of a guide on how successful part-time authors manage to juggle their full time job with their writing. Ultimately, we abandoned the idea. The problem: there wasn't enough to say. The part-time authors who have the easiest time writing books tend to be those who know enough about the industry to be confident in the success of their project. This confidence is what allows them to keep finding time in their schedules to write; fancy scheduling rules and productivity systems prove irrelevant.
This same observation carries over to the quest to conquer an uncontested niche in your field. To follow through you need confidence in your success; otherwise, your efforts will diminish over time, regardless of the complexity of your productivity systems or the fervor of the inspirational quotes you read. Here's a simple rule: If you're not willing to bet $1000 on your success within 6 to 12 months, then either your goal is quixotic or you don't know enough about the field yet. In both cases, you're not ready for the project. A blind adherence to the flawed idea that getting started is the most important step is best left to cheesy motivational speakers — winners make plays with confidence.
Idea #3 Follow Steve Martin's Brand of Diligence
In his memoir, Born Standing Up, the comedy superstar Steve Martin provides insight into his rise to prominence. I've written in-depth about his method, but perhaps the most important concept is Martin's redefinition of "diligence." He notes that diligence was crucial in his rise to comedic fame, but he's quick to redefine the term away from it's standard definition of "hard work applied consistently over time." To Martin, the key to diligence isn't the work applied to your pursuit, but instead the work you don't apply to other pursuits. He succeeded in reinventing comedy because he kept his focus on comedy, even when other, more shiny and interesting side projects presented themselves.
The same concept applies to The Superstar Corollary. When conquering your uncontested niche, it can be tempting to divide your attention. Here is where Martin's diligence is key. The bonus reward you get for being the best far outweighs any small benefit that a shiny new side project can provide. On the large scale, therefore, maintaining a relentless focus on your conquest maximizes your total overall reward.
Concluding Summary
We're wired to be disproportionately impressed with someone who is the best at what they do. This effect, however, is blind to the competitiveness of the pursuit. The writer who is traveling to every country in the world, for example, can earn as much attention as the Rhodes Scholar with a PhD in international relations.
Is there's an uncontested corner in your own working life where you could apply the Superstar Corollary to gain a huge return on investment?
About the Author:
Calvin Newport is author of How to Be a High School Superstar: A Revolutionary Plan to Get into College by Standing Out. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Dartmouth College in 2004 and earned a Ph.D in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT in 2009. Newport’s work and findings on student success have been featured on ABC, NBC, and CBS.
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Odds and Ends: Birthday Give-Back Results and Winners
You all are amazing human beings and should be so, so proud. The birthday give-back experiment raised more than $45,000 in a little over three days, which means $90,000+ to schoolkids in need, since I’m matching. This means you impacted more than 9,300 kids, and together we will impact closer to 20,000.
Check this image out — to put things in perspective, that’s about 20,000 people. Holy $#%&!
If you donated by midnight on Sunday, you should have received the following e-mail from Donorschoose.org:
Subject line: Gift from Tim Ferriss
Wow!
Thank you so much for celebrating Tim Ferriss’s birthday by supporting a classroom on DonorsChoose.org. This short email contains a gift, so please read all the way through.
Thanks to you, students will have the opportunity to take interesting field trips to amazing places, including sea research vessels and Shakespearean plays! The students you helped will have access to reading activities, word games, listening centers and — most important — books for improving literacy skills. Through the Great Give-Back Birthday, you have brought valuable resources to more than 8,600 kids [Tim note: this has since increased] – incredible!
Not only are you passionate supporters, but, as you know, Tim Ferriss has agreed to match your donations, bringing even more supplies to high need schools. But here’s the cool part: he wants to give it back to you! You get to decide where to put Tim’s money, whether in your hometown elementary school or into music programs across the country.
So please use the below $50 gift code from Tim Ferriss to select a classroom project of your choice on DonorsChoose.org. Just find a project that speaks to your heart and enter the code when you checkout. Your gift code expires on September 30, 2010, so don’t forget to fund a great classroom!
[UNIQUE CODE]
On behalf of all the students and teachers you have touched with this gift, thank you very much!
Your friends at DonorsChoose.org
P.S. Here is a note from Tim:
“You rock!!!
It’s hard to describe how amazed, overjoyed, and touched I’ve been by you all, and your selfless contributions to kids who need it most in our schools. PLEASE use your gift code! I suggest you either use it today (it just takes a few minutes), or put it in your calendar for this week so you don’t forget. It makes an incredible gift as well.
Just don’t forget to use it! Chances are, if you don’t use it this week, you will forget. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have enjoyed this incredible experiment. Wow.
All the best to you and yours — thank you, thank you, thank you,
Tim“
And that’s the damn truth.
But let’s not forget out prize winners (though I hope you all feel awesome after the experience, which you should):
The lucky winner of the round-trip ticket is Brian Brereton. Please contact amy-at-fourhourworkweekdotcom when you know your timing for the trip!
For the Maui Jim gift card and glasses, the winners are Ty Kroll (VIP gift card), Douglass Lodmell, and Jesse Walters. Please allow a week or so for them to arrive.
This has been the most wonderful birthday I could ask for. Thank you all.
Soon 33 years young. I’ll be back on the playa in August for Burning Man.
33. I’ll turn a glorious 33 this weekend.
It’s going to be a great natal year–I can already feel it. Repeating numbers (born in ’77) are good luck. Perhaps it will be good luck for you, too: in this post, I’m giving away a round-trip ticket anywhere in the world and more.
But back to that strange birthday gift…
Much to the chagrin of my momma-san, I’ve become quite difficult to buy presents for. Some friends even think I’m impossible to find presents for.
It’s not entirely true. I love handwritten letters, home-made brownies (like Fred Wilson), girlfriends dressed in next to nothing, and–most of all–when people do something nice.
Before we move on (wait for it, wait for it), please watch this super-short movie trailer:
In lieu of gifts this year, my birthday wish is to help high-need kids in public schools take field trips.
Can you imagine never having the chance to go to the aquarium or natural history museum? “Never” as in, literally, never in your life?
That’s unacceptable.
Since I am turning 33 this year, please help choose a field trip to support here with a tax-deductible $33 donation (or any other amount). Feel free to give from $10-$10,000 in the “Give to the most urgent project” field, whatever you can afford.
If we run out of field trips (which would be awesome), we’ll focus on reading projects. Literacy = the most fundamental path out of poverty.
Beyond the good karma and thank-you letters you’ll receive from the kids:
Incentive #1 – The trip: Donate before this Sunday at 12 midnight PST, and I’ll pick one of y’all randomly. You’ll get a round-trip ticket anywhere in the world that Continental or Star Alliance fly, whether Rome, Tokyo, Buenos Aires, or hundreds of other awesome locations. There is no expiration date on the trip, so you can take your time.
Incentive #2 – How it becomes $100,000: I will match every dollar donated, dollar for dollar, up to $100,000 total. That means that if the field trip gifts (donations) total $50,000, I will write a check for $50,000, all of which will go to public school kids in need. Remember, it’s tax-deductible.
Please go to this page and look around. Seriously, take a peek.
The goal is to get approximately 1,500 donors at an average of $33 each, which will add up to $50,000 and, matched, add up to $100,000.
Incentive #3 – If you want to get some goodies, please help spread the word. Tell people I’m matching donations and get them to this post or this DonorsChoose.org link (same as above). Leave a comment below telling me what you did to spread the word (Facebook, Twitter, e-mail blast, add to your e-mail signature, encourage employees/friends to do the same, etc.).
The three most die-hard promoters will get pairs of my favorite sunglasses on the planet: Maui Jim’s. Grand winner will get a VIP gift card (good for any pair, including $300+ models) and two runners-up will get a pair of $200+ sunglasses of my choosing.
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Beyond the bribes, you’ll feel awesome about yourself for doing some real good for little ‘uns who have so little. Trust me.
Superman is not coming to help these kids, nor is the government — will you step up for even two minutes?
I hope to help with the bigger policy changes, but, as one politician said, “Show me a movement first and then I can respond.”
I think that’s doable, and this little experiment could be exhibit A.
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Note for Non-US readers from Baahar:
“For people from outside the US: during the checkout process on donorschoose.org, it asks for your address. I couldn’t proceed at first because my postal code was too short, and there was no message to indicate what the problem was. Type a 5 digit number to pass that stage.”
DODOcase, one of more than 1,000 businesses created in the last six months, has sold more than 10,000 units at $60 each.
From today’s New York Times coverage of the Shopify/4-Hour Workweek build-a-business competition that just ended:
To encourage early, positive buzz among Apple iPad buyers, Mr. Dalton [of DODOcase] hired street teams via Craigslist to “hang out with Apple fanboys, while they waited on line for hours, maybe even days, outside of Apple retail stores for a chance to buy the first edition iPad.” The street teams, he said, hit Apple store locations in Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco.
DODOcase also scored favorable reviews with the tech blogs Engadget and The Unofficial Apple Weblog. Some endorsements came unsolicited from high profile customers; on July 14, Evan Williams, chief executive of Twitter, posted a DODOcase endorsement on his Twitter feed: “Got my Dodocase. Sweet.”
The company, which plans to continue manufacturing its product and creating jobs in San Francisco, received more than 10,000 orders within a few months of the iPad’s debut…
The DODOcase costs around $60, so you can do the math. Amazing.
The Shopify build-a-business competition was a financial carrot for anyone who’d dreamed of starting a business but hadn’t taken the jump. Each person had six months to build a business, and their two highest-grossing consecutive months would be matched against everyone else.
The competition just ended on June 30th. So what happened?
This post will cover the overall results and focus on the winners: their lessons learned, marketing tipping points, mistakes, and much more. First, some stats:
Revenue PER HOUR for the duration of the contest (180 days): $696.38
Total number of people competing: 1,819
Total number of orders placed: 66,503
Below is a sweet infographic that shows some of the highlights and a few other fun numbers (full-size here):
I use the term “prize winners” because more than 500 viable businesses were created by you all, and I consider all of you winners (including those who participated but didn’t get this first attempt quite right).
For prize winners, here are the category and overall winners:
In that order, I asked all of them the following questions:
1) How did you decide on your product? What ideas did you consider but reject, and why?
2) What were some of the main tipping points (if any) or a-ha moments? How did the tipping points happen?
3) What were your biggest mistakes, or biggest wastes of time/money?
4) Key manufacturing and marketing lessons learned?
5) If you were to do it all over again, what would you do differently?
6) What’s next?
Here are their answers.
Lessons Learned: From Manufacturing to Marketing
NASHVILLE FLOOD TEES
Nashville Flood Tees is a group of artists and designers utilizing their talents to help the victims of the recent flooding in Nashville and the Middle TN area. We sell T-shirts for adults and children, with all of the profits going towards local charities.
Nashville Flood Tees was the brainchild of graphic designer Susannah Parrish, of texaSUS design, who posted 2 tshirt designs on Facebook. What was intended to be a modest project, turned into a viral marketing explosion- over 25,000 Facebook fans amassed within two days.
As it became clear this couldn’t be just a couple hundred tshirts printed in her basement, Susannah teamed up with Josh and Bethany Newman of ST8MNT design, a graphic design firm, to create an online store and additional designs. Josh and Bethany were able to get a Shopify store up and running within 2 days.
Render Apparel, a custom apparel company, joined the team to produce the product. The online store sold 800 shirts the first hour it went live. It’s been estimated that over $200,000 has been raised for the charities, of which $120,000 that has already been given to the charities.
1) How did you decide on your product? What ideas did you consider but reject, and why?
T-shirts seemed to be the perfect mix of raising money, as well as promoting the cause in the marketplace and giving the consumer sense if empowerment and ownership.
2) What were some of the main tipping points (if any) or a-ha moments? How did the tipping points happen?
The tipping point was Facebook. There are now 36,970 fans. Google stats show online store visits from 93 countries/territories, with over a 108,000 visits total since we launched 2 months ago.
3) What were your biggest mistakes, or biggest wastes of time/money?
Our biggest mistake and waste of time: fulfillment. Since this was a charity idea that 3 small business owners set up to do in their spare time, we wanted to keep costs at a minimum. We wanted as much money as possible to go to the charities, so we didn’t partner with large expensive fulfillment houses or large capacity printers that could make our products the priority. This actually proved to take up more time that we didn’t have because we had to be so involved.
Our other biggest mistake: PayPal. For the same reason as fulfillment, we needed to set up payment as quickly and easily as possible. This has been a real challenge. Not only did PayPal shut us down for 24 hrs after only being live for less than 8 hrs, because of the sheer volume we sold, but they’ve been really slow and difficult releasing funds to us.
4) Key manufacturing and marketing lessons learned?
Lessons learned – the amazing power of online social networking. This idea exploded because of Facebook. We didn’t even have the time to actually use Google ad words or email marketing blasts with Emma.
5) If you were to do it all over again, what would you do differently?
If this had been a for-profit business, where we had more time and energy to devote to the resources, we would have set up a merchant account and payment gateway, instead of a third party payment processor like PayPal. We also would have integrated a more sophisticated online marketing strategy to truly capitalize on the viral explosion. And we definitely would have utilized a more turnkey fulfillment service. This has proven to be the most difficult aspect of an online store. And lastly we would have employed customer service staff to maintain communication with customers.
6) What’s next?
We plan on launching a new charity tshirt store that specializes in quality designs to raise money for a wider range of current causes: MyShirtHelps.com
This venture has been an amazing journey, (and at the risk of sounding like a kiss-ass that strangely happened only a few days after we finished reading The Four Hour Work Week. The idea for an online apparel company had already been on our minds as a curious side business to launch. And the steps for implementation outlined in the book were on the to do list as sort of a pie-in-the-sky-if-we-ever-get-more-time plan. So as we watched the flooding on tv, and our good friend and former colleague showed us pics of a tshirt design, it all fell into place. Thanks to Shopify and The Four Hour Work Week, we scrambled a store up in a matter of days and have raised over $200,000 for the flood victims of the middle Tennessee area.
BUY MAFIA
What I sell at my online store BuyMafia.com is a service of transferring virtual items that I collect from the game Mafia Wars on Facebook, items like weapons, vehicles, armors, collectibles and many others from the game that will help improve peoples character and make them stronger for the competitive wars and fights that people take seriously, even though is just a fun game.
1) How did you decide on your product? What ideas did you consider but reject, and why?
I started playing the Mafia Wars game for Facebook and I notice that they had over 4 million fans playing the game daily (now there are over 10 million) and I did some research online and found a website that works like ebay but just for digital items for online games. I tried selling something there just to test the market, and on the same day I got an email from the site saying that someone purchased the items I listed there and they gave me their information so I could send to them, I did not expect that it would work that well but it did.
2) What were some of the main tipping points (if any) or a-ha moments? How did the tipping points happen?
I had an a-ha moment when I saw how serious people were with the game and the competition between clans and that people wanted more and more items to become stronger and they would spend whatever it took to be the strongest player on the game. Then I used what I learned about business to create a business plan around that.
4) Key manufacturing and marketing lessons learned?
The best thing was that I did not put 1 penny out of my pocket until today do create this business, I just reinvested the money that was coming in from the items I collected in the game and sold until I got to the point that I pay people to collect them for me and I just focus on the marketing and sales.
I learned that marketing and getting traffic to the site are some of the most important things for a online business, the more I spent with marketing the more the sales grew, and that was exponential growth.
5) If you were to do it all over again, what would you do differently?
I would have invested more time looking for ways to market the business instead of trying to collect more and more items on the game. I could have people doing that for me.
6) What’s next?
Now I’m working on a affiliate program for people that wants to make money by just sending people to the site, giving them a percentage of the sale when their customer purchases something. I’m always looking to leverage and to automate more and more of the business so I can have time to create new projects.
GROVEMADE
Grove is a design collective lead by Joe Mansfield and Ken Tomita bringing art and customized natural products into your daily life.
Everything is designed and made in Portland, Oregon. We take pride in how we do things and who we are, as much as in our products. Our products reflect our pursuit of fine design and ethical consideration. Our main product right now is a bamboo iPhone case for the iPhone3G and iPhone4. We curate and artist series of laser engraved art on the cases, offer customization where you can upload your own artwork, and a plain case. The cases are a blend of high tech manufacturing and old fashioned handwork, aiming to bring warmth back into your lives.
1) How did you decide on your product? What ideas did you consider but reject, and why?
The product preceded the company. Joe had an idea to make a bamboo iPhone case and I joined in to help him do it. We thought we could make the best iPhone case in the world. With so much of our lives becoming dominated by electronic products such as cell phones and computers, we felt that the world could use some products made with natural materials. Also, contemporary design has been criticized for being cold and impersonal, while tradition is hailed as warm but old. Why not bring back the warmth of tradition back into contemporary design?
2) What were some of the main tipping points (if any) or a-ha moments? How did the tipping points happen?
The a-ha moment was when Joe and I decided to team up last summer. I design/build custom furniture under the name TomitaDesigns and Joe coincidentally lived across the street from my woodshop where he conducted his laser business EngraveYourBook. We became friends from the proximity and “nerded out” on design and art every day while tossing the football around on the street, not getting any real work done. He had talked of the iPhone case idea for years actually. I can’t even remember the actual moment when we decided to team up. Now, it seems so obvious how our skills, talent, and spirit combine so well but back then we were completely oblivious to the possibility of working together. I believed in his vision and we fed off each other to make it a reality.
3) What were your biggest mistakes, or biggest wastes of time/money?
Ive heard somewhere that it is better business wise to release a mediocre product early than a great product late. Timing is everything.
Some people may point to our late release of the 3G model as a big mistake because of the timing. It was in terms of sales. However, if we were to do it again we would do the same thing. We didn’t release till we had refined the product to our level of satisfaction. We don’t release mediocre products just to make money. We want to have pride in what we do, and that means sometimes we will be late to the game, and sometimes it won’t make business sense.
4) Key manufacturing and marketing lessons learned?
From a marketing perspective, everything went according to our vision.
Concentrate on making the best product possible. If you succeed, the product will sell itself…. People will talk about it on their own.
From a manufacturing perspective, I had a lot to learn. I am accustomed to designing and building one-off high end furniture pieces with no regard to how difficult it is to make. The goal has always been to make the best piece possible. I had a difficult time adjusting from that mindset to that of a production situation. Our products are difficult to make and require a lot of labor because of my mindset and lack of willingness to compromise certain things. For example, we hand rub 4 coats of natural oil/wax on our cases which doesn’t really make any sense for mass production.
5) If you were to do it all over again, what would you do differently?
Nothing. I don’t do the “wish I had a time machine” thing. Experience–whether it be good decisions or mistakes–all lead us to where we are at now. I love the ride and learning experience, bumps and all.
6) What’s next?
We have an iPad case coming up that we are really excited about. We are mixing and matching some different materials that have radically different properties. It will be thin, sleek, and customizable, of course.
We also have some amazing collaborations on the iPhone4 case coming up with artists and brands that we are fond of. We love working with artists first and foremost. Our spirit of creative pursuit is our greatest attribute and simply the most fun part.
The truth is, we have a ton of projects in development constantly in our heads. I can’t wait to get to all of them!
VAPORIZERS
1) How did you decide on your product? What ideas did you consider but reject, and why?
We decided on vaporizers because we already wholesale in the same industry. We decided to launch an online website. Shopify was easy to use and very convenient.
2) What were some of the main tipping points (if any) or a-ha moments? How did the tipping points happen?
The main tipping points was figuring out the keywords they generate the most conversion. Once we were able to identify the keywords, using Google Analytics, it allowed us to be more aggressive and competitive. We determine it by amount of revenue generated per click minus cost per click.
3) What were your biggest mistakes, or biggest wastes of time/money?
The biggest mistakes were starting shopify contest late. It took us much longer to develop the website than we expected. We entered in the last 2 month of the contest. Besides that, everything went very smooth for the website.
4) Key manufacturing and marketing lessons learned?
The key marketing lesson learned was how to manage the cost of PPC campaign. PPC became one of our biggest cost, it was a challenge to maximize efficiency. We really had to watch our ad campaign to keep the website profitable.
5) If you were to do it all over again, what would you do differently?
We would focus more on search engine optimization other than ppc aspect. Also spend more time planning out the website with a deadline checklist. This would allow us to launch a new site much faster. The deadline would look more like a real estate project… [with] each phase of the website constructed in a synchronized fashion.
6) What’s next?
We plan to open another site for niche market products that wal-mart, target, and costco do not carry.
DODOCASE
1) How did you decide on your product? What ideas did you consider but reject, and why?
Going back to our use first use of a Kindle, we were amazed and excited about the idea of an e-reader. At the same time we started to feel a sense of loss about not holding and reading a good book (despite what one might think, reading is at least in part a tactile thing). While we didn’t act on this feeling on the Kindle as the iPad was announced it was clear that we had to do something. Patrick considered many different types of wood materials to compliment the book element and ultimately decided on bamboo based on its eco appeal and its historic relation to paper.
2) What were some of the main tipping points (if any) or a-ha moments? How did the tipping points happen?
Since the iPad form factor was new, we had designed the DODOcase based on Apple engineering drawings. The first a-ha moment was putting the iPad in the DODOcase on launch day. We realized we had not only achieved our design objectives, but it was a way nicer experience using the iPad in a DODOcase than on its own. The second a-ha moment was when Engadget called the DODOcase ‘the Rolls Royce of iPad cases”.
The Engadget connection happened through the viral activity that surrounded DODOcase. Our target market on launch (obviously the early adopter of the iPad) is highly connected and highly social. They wanted to talk about their new toy and we become part of the conversation. These conversations spun up in the ‘echo chamber’ of Twitter and Facebook and quickly made it to the tech blogger community. Josh from Engadget reached out to us directly and we recognized he was a guy we wanted to get our product to quickly (he got case #16).
3) What were your biggest mistakes, or biggest wastes of time/money?
Fighting the urge of distractions has been a challenge for us. We pursued an iPhone 4 case design for a week before checking ourselves and deciding that while we had a cool product design execution would be a distraction from our commitment to our customers.
4) Key manufacturing and marketing lessons learned?
We’ve learned tons about book binding and woodcraft which we will certainly take forward with us. On the marketing side, we’ve learned that having a great story is as important as having a great product. As a small company, you need to connect with your customers on an emotional level as well as on the physical level of the product. We sell DODOcase’s exclusively online which means most of our customers are buying a product without ever touching it. To achieve sales in this way, its important that customers ‘want’ to buy into the story as well as the product. We’ve believe that we are in the middle of a giant cultural shift from the book to the computer (e-reader/iPad). We hope that DODOcase can help ease that transition by providing the tactile experience we’ve all grown up with applied to these amazing new devices.
Let me take a stab at ‘formulating a good story’.
For a small business like DODOcase, it is critical that our products have a story behind them. The seeds of product development for the DODOcase originated when we first held the Kindle. We were amazed by the power and convenience of the Kindle, but immediately felt a sense of loss about the traditional book. That loss was a combination of the tactile feeling of a book as well as the potential that an entire traditional industry (book binding) could ultimately be destroyed by such technology. These feelings became the core of the DODOcase product story. We set out to make a product that helped assuage these feeling as consumers embraced the iPad. Users of an iPad in the DODOcase ‘feel’ like they are reading a hardback book which created a positive association with their past feelings of reading actual books. Further, through our use of YouTube videos and other online messaging, we told the story of how DODOcase is made using traditional book binding techniques.
The combination of a product that delivered on expectations we set and the story we’ve told in our messaging has strongly resonated with customers. At the end of the day, we made a product that we wanted to use and have tried to share liberally the many reasons why we’ve made the product and manufacturing decisions we’ve made.
5) If you were to do it all over again, what would you do differently?
If we had the opportunity to do it all over again, we might look a little more carefully at our choice of wood. Bamboo is an amazing material, but it is also very difficult to work with. Choosing a different type of wood might have made our lives easier.
6) What’s next?
We will continue to expand and invest in our production capabilities. We strive to eliminate the wait to get a DODOcase and to better service our customers. We will be expanding our product line to support additional colors and customizations for corporate clients and universities. We will look at new tablet devices as they come out and decide if the market will be large enough to support a DODOcase model.
We are thrilled to grow our business in the great city of San Francisco and contribute to the local economy.
Brainstorming in Boulder, CO with a class of founders from TechStars, where I’ve been a mentor. After this particular trip, I ended up advising Graphic.ly. (Photo: Andrew Hyde)
Disclaimer: nothing on this site is legal advice, and I am not an investing expert.
Part I explained how, instead of getting an MBA, I invested the tuition dollars into angel investing. To recap, my current stats for the two-year “Tim Ferriss Fund” look like this:
15 or so total investments
0 deaths
2 successful “exits”, or sales (including my own company)
If we look at the value of my remaining start-ups on paper, based on subsequent funding and valuations, the portfolio is probably up well over 4x. This means nothing (remember Webvan?), but it’s fun to look at the spreadsheet.
This post will look at how I’ve found deals, how I filter deals, and the rules I’ve set for myself. The latter can teach broader business lessons, even if angel investing never enters your life…
Before we get started: you almost always need to be an “accredited investor” to angel invest. If you aren’t comfortable lighting your money on fire, you shouldn’t invest in start-ups–period. That doesn’t mean, however, that you can’t learn a few things from the sidelines.
Before we get started – part deux: angel investing can be complicated. I’ll be using some fuzzy math and simple examples to get the point across. This is intended as a primer, not as a guide to the intricacies of investing.
Last but not least, I’ll use a gender-neutral “he” for the sake of simplicity instead of “he or she”, which is cumbersome. Both sexes can play well in this game (check out Esther Dyson), and both can screw it up equally badly.
For those who want some resources upfront, here are a few:
If you want to be an angel investor:
Read – How to Be an Angel Investor
Read – Is it Time for You to Earn or to Learn? by Mark Suster – this is a must-read reality-check that takes into account dilution and other nasties. Though written for people thinking of joining start-ups as employees, it applies to angels.
If you want to find angel investors: AngelList (go here to pitch me or anyone else in their roster)
Consider applying to a “seed accelerator” program that will cultivate you. For a complete list of such programs and upcoming application deadlines, visit Kaljundi’s site. Here are few well-known examples:
As exciting as I find the start-up game in Silicon Valley, it can also be depressing.
I see capable first-time entrepreneurs, full of piss and vinegar, run into fundraising and get their asses kicked by seasoned venture capitalists (often affectionately called “vulture capitalists”). Two or three years later, their start-up baby is either dead or their ownership has dwindled to the point where their enthusiasm is gone.
Here are some questions and warnings that might help avoid this:
1) Why do you need funding?
If you can bootstrap to profitability and one of your goals is to work for yourself, I’d suggest thinking twice. If you take a few million dollars, you will–on some level–be working for investors. If you make a mistake and allow investors to have board control, which can happen if you spend funding faster than expected, you no longer run your start-up.
2) Avoid angel investors with few or no prior start-up investments.
The family dentist wants to put in $50,000 and will give you whatever terms you want? Sounds great! Don’t do it. Ditto for the successful CEO who’s never done angel investing, as seductive as it will be.
One good friend just had her start-up implode (after millions of investment) because her primary investor, a former tech CEO, didn’t have the stomach for start-up investing. He panicked when things deviated from the business plan (um, welcome to start-up land), and began doling out funding in two-week increments and insisting on near-weekly board meetings. He became the micromanager from hell. No longer was the real start-up CEO able to make CEO decisions, and the company was doomed.
Only take investment from people who have invested in a few start-ups. Having run a start-up doesn’t qualify one as risk-tolerant enough for start-up investing.
3) Don’t take a ton of money just because the valuation is sexy, or because you give up less ownership.
This problem is more common with venture capital (VC), but it worth learning early: it’s a bad idea to take money from someone simply because they offer a high valuation. Let’s say two investors want to be your lead investor. Investor A thinks your start-up is worth $3 million and offers to buy 33% of the company for $1 million — to fund you with $1 million. Investor B thinks you’re worth $10 million and offers to also give you $1 million, but you’ll only give up 10% of the company!
Go with Investor B, right? Well, not so fast. If you come out of the gates with very little to show but a $10 million valuation, things can blow up in your face a few ways:
- Your exit options become fewer. If Investor B needs a 10x return for his portfolio and has the ability to block your sale for less, this means you have to sell for at least $100 million. If you’re a first-time founder, putting $1-2 million in your pocket with an early sale for $10 million could have changed your life forever and given you “f**k you” money to do anything you wanted. Now it’s home run or nothing.
- You run the real risk of a “down round”. If you don’t make it to profitability with that $1-million round, you’ll need to raise more money later. If you haven’t made a ton of progress, including a ton of new customers, the fundraising community will be skeptical and probably insist your $10-million valuation was too high, or that you’ve lost value since that round. Now you’ll need to do what’s called a “down round” (some examples here). In most cases, this spells the end for your start-up.
OK, with those warning out of my system, let’s look at some definitions and how I’ve done things so far.
Investor vs. Advisor, and Some Definitions
When dealing with tech start-ups, the following terms are important to understand. Below are some very general definitions, keeping in mind that almost everything is negotiated and on a case-by-case basis:
“Seed” or “Series-A” = two early rounds of financing common in the start-up world. “Seed” is first, and often either family and friends or $100,000-$1,000,000 from angels. “Series-A” might be around $1,000,000-$5,000,000 and comprise primarily angels and perhaps 1-2 venture capitalists from larger firms that could later participate in larger “Series-B” or “Series-C” rounds, if needed for profitability or to compete. These “B” or “C” rounds usually involve many millions of dollars, which few angels will put up as individuals.
“Dilution” = Having your percentage ownership lowered when new investors come in. If, for example, you own 1% of a start-up at seed stage, if there are any future rounds of financing, your portion of the pie will almost always shrink–you will be diluted. This is critical to keep in mind when calculating potential outcomes as an investor or advisor.
“Investor” = someone who writes checks in exchange for equity (a certain % ownership) in the start-up.
“Advisor” = someone who advises a start-up in exchange for equity over time. “Advising” can include key introductions (to customers, partners, important hires), “syndicating” financing (getting other investors on board), developing/improving the product, helping with PR/marketing/customer-acquisition, or anything else a start-up might need.
So what percentage do advisors get? For someone who’s just doing a few intro’s, or whose name you’re using to get investors, it might be 0.10 – 0.25%. For someone who’s investing real time and helping to build the company, or someone whose involvement could make the difference between success and failure, it could be as high as 2%… or even more. There are start-ups who think giving more than 0.25% is ridiculous, and there are start-ups who find 2% a steal if they can get the right person.
Advisors generally receive their equity over a period of time, often 12-24 months.
This means that if an advisor signs an agreement for 1% that “vests” over 12 months, he would get 1/12 of one percent each month, and the start-up can cancel the deal at any time. If the start-up gets fed up with this advisor after six months, it means he gets the 0.5 percent that vested, but no more.
Different strokes for different folks, but all-star advisors generally = better investors, better investment terms, and faster outcomes. To me, that’s a legitimate no-brainer.
If I were to found a tech start-up and aim for the fences (IPO or sale), I would do what several successful tech CEOs I know are doing right now: give 3-5 bad-ass advisors 1-2% each, depending on time required, and self-fund until you hit break-even or profitability. Then, go out to raise $500-750,000 from key angels who can open doors to potential acquirers and help you get to “scale”. “Scale”, in this context, meaning the point at which you can go big, as in millions of users or nationwide, with the simple addition of money: the costs and revenues of your customer acquisition are predictable. Money in = more money out.
Last, you go to potential acquirers (often potential competitors) to see if they’d like to discuss “partnerships” or funding you; both approaches are used to start conversations that hopefully end with “why don’t we just buy you instead?” from their side.
If that doesn’t work, you get more funding, grow a lean monster, and eat their lunch.
The Start-Ups and Deal Flow
Here are the start-ups I’m involved with, whether as an investor or advisor, in no particular order:
Twitter (investor) – micro-blogging platform Digg (investor) – see what’s most popular on the web StumbleUpon (advisor) – Pandora for the coolest content on the web (this is how I find much of my most popular Twitter material) Evernote (advisor) – capture anything in the world you want to remember Posterous (investor, advisor) – the simplest blogging platform in the world CrowdFlower (advisor) – crowd-source just about anything for pennies; 500,000 workers in 70+ countries. SimpleGeo (investor) – on-demand geodata infrastructure Graphic.ly (advisor) – the next (gorgeous) evolution of comic books Foodzie (investor, advisor) – find and buy incredible artisinal food in the US (my favorite cookies in the world are here) Shopify (advisor) – beautiful and easy e-commerce for selling anything RescueTime (investor, advisor) – time and productivity tracking ReputationDefender (investor) – monitor and repair your reputation online TaskRabbit (advisor) – get any task done, from dry cleaning to research (use code “FERRISS10″ for $10 off your first task) UberCab (advisor) – Fully automated car dispatch with built-in reputation system – ride like a European diplomat. Badongo, DocumentHosting.com (investor) – file and document hosting/sharing DailyBurn (investor, advisor) – exercise and diet tracking iMarket Services (advisor) – creating hubs for niche markets like stand-up comedy Samasource (not-for-profit – advisor) – outsource your tasks to those most in need (refugees, etc.) Donorschoose.org (not-for-profit – advisor) – eBay for helping public school children in need of basic supplies.
“Deal flow” refers to how you find the start-ups you invest in, or how they find you. All of the companies except DonorsChoose.org and iMarket Services (respectively: have known the CEO for ages, chance meeting at SuperBowl party) were found through:
- Referrals from friends who are angels and tech CEOs
- Y-Combinator (Posterous, RescueTime)
- TechStars (DailyBurn, Foodzie, Graphic.ly)
- Facebook Fund (fbFund) (TaskRabbit, Samasource)
- Twitter DMs from me to the founders (Evernote, Shopify)
My Rules
What makes me interested in a start-up… or rules them out?
Let’s go through the bullet-points–general rules of thumb–first, some of which are borrowed from much more experienced folk like Mike Maples, Chris Sacca, Travis Kalanick, and others.
These are the considerations I run through when looking at start-ups, but it doesn’t mean that all of the companies in the portfolio passed all of the criteria.
In no particular order, and written as a stream of consciousness:
- If my readers won’t shut up about them, I listen (this led me to reach out to Evernote and Shopify)
- I generally look for these questions to be answered via email, but I now much prefer to have them answered through the AngelList form. If you don’t know the terms (“deck”, “traction”, etc.), you need to learn them before pitching Silicon Valley types.
- Does it offer the possibility of at least a 5x return? Good angel investors in Silicon Valley do not invest in lifestyle businesses or profit shares–they want to turn their $100,000 into millions. 5x return potential is just the entry point for working with decent angels at the seed or Series-A level. Many will be filtering for 20-30x potential, depending on the size of their fund.
- If it’s a single founder, the founder must be technical. Two technical co-founders are ideal.
- Have the founders ever had crappy service jobs, like waitering or bussing at restaurants? If so, they tend to stay grounded for longer. Less entitlement and megalomania usually means better decisions and better drinking company.
- I must be eager to use the product myself. This rules out many great companies, but I want a verified market I understand.
- I must understand their customers and be able to recruit, in military terms, HVTs–High Value Targets.
- Do the founders actually test some of what I’m recommending? My data is based on 15+ start-ups and more than $1M in direct response advertising–there are a few things I understand very well, sign-up conversion being one example. I will usually suggest 1-2 elements for testing in an initial meeting, well before investing, and if at least one element isn’t tested within a week, they’re out. If the product (usually a website) isn’t split tested or “iterated” fast enough, it usually foreshadows death for tech start-up. Speed is often the only competitive advantage smaller guys have.
- They need to understand the eco-system in which they play. What recent companies have sold for what amounts? Who are the most likely acquirers? Who are the most formidable competitors, and what types of funding (even investors) and resources do they anticipate needing to compete? It it a winner-takes-all market where only one company will reign supreme (e.g. businesses dependent on network effects), or can many large profitable companies co-exist?
- Founders must pass the “mall test”: if you were to see them in a mall, would you walk in a different direction, would you walk over to say “hi” and move on, or would you invite them to join you for coffee or whatever you’re doing next? If the founders don’t fall in the last group, don’t invest. This is a close cousin of the simpler “would you invite them out for beers just to catch up” test.
- Am I following my rules, but are other investors turning them down? These days, I take this as a positive sign. Mike Maples explained this to me: breaking your rules to co-invest with well-known investors is usually a bad idea, but following your rules when others reject a start-up can work out extremely well. DailyBurn, my only exit to date, was a mild example of this. They hit my checklist boxes, but the majority of the investors (but not all) I asked to participate declined. It thrills me that this start-up–from Alabama!–has so far outpaced most in Silicon Valley. Bravo.
Now the rules that require a little explanation:
1. Don’t do it solely for the money, but know your minimums.
Investing in start-ups has to be, on some level, a labor love. You need to love helping entrepreneurs. That said, don’t actively waste your money and life by failing to do basic math.
Set a minimum threshold for each start-up investment. The minimums could be what a success should cover, or a minimum dollar amount. For example:
A. Each start-up, if it exits at 5x its current valuation, should be able to cover 2/3 of your total fund.
Most entrepreneurs think their start-up will be the next Google, but you can’t base your investment strategy on the assumption that each company has the potential to exit for a billion dollars. Look at comparables (similar companies) that have sold, and their average purchase prices. If you want to keep it simple, you might use 5x at Series A round as your assumed “success” multiple.
What this means:
Let’s say a company is raising $500,000 in a Series A. Investors decide it is currently worth $1,000,000, so–after receiving the $500,000 infusion–it will have a $1,500,000 “post-money” valuation. (For sake of simplicity, we assume that Investors don’t require an option pool for new employees to be set aside in the pre-money valuation. For more on that, read this) Let’s also say that you put in $15,000, so you “own” 1% of the company post-money.
Remember the rule of the header: “Each start-up, if it exits at 5x its current valuation, should be able to cover 2/3 of your portfolio.”
Most of your start-ups will fail, so the successes need to make up for losses.
If we’re using the “2/3″ rule, and your fund (like mine from 2007-2009) is $120,000, you shouldn’t invest $15,000 in this start-up, as 15K x 5 = $75,000. 2/3 of $120,000 is $80,000, so you’d either have to invest slightly more, lower the valuation, or add in advising and get more equity in return. This isn’t even accounting for dilution, which is likely in most cases.
B. Each start-up, if it exits at 3x its current valuation, should allow you to walk away with $300,000.
This is one of my preferred methods for qualifying or disqualifying a start-up.
As much as I might love them, I’m not going to take another part-time job for 1-3 years for a $50,000 pay-off. This is where first-time entrepreneurs who refuse to give advisors more than 0.25% often lose the forest for the trees.
Let’s say a start-up ends up with a 3-million (3M) post-money valuation. If I help them more than triple the value of their company to 10M, how much do I walk away with if there are no more rounds of funding? If they offer me 0.5%, I walk away with $50,000. If, considering the time invested, I could earn 5x that doing other things, it makes no sense to do the deal if this is my rule.
Woe is the angel who bases his or her decisions on all start-ups having the potential for a billion-dollar exit. Rule #1 in angel investing is, as far as I’m concerned, the same as Warren Buffett’s first two rules of investing:
2. Move from investor –> investor/advisor –> advisor
Let’s assume you have committed to spending $60,000 per year on angel investments, just as I did. This means two things:
- You aren’t going to be able to satisfy the above rule of “2/3″ or the $200,000 minimum for many companies. At best, you’ll have 1-3 investments.
- 1-3 investments doesn’t work in angel investing, where most pros would agree that 9 out of 10 (on a good day) will fail.
- It’s therefore impossible for you to get a good statistical spread with $60,000 per year. The math just doesn’t work.
The math especially doesn’t work if you f*ck it up like I did (see Part I) by getting over-excited and dropping $50,000 on your first investment. Oops!
Here’s how I dealt with this problem:
First, I invested very small amounts in a few select start-ups, ideally those in close-knit “seed accelerator” (formerly called “incubator”) networks like Y-Combinator and TechStars. Then I did my best to deliver above and beyond the value of my investment. In other words, I wanted the founders to ask themselves “Why the hell is this guy helping us so much for a ridiculously small number of options?” This was critical for establishing a reputation as a major value-add, someone who helped a lot for very little.
Second, leaning on this burgeoning reputation, I began negotiating blended agreements with start-ups involving some investment, but additional advisory equity as a requirement.
Third and last, I made the jump to pure advising. Since the end of the first year of the “Tim Ferriss Fund,” more than 70% of my start-up “investments” have been with time rather than cash. In the last 6 months, I have written only one check for a start-up. The goal is still the same as in the first phase: deliver above and beyond the current value of my potential equity (if fully vested) as quickly as possible. The next post this week will give an example of this.
Comment from a proofreader and experienced angel, Naval Ravikant, who was also a co-founder at Genoa Corp (acquired by Finisar), Epinions.com (IPO via Shopping.com), and Vast.com (largest white-label classifieds marketplace):
One thought – if someone really wants to invest $200K as an angel investor, you’re right in that they can’t spread it across enough companies to diversify it or have it be worth their time. In that case, they could do advisory work as you suggest – or they could fork it over to a super-angel fund. They’d end up paying a 15% in management fees and 20%+ of the profits in carry, but most of the super-angels have pretty good returns and they would get startup exposure for basically a $30K + 20% of the profits cost, and their time is surely worth more than that…
Moving gradually from pure investing to pure advising allowed me to reduce the total amount of capital invested, increase equity percentages, and make the $120,000 work, despite my early slip-ups. This also, I believe, produced better results for the start-ups.
The reason for the better results is related to a common objection.
Some counsel against pure advisors, the belief being that pure advisors have no “skin in the game.” To address this, start-ups might insist on an investment before advising can be discussed. The logic isn’t bad–that an advisor will do more if they have something to lose–but this argument has never compelled me, and I don’t know many good advisors who are compelled by it.
Why?
I feel more compelled to help companies that I have pure advising relationships with for two reasons.
First, if I’ve given a start-up capital, I’ve already given some value. If it’s pure advising, I need to prove my value within the small world of start-up investing or my reputation goes downhill. Second, because my reputation is at stake, I do more due diligence than with pure investments to ensure an excellent fit (their needs + my capabilities) before signing up. Just as important: before offering real equity for advising, a start-up will do likewise, and our marriage–if we get to that point–ends up better as a result.
The start-ups that aren’t great fits, those who haven’t mapped my strengths and weaknesses to their own, look at me, laugh, and ask themselves: “Tim Ferriss wants what?!?”
They’re right, I’m not a good fit. If their desire for me as an advisor is contingent upon an investment, they probably haven’t thought enough about how I’d be able to help (or not help). Either I really can’t help much, in which case I shouldn’t be offered advisor equity at all, or I can really help, in which case they should get me on board with a compelling arrangement for everyone. Start-ups often forgot that the advisor equity vests monthly–advisors still have to earn it or they can be fired.
It’s a hell of a lot of fun advising start-ups with good product and personality fit, even if the companies don’t become the next Google.
But, I do miss a lot of great opportunities by focusing on advising and tight fit. This doesn’t bother me. I haven’t yet lost any money. Rule #1.
Let’s be clear on one point: if you don’t deliver real results for your start-ups, you do not deserve to be an advisor. If you can’t point to a track record of some sort, you haven’t earned the right to ask for advising equity. Pull out the checkbook and pay your dues.
They’re attractive for many reasons: developing new business skills, developing a better business network, or — most often — taking what is effectively a two-year vacation that looks good on a resume.
In 2001, and again in 2004, I wanted to do all three things.
This post is the first of two that will share my experience with MBA programs and how I created my own…
In the process, it’s my hope that these writings will make you think about real-world experiments vs. theoretical training, untested assumptions (especially about risk tolerance), and the good game of business as a whole. There is no need to spend $60,000 per year to apply the principles I’ll be discussing.
Last caveat: nothing here is intended to portray me as an investing expert, which I most certainly am not.
Beginnings
Stanford University Graduate School of Business (GSB). Ah, Stanford, with its palm tree-lined avenues and red terra cotta roofing, always held a unique place in my mind.
But my fantasies of attending GSB reached a fever pitch when I sat in on a class called “Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital,” taught by Peter Wendell, who had led early-stage investments in companies such as Intuit. The class is now co-taught by Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, and Andy Rachleff, founding general partner of Benchmark Capital.
Within 30 minutes, Pete had taught me more about the real-world inside baseball of venture capital than all of the books I’d read on the subject.
I was ecstatic and ready to apply to GSB. Who wouldn’t be?
So I enthusiastically began a process I would repeat twice: downloading the application to get started, taking the full campus tour, and sitting in on other classes.
It was the other classes that got my panties in a twist. Some were incredible, taught by all-stars who’d done it all, but others — many others — were taught by PhD theoreticians who used big words and lots of PowerPoint slides. One teacher spent 45 minutes on slide after slide of equations that could be summed up with “If you build a crappy product, people won’t buy it.” No one needed to prove that to me with differential calculus.
At the end of that class, I turned to my student guide for the tour and asked him how it compared to other classes. He answered: “Oh, this is easily my favorite.”
That was the death of business school for me.
How to Make a Small Fortune
By 2005, I was done chasing my tail with business school, but I still ached to learn more.
Then, in 2007, I started having more frequent lunches with the brilliant Mike Maples, a co-founder of Motive Communications (IPO to $260,000,000 market cap) and a founding executive of Tivoli (sold to IBM for $750,000,000).
Our conversations usually bounced between a few topics, including physical performance, marketing campaigns (I’d just launched The 4-Hour Workweek), and his latest focus: angel investing.
“Angel investing” involves putting relatively small amounts of money — often from $15,000 to $100,000 — into early-stage start-ups. In Mike’s world, “early-stage” could mean two engineers with a prototype for a website, or it could mean a successful serial entrepreneur with a new idea. The angels usually have relevant business experience and are considered “smart money” — their advice and introductions are just as valuable as the money they put in.
After several lunches with Mike, I’d found my business school.
I decided to make (in my mind) a two-year “Tim Ferriss Fund” that would replace Stanford business school.
Stanford GSB isn’t cheap. I rounded it down to $60,000 a year, for a total of $120,000 over two years (these days, it’s $80,000+ per year).
For the “Tim Ferriss Fund,” I would aim to intelligently spend $120,000 over two years on angel investing in $10-20,000 chunks, so 6-12 companies in total. The goal of this “business school” would be to learn as much as possible about start-up finance, deal structuring, rapid product design, initiating acquisition conversations, etc. as possible.
The curriculum could be thought of as “The Start-up Lifecycle from Birth to Acquisition/IPO or Death.” But curriculum was just part of business school; the other part was getting to know the “students,” preferably the most astute movers and shakers in the start-up investing world. Business school = curriculum + network.
The most important characteristic of my personal MBA: I planned on “losing” $120,000.
I went into the “Tim Ferriss Fund” viewing the $120,000 as sunk tuition costs, but also expecting that the lessons learned, and people met, would be worth that $120,000 investment. The two-year plan was to methodically spend $120,000 for the learning experience, not for the ROI.
I would not suggest mimicking this approach:
1) Unless you have a clear informational advantage — insider access — that gives you a competitive advantage. I live in the nexus of Silicon Valley and know many top CEOs and investors, so I have better sources of information than the vast majority of the world. I don’t invest in public companies precisely because I know that professionals have better access to information than I do.
2) Unless you are 100% comfortable losing your “MBA” funds. You should only gamble with what you’re very comfortable losing. If financial loss drives you to even mild desperation or depression, you shouldn’t do it.
3) Unless you have started and/or managed successful businesses in the past.
4) Unless you limit angel investment funds to 10% or less of your liquid assets. I subscribe to the Nassim Taleb school of investment, with 90% in conservative asset classes like AAA bonds and the remaining 10% in speculative investments that can capitalize on positive “black swans”.
I’ve come to realize that the questions most investment advisers (and investors) ask are the wrong questions, or incomplete. Even if you have only $100 to invest, this is important to explore.
Most advice and decisions center on one question: what is your risk tolerance?
I had one wealth manager ask me this, and I answered honestly: “I have no idea.” It threw him off.
I then asked him for the average of his clients’ responses. The answer:
“Most answer that they would not panic, up to 20% down in one quarter.”
My follow-up question was: when do most panic and start selling low? His answer:
“When they’re down 5% in one quarter.”
Unless you’ve lost 20% in a quarter, it’s hard—neigh, impossible—to predict your response.
It’s not dissimilar from a common boxing maxim: everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.
To would-be angel investors, I suggest the following: go to a casino or racetrack and don’t leave until you’ve spent 1/5 of a typical investment and watched it disappear.
Let’s say you’re planning on making $25,000 investments.
I’d ask you to then purposefully lose $5,000 over the course of at least three hours, and certainly not all at once. It’s important that you slowly bleed losses as you attempt to learn the game, to exert some control over something you can’t control. If you can remain unaffected after slowly losing your $5,000 (or 1/5 of your planned typical investment), consider making your first angel investment.
But proceed with caution.
Even among brilliant people in the start-up world, there is an expression: “If you want to make a small fortune, start with a large fortune and angel invest.”
The First Deal and First Lesson
So what did I do? I immediately went out and broke my own rules.
There was a very promising start-up which, based on comparables using Alexa ranking correlations to valuations, was more than 5x undervalued! If it hit even a “base hit” like a $25,000,000 exit, I could easily recoup my planned $120,000!
I got very excited — it’s the next Google! — and cut a check for $50,000. “That’s a bit aggressive for a first deal, don’t you think?” asked one of my mentors over coffee. Not a chance. My intuition was loud and clear. I was convinced, based on other investors and all of the excitement surrounding the deal, that this company was on the cusp of exploding.
Two years later, it still hasn’t popped.
Following the Rules
Lesson #1: If you’ve formulated intelligent rules, follow your own f*cking rules.
I learned many more important lessons over the following two years, most of which I’ll share in the next post. Thus far, following the rules, the stats look something like this:
15 total investments (some of which are listed here)
0 deaths
1 successful exit
The one successful exit thus far, DailyBurn, guarantees that I will not lose money on my two-year fund. But, as they say, “Once you’re lucky. Twice you’re good.” I’m still not convinced I know what I’m doing.
My hope, and that of most angels, is that each start-up will “exit”, or be bought within 3-5 years. I’ll therefore have a more complete view of the “Tim Ferriss Fund” two-year portfolio by 2013. There will be fatalities, no doubt.
But recall that the learning was my main reason for doing all of this.
I had one other exit: my own company. Using what I learned about acquistion deal structures through angel investing, I became less intimidated by the idea of “selling” a company. It need not be complicated, as I learned, and BrainQUICKEN was sold in late 2009. This means the ROI on my personal MBA is, so far, well over 2x and could end up more than 10x.
Creating Your Own MBA
How might you create your own MBA or graduate program? Here are three examples with hypothetical costs, which obviously depend on the program:
Master of Arts in Creative Writing – $12,000/year
How could you spend (or sacrifice) $12,000 a year to become a world-class creative writer? If you make $50,000 per year, this could mean that you join a writers’ group and negotiate Mondays off work (to focus on drafting a novel or screenplay) in exchange for a $10-15,000 salary cut.
Masters in Political Science – (same cost)
Use the same approach to dedicate one day per week to volunteering or working on a political campaign. Decide to read one book per week from the Georgetown PoliSci department’s required first-year curriculum.
Commit–within financial reason–to action instead of theory. Learn to confront the realities and rewards of the real world, rather than resort to the protective womb of academia.
Question of the day (QOD): what would you like to learn specifically about start-ups, angel investing, or start-up financing? Please let me know in the comments with “QOD”.
“It’s impossible not to constantly wonder if there’s something better, someone better.”
My good female friend picked up her third glass of Syrah-Merlot and continued: “If I could only choose between three decent guys, it’d be a done deal. I’d be married already.”
I nodded. Having options–perceived infinite choice–isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. How, then, do you tame indecision, particularly in relationships?
The following guest post, written by Claire Williams, explores some of the more successful approaches… and realizations.
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In 2000, Drs. Sheena S. Iyengar and Mark R. Lepper set up a tasting booth at an upscale grocery store in California. On some days, they put out a selection of six types of jam; on other days they set out twenty-four. Although the wider selection attracted more shoppers, more people bought the jam when there were fewer options. It seemed
the more choices people had, the harder it was to make a decision.
The Paradox of Choice explored this infamous dilemma, in which having more options tends to leave us paralyzed and increase our buyer’s remorse. But what does that mean when you’re not just shopping? What about when you’re doing much more important stuff…like picking a job, a house, or – gasp – a life partner?…
If you ever listened to your teachers, talked to your parents, or watched Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, you learned that you were a special snowflake and the world was yours for the taking. But for a generation with more options than ever before, how do you choose when you’ve been taught you can have it all?
Choister?
Today’s twenty- and thirty-somethings approach life and love very differently than past generations. The explosion of choices now available has impacted our desires and expectations, and led us to reconsider traditional decisions. Young men and women are increasingly reluctant to make the ultimate commitment and get married, and much of
that is due to all the other glittery options out there competing for our attention – friends, professional success, 30 Rock, the people in the world you haven’t yet dated.
If you love choices and think the world is your oyster, you’re a choister.
In a world where you might have twenty careers by your 31st birthday, you just might want to cultivate some more stability in your relationships.
The “choice effect” is that pit in your stomach as soon as the waiter walks away with your food order and you realize you wanted what she’s having. It’s a reality, and one that impacts our love
lives.
So how do you overcome this paradox in relationships? For your mother’s sake, take notes.
5 Ways to Tame the Choice Effect:
Use the following “C”-words to make the other “C”-word–commitment–less daunting.
1. Criteria:
Before I decided to settled down with “J”, my now fiancé from Argentina, there were several key moments where I questioned the very basis of our relationship. As foreigners in each other’s lands, cultural and language barriers have been an ongoing theme. It’s taken him years to accept that in my country we eat omelets for breakfast – not lunch – and my visible upset at the break-up of Tipper and Al made him more than pause (okay, maybe that’s not cultural). But one day while I related a particularly hysterical Jon Stewart shtick, the worst happened. He told me it didn’t sound very funny. And that’s when I asked myself: could I really spend a lifetime single-handedly explaining the nuances of The Daily Show to a newbie?
My non-negotiables had been there from the start: internationalism, spirituality, and ambition. Although J matched me well on these fronts, we weren’t carbon copies of one another by any stretch of the imagination. He spends hundreds of hours a year on photography, and I traveled around the world for an entire year without bringing my own camera. I still don’t understand if a bass and a bass guitar are the same thing, but there are apparently three of them displayed in our foyer. I had never heard of Maradona.
We make trade offs in our love lives – J’s cultural “shortcomings” are made up for by key compatibilities. As I’ve come to believe, a man who has never tasted peanut butter can still make an excellent father. So think about what you need. Not a never-ending wish list about how the perfect partner will want to attend Lilith Fair and share your love of Neti pots. Pick the stuff that matters and find someone with those qualities.
2. Concentration:
Like Stephen Stills once sung: “Love the one you’re with.”
When J and I had been dating less than a year, I moved half-way around the world for an MBA program. Suddenly
my wonderful, intelligent, handsome boyfriend was a pixelated photo to Skype with. Meanwhile, real, warm-blooded men played lacrosse around me. This world will pull us in lots of directions, and you need to decide what your prize is and keep your eye on it. Don’t get distracted by every boy or girl that musters the energy for a “how YOU doin’?” Don’t forget your fiance’s cello concert because you’re wall-flirting with your middle school crush on Facebook. I’m all for canvassing your options, but beware the shiny ball syndrome.
3. Common Sense:
Does your ideal life involve a mud hut in Nicaragua with a partner equally thrilled by jungle monkies? Then don’t go trolling for men on what’s left of Wall Street. If you’re a conservative Christian who’s into side hugs, don’t make eyes at the atheist hippie at the local coffee shop. Yes, opposites attract. Paula Abdul said so. But they aren’t a long-term win. Don’t fall into a relationship that checks none of your boxes. Although you may think this is destiny slapping you on the face, this is actually just adrenaline. Probably heightened from the fog of patchouli.
4. Calculation:
Keep an eye on the clock. Not in the Marisa-Tomei-stomping-your-foot kind of way. But there’s being picky and then there’s being paralyzed. So ask yourself – whether you’re choosing a pair of shoes, a healthcare plan, or a spouse – “How long SHOULD this take?” For example – would you agree with the following: you should spend no longer than an hour of your life at GAP deciding between unremarkable fragrances, and no longer than 5 years to decide on a partner? Like my best friend who, after dating her boyfriend for seven years, suddenly thought, “How much more data can I expect to gather?” and suggested they elope to Vegas. You don’t have to adhere perfectly, but it’s good to step back, pick a number (I just might recommend two years), and buy a watch.
5. Choose Already:
If you went into an ice-cream store and saw a child ordering an ice cream cone with 7 different scoops, you’d tell him he was idiot (or not, because that is mean and he is small). Don’t be that kid. You don’t get to have everything.
And, to be fair, you don’t want to. College buffet lines were fun at the beginning, but a plate full of pasta-pizza-ranch-dressing-Fruit Loops loses its appeal after a while. So choose.
What stops so many of us from making a commitment is our fear that once we make a choice we have to close the door on all the other options. If we marry Andy, we will never date Charles. True. If we become an architect, we will never be a ferret trainer. Also true. However, if we do sack up and choose to become an architect, then we have a whole host of new and shiny choices to think about! Should we make a doghouse or a people house? Should the house be blue or red? Should the building be small, medium, or big?
Choosing doesn’t limit choices—it just changes them. So feel free to pick that city, that career, that partner, knowing that even commitment brings a whole new set of options – children/pets/red and blue houses – to be excited (and angsty) about.
By the way, I picked me an architect. (See how I tied that up?)
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Claire Williams is co-author of The Choice Effect, which explores overcoming the Paradox of Choice in decisions–big and small–that affect your life. Her previous writing on navigating choices can be found here.
This is a truly random episode of Random. What has Kevin learned in his new role as CEO of Digg? Which new books, people, and websites are we finding interesting? From management lessons to language learning (and a critique of Rosetta Stone), this episode meanders all over the place.
This is also our first sponsored episode — Sonos! It’s quite cool that we’re now sponsored by a company whose products made a cameo as early as episode 2.
Thanks to awesome readers DynastyDC and Ben, here are the show notes and links…
Tim talks about his week in Amsterdam, the Queen’s Day celebration, The Next Web, the status to his upcoming book and DailyBurn’s business exit.
Kevin Rose, Digg Inc. CEO discusses product development, work frustrations, and the new Digg version with Cassandra back-end. The new version includes 3-5 core features, followed by weekly releases.
• Reference: The Next Web http://thenextweb.com/?
• Reference: Queens Day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koninginnedag?
• Reference: Tim’s upcoming book http://su.pr/2iZgRr?
• Reference: DailyBurn.com Exit http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/20/iac-dailyburn/?
-Business Exit def. http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/exit.html
Tim’s Recommendations
• Book: How to Break A Terrorist http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Break_a_Terrorist
• Clothing: Cordaround http://www.cordarounds.com/blog/
• Person: Nassim Nicholas Taleb http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/?
– Taleb’s book: The Black Swan (same link as above)?
– Nassim Taleb on Twitter: http://twitter.com/nntaleb
• Website: Livemocha.com- Language learning http://www.livemocha.com/
• Product: Pimsleur Direct- Language learning http://www.pimsleurdirect.com/?
– Turkish: Lonely Planet Phrasebook (Paperback) http://www.amazon.com/Turkish-Lonely-Phrasebook-Arzu-Kurklu/dp/1864503165
• Websites: www.livemocha.com and eduFire.com
Kevin’s Recommendations
Show Sponsor: http://www.sonos.com/random
• Reference: http://cassandra.apache.org/?
• Reference: Six Apart Co. http://www.sixapart.com/?
• Reference: Digg iPad App http://about.digg.com/blog/announcing-diggs-iphone-app
• Book: Rework 37 Signals- business minimalist philosophy http://smarterware.org/5373/rework-37signals-recipe-for-running-a-business (includes PDF excerpt)
• Person: Phillip Rosedale- Founder of Second Life, Founder of LoveMachineInc.com http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Rosedale?
- LoveMachineInc.com
– employee 2 employee praise http://www.lovemachineinc.com/?
– Phillip Rosedale on Twitter: http://twitter.com/philiplinden
Philip’s awesome pants: Cordarounds—http://www.cordarounds.com/catalog/
• Website: Evernote http://www.evernote.com/
Glenn
• Glenn on tour with Delivering Happiness Book Team http://www.deliveringhappinessbook.com/
Brute force seldom works with haters. Redirection does. (Photo: Deadstar 2.0)
I recently spent a week in Amsterdam enjoying bicycles, canals, Queensday, and… ahem… coffee shops. For real. Honest. The best coffee I’ve had in Europe has to be De Koffie Salon.
I also gave a short keynote at The NextWeb about how to deal with haters, protect yourself from (some) media, respond to FlipCams, and other personal branding self-defense 101.
Think you have crazy people contacting you or commenting on your blog? Me too. I share some of my favorite hater e-mails, Amazon reviews, and voicemails. It’ll make you feel better to hear the stories.
It is possible to learn to love haters. But it does take some know-how and tactical planning…
1. It doesn’t matter how many people don’t get it. What matters is how many people do.
“It’s critical in social media, as in life, to have a clear objective and not to lose sight of that,” Ferriss says. He argues that if your objective is to do the greatest good for the greatest number of people or to change the world in some small way (be it through a product or service), you only need to pick your first 1,000 fans — and carefully. “As long as you’re accomplishing your objectives, that 1,000 will lead to a cascading effect,” Ferriss explains. “The 10 million that don’t get it don’t matter.”
2. 10% of people will find a way to take anything personally. Expect it.
“People are least productive in reactive mode,” Ferriss states, before explaining that if you are expecting resistance and attackers, you can choose your response in advance, as opposed to reacting inappropriately. This, Ferriss says, will only multiply the problem. “Online, I see people committing ’social media suicide’ all the time by one of two ways. Firstly by responding to all criticism, meaning you’re never going to find time to complete important milestones of your own, and by responding to things that don’t warrant a response.” This, says Ferriss, lends more credibility by driving traffic.
3. “Trying to get everyone to like you is a sign of mediocrity.” (Colin Powell)
“If you treat everyone the same and respond to everyone by apologizing or agreeing, you’re not going to be recognizing the best performers, and you’re not going to be improving the worst performers,” Ferriss says. “That guarantees you’ll get more behavior you don’t want and less you do.” That doesn’t mean never respond, Ferriss goes on to say, but be “tactical and strategic” when you do.
4. “If you are really effective at what you do, 95% of the things said about you will be negative.” (Scott Boras)
“This principle goes hand-in-hand with number two,” Ferriss says. “I actually keep this quote in my wallet because it is a reminder that the best people in almost any field are almost always the people who get the most criticism.” The bigger your impact, explains Ferriss (whose book is a New York Times, WSJ and BusinessWeek bestseller), and the larger the ambition and scale of your project, the more negativity you’ll encounter. Ferriss jokes he has haters “in about 35 languages.”
5. “If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.” (Epictetus)
“Another way to phrase this is through a more recent quote from Elbert Hubbard,” Ferriss says. “‘To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.” Ferriss, who holds a Guinness World Record for the most consecutive tango spins, says he has learned to enjoy criticism over the years. Ferriss, using Roman philosophy to expand on his point, says: “Cato, who Seneca believed to be the perfect stoic, practiced this by wearing darker robes than was customary and by wearing no tunic. He expected to be ridiculed and he was, he did this to train himself to only be ashamed of those things that are truly worth being ashamed of. To do anything remotely interesting you need to train yourself to be effective at dealing with, responding to, even enjoying criticism… In fact, I would take the quote a step further and encourage people to actively pursue being thought foolish and stupid.”
6. “Living well is the best revenge.” (George Herbert)
“The best way to counter-attack a hater is to make it blatantly obvious that their attack has had no impact on you,” Ferriss advises. “That, and [show] how much fun you’re having!” Ferriss goes on to say that the best revenge is letting haters continue to live with their own resentment and anger, which most of the time has nothing to do with you in particular. “If a vessel contains acid and you pour some on an object, it’s still the vessel that sustains the most damage,” Ferriss says. “Don’t get angry, don’t get even — focus on living well and that will eat at them more than anything you can do.”
7. Keep calm and carry on.
The slogan “Keep Calm and Carry On” was originally produced by the British government during the Second World War as a propaganda message to comfort people in the face of Nazi invasion. Ferriss takes the message and applies it to today’s world. “Focus on impact, not approval. If you believe you can change the world, which I hope you do, do what you believe is right and expect resistance and expect attackers,” Ferriss concludes. “Keep calm and carry on!”
Afterword
One of my favorite authors, Nassim N. Taleb of Black Swan fame, e-mailed me the following aphorism today, which was perfect timing and perfectly put:
Robustness is when you care more about the few who like your work than the multitude who hates it (artists); fragility is when you care more about the few who hate your work than the multitude who loves it (politicians).
Remember: Travel is about the experience, not what you bring with you.
that strangely happened only a few days after we finished reading The Four Hour Work Week. The idea for an online apparel company had already been on our minds as a curious side business to launch. And the steps for implementation outlined in the book were on the to do list as sort of a pie-in-the-sky-if-we-ever-get-more-time plan. So as we watched the flooding on tv, and our good friend and former colleague showed us pics of a tshirt design, it all fell into place. Thanks to Shopify and The Four Hour Work Week, we scrambled a store up in a matter of days and have raised over $200,000 for the flood victims of the middle Tennessee area.
