Lone Gunman

When some­one asked for advice on How to become a mil­lion­aire in 3 years on Hacker News, ser­ial entre­pre­neur Jason Bap­tiste took the task seri­ously pro­vid­ing thirty-seven things to focus on when start­ing a com­pany, includ­ing:

• Mar­ket opportunity
• Inequal­ity of information
• Sur­round your­self with smart people
• Your pri­mary met­ric shouldn’t be dollars
• If you do focus on a dol­lar amount, focus on the first $10,000
• Get as many dis­tri­b­u­tion chan­nels as possible
• Be a mas­ter of information
• Be so good they can’t ignore you
• Give your­self every oppor­tu­nity you can
• Look for the acces­sory ecosystem
• Make the illiq­uid, liquid
• Don’t be emotional
• Don’t leave things up to chance
• Raise rev­enue, not funding
• Don’t get comfortable
• Don’t skimp on the impor­tant things
• Keep the momen­tum going
• Lis­ten to (or read the tran­scrip­tions of) every Mix­ergy inter­view you can
• Learn how to filter

Jason goes into great detail for each item on his list, start­ing his post with the clar­i­fi­ca­tion that these tips are for mak­ing a suc­cess of a busi­ness endeav­our in “a short time frame” (i.e. not specif­i­cally for mak­ing a mil­lion dol­lars in three years).

From the early days of devel­op­ment through to the release and refine­ment of the final prod­uct (and fur­ther), Patrick McKen­zie has been chron­i­cling his jour­ney as a one-man Micro ISV (Micro Inde­pen­dent Soft­ware Vendor).

McKen­zie has recently com­piled a fan­tas­tic list of his best posts and this acts as a list of prac­ti­cal advice for small com­pa­nies on top­ics such as SEO, mar­ket­ing and adjust­ing to the self-employed lifestyle.

Om Malik presents what he believes are the ten essen­tial startup essays of 2009:

1. Paul Gra­ham: What Star­tups Are Really Like
2. Sean Ellis: Mile­stones to Startup Success
3. Eric Ries: Myth: Entre­pre­neur­ship Will Make You Rich
4. Ven­ture Hacks: What Is the Min­i­mum Viable Product?
5. Mike Speiser: The Power of Con­tin­u­ous Improvement
6. Mike Speiser: Get­ting Com­fort­able With Peo­ple Who Make You Uncomfortable
7. Tony Wright: The Fun­nel Prin­ci­ple: Soft­ware & Mak­ing Money
8. Andrew Chen: Does Every Startup Need a Steve Jobs?
9. Josh Porter: Design­ing for Social Traction
10. David Skok: Startup Killer: The Cost of Cus­tomer Acquisition

I’ve not read them all, but the ones I have are excel­lent and def­i­nitely worth your time. I’ll be get­ting to the remain­ders shortly.

Truth is, the great value in most MBA and JD pro­grams can be boiled down to 5 to 10 talks, pre­sen­ta­tions, classes and con­ver­sa­tions that changed the way you expe­ri­enced the world.

Fol­low­ing up on this com­ment, Jonathan Fields presents The Seven Keynote MBA: seven keynote speeches, from a diverse group of peo­ple, that together Fields believes will pro­vide you as much real-world advice as an MBA.

The talks (videos, length in parentheses):

1. Guy Kawasaki, TiECon 2006: The Art of the Start (39:46)
2. Mal­colm Glad­well, TED 2004: What We Can Learn From Spaghetti Sauce (18:16)
3. Gary Vayn­er­chuck, Web 2.0 Expo NY: Build­ing Per­sonal Brand Within the Social Media Land­scape (15:27)
4. Annie Leonard: The Story of Stuff (21:16)
5. Jimmy Val­vano, 1993 ESPY Awards: Arthur Ashe Courage and Human­i­tar­ian Award accep­tance speech (9:59) (tran­script)
6. Seth Godin, TED 2009: The Tribes We Lead (17:24)
7. Tony Hsieh, Web 2.0 Sum­mit 08: Build­ing a Brand that Mat­ters (16:46)

via @evbogue

Designer Frank Chimero presents his ‘Ideas’: his man­i­festo of sorts prin­ci­ples on cre­ativ­ity, moti­va­tion and inno­va­tion. Chimero briefly cov­ers seven top­ics, entitled:

• Why is Greater Than How
• Not More. Instead, Better.
• Sur­prise + Clar­ity = Delight
• Sin­cire, Authen­tic & Honest
• No Sil­ver Bul­lets, No Secrets
• Qual­ity + Sin­cer­ity = Enthusiasm
• Every­thing is Some­thing or Other

I’m par­tic­u­larly fond of the final two top­ics and this, from Why is Greater Than How:

This com­plex world has made us over-emphasize How-based think­ing and edu­ca­tion. Once the tools are under­stood, under­stand­ing why to do cer­tain things becomes more valu­able than how to do them. How is recipes, and learn­ing a craft is more than fol­low­ing instructions.

How is impor­tant for new prac­ti­tion­ers focused on avoid­ing mis­takes. Why is for those who wish to push, are not risk-averse and seek to improve. How is coulda, Why is shoulda. How is fin­ish­ing tasks, Why is ful­fill­ing objec­tives. How usu­ally results in more. Why usu­ally results in better.

via Link Banana