A couple of years ago, I had an idea to create a site that introduces remarkable people to each other. I knew there was going to be a huge backlash to being connected online - facebook, twitter, etc. I got tired of meeting new people online, which I regarded as “weak connections” without really forging any new “genuine connections” which I believe could only occur offline. With the rising popularity of match.com, meetup.com, and couchsurfing.com, I noticed a lot of sites that started to utilize technology to get people to meet in real life.
So I got to thinking, what if there was a service that introduces me to remarkable people that I should meet in my own city? But, like the saying goes, timing is everything. I pitched the idea to Adrian Lai and Derek Lo who had mixed feelings about it. “Who would pay a monthly fee to meet other people? I already meet tons of people! How would it work?”
So, like a lot of ideas, I put it on the backburner but something about this idea would never go away. I started to do a little a bit of research and wrote some posts on my blog. One around “Social Isolation“, “Social Origin of Good Ideas“, and another around “New Wealth“. I started to read a lot of articles around these topics including “Sleeping by Strangers” by Good Magazine, “Social Networking for the Elite” by Business Week, and excellent blog posts on being connected that blew my mind.
And from there, I started hashing out the idea in my notebook and tons of Google Docs. Looking back at my notes, here are the early versions of the idea (don’t laugh!)
Meet Interesting People
Meet other interesting people in your city over coffee, lunch, dinner, or drinks. It’s not a dating site. It’s a site to forge genuine connections for professional and personal use.
Purpose: Using technology to facilitate face-to-face individual meetings. connects interesting people that should meet to meet with each other on a more individual (micro) level.
Problem: Only way you can meet new people is through events, friend of friends, etc. all which are very time-consuming and proactive.
Most social networks don’t create genuine networks and relationships. Within the past 20 years, the rise and triumph of communication technologies— proliferation of email, cell phones, BlackBerries, and MySpace—have caused our circle of close friends and confidants to shrink by a significant margin. We are somehow more connected than we once were, and more isolated than ever before.
Online social networks have replaced local communities, unique cultures, and genuine connections that can only occur face-to-face. The world’s greatest achievements across all realms are a result of collaborations, which also spawns accountability and cross-pollination. “Going it alone” seldom works, and without a strong network, most ideas will never happen.
So yeah, those were the first drafts at carving up By/Association. From there, I started to hash out the idea and just launched it. And as you can see today, it’s come a long way.
By/Association is a private service for personal introductions to remarkable people.We hand select our members for their exceptional creativity, vision, and cross-disciplinary networks.
We then introduce them to each other. Because when two amazing people get together, their potential impact grows and the world changes shape.
We know someone you should meet.
I encourage everyone to read the “manifesto” which is what drove the branding and strategy behind the entire site. So, today marks the first day that we launch By/Association in New York and San Francisco. It’s been a long journey and I hope that you guys sign-up!
I’ve always lived my life and made decisions based on a couple of key principles. These may sound like tried and true cliches, but i actually DO follow them. Stop and think about what they actually mean instead of letting them fall on deaf ears.
1) Never chase the money.
2) Every step moves you closer to your goals.
3) Do what makes you happy.
4) Live life with no regrets.
5) Trust your gut.
6) Most importantly, have fun because life is short.
When I graduated from VCU Brandcenter in 2006, I wanted to travel around the world. So, I did. At the time, it was probably not the smartest thing to do. When people were putting together their portfolios and going on job interviews, I was in the computer lab planning my itinerary and booking travel. Looking back, it was probably one of the best experiences I ever had in my life. And something I would have regretted if I didn’t do. I mean, what other times in your life can you travel around the world by yourself with nothing to worry about?
Looking back at the past 3 years, I’ve applied these simple life principles that guided me down many different paths to get me where I am today. I worked at Naked Communications in London to build up my creative skill-set. I moved to New Orleans to work for Trumpet and help rebrand the city of New Orleans. And most recently, I worked for creative startup Behance in New York. Each one of these experiences have taught me some valuable life lessons.
Like all good things, they must come to an end. Friday will be my last day at Behance. I’ve had a wonderful 1.5 years working at this startup and have learned so much in the process. Before I decided to work at Behance, I read an article on the “Paypal Mafia” and I knew that I had to be in a similar environment. Looking back over my experience here, I can truly say that it was everything I expected and even more. I wish the team luck in all of their future endeavors and I’m thrilled to see them grow and be successful.
But, much like my decision to travel around the world, I’ve decided that it’s time for me to focus all of my time and energy on All Day Buffet. The next phase of my life will be to utilize my past experiences and skills to grow and build All Day Buffet to the point where it becomes successful. I’ll be solely focused on working with Jerri Chou on growing All Day Buffet and The Feast Conference, working with Laura White to launch her own company, and internally developing some other brands we have brewing in the pipeline. I’m a philanthropist at heart, and at the end of the day, I want to help as many people as I can.
Lastly, a real quick story to wrap things up. A couple of weeks ago, I had breakfast with Annie Duke (professional poker player) who told me a great life lesson and story around sunk costs. In the most basic terms, the concept is used in making good decisions (which is the secret to the success of professional poker players). Wikipedia defines sunk costs as “costs that cannot be recovered once they have been incurred.”
So, for example, if you’re waiting in line at the grocery store, and the line next to you moves faster, most people won’t hop over to the faster line because of the time they “invested” in their current line. This makes absolutely no sense as anything invested in your past shouldn’t influence your future. Another example revolves around relationships. Most people stay together because they’ve “been together for the past five years.” Again, people shouldn’t make decisions based on past investments. And if you’re wondering how this applies back to poker. Once you make a bet and put your chips in the middle, that money is no longer yours (so you shouldn’t make bad decisions on getting it back).
Instead, you should look toward the future and look at all the different paths, opportunities, and possibilities presented to you right now. The sky is the limit. Everything in your past gets you to this point but it’s up to you to make the best possible decision on which path you want to go down. And that’s where gut intuition, happiness, and the rest of my cliche life principles come into play. Because at the end of the day, if you make the right decision for yourself, there’s no way that it’s a bad one!
I’ve been thinking about the differences between old wealth and new wealth lately.
According to Wikipedia, “wealth is an abundance of valuable material possessions or resources. ‘Wealth’ refers to some accumulation of resources, whether abundant or not. ‘Richness’ refers to an abundance of such resources. A wealthy (or rich) individual, community, or nation thus has more resources than a poor one. Richness can also refer to at least basic needs being met with abundance widely shared.”
So, in the old economy, wealth was determined by how much money you have, your family name, your school, etc. Most of the things you’ve seen in high society or the upper class. The problem with this definition of wealth is that it’s purely destructive. When a person is motivated by the pursuit of profit, he or she will start making decisions outside the normal realm of morals and ethics.
If you’ve seen the film, The Corporation, they reveal that “a disturbing diagnosis is delivered: the institutional embodiment of laissez-faire capitalism fully meets the diagnostic criteria of a psychopath.“ Symptoms include the “callous disregard for the feelings of other people, the incapacity to maintain human relationships, reckless disregard for the safety of others, deceitfulness (continual lying to deceive for profit), the incapacity to experience guilt, and the failure to conform to social norms and respect for the law.” Pretty scary huh? Enron, Worldcom, sweatshops, and Madoff are great examples of this psychopath behavior and the consequences that result from it.
What I’ve noticed is this notion and concept of “new wealth.” Within our generation, it doesn’t matter how much money you make or how “wealthy” you are through monetary means. With the collapse of the financial system (from psychopathic investment bankers) to the numerous corporations filing for bankruptcy, we’ve seen what “business and wealth” will cause individuals to do.
The currency around “new wealth” revolves around your creativity, innovation, cross-displinary networks, and what you’ve actually done to make this world a better place. These are the people that are “rich” in my books. Not the investment bankers on wall street leveraging more buyouts with inflated money that doesn’t actually exist to make an extra buck.
As we move into this conceptual age, the new currency should revolve around creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship, and not on making billions at the expense of others. I’m just glad that the majority of investment bankers have finally moved out of Manhattan because the “wealthy” creative folks are finally moving back in.
Over the weekend, I read a great article in the latest issue of Inc. Magazine about Bob Parsons, the founder of Go Daddy. Thought I would share a good quote:
People often say to me, “You must be a really busy guy!” Actually, I’m not. I can make time anytime I want, and there’s a reason for that: I accomplish everything through other people. That gives me a tremendous bandwidth. And then, when I want to get away — which I do often — everybody who works with and for me knows how to handle things, so it doesn’t matter if I’m here or not. It shows trust.
Man, it’s just great to know that a guy that manages and employs around 2,000 people delegates and manages that many people.
I think Chris Rock is the funniest dude on the planet, period. There’s a lot of things that I don’t find funny like #77 on Stuff White People Like - Musical Comedies. Every now and then, I’ll pop in Bigger and Blacker, and I’ll be ROFL. Seriously. Laughing so hard I almost pull a muscle in my stomach.
“There are only three things women need in life: food, water, and compliments.”
Harvard Business Review just published an article titled “Innovate Like Chris Rock” which goes over the process and tactics of Chris Rock in becoming the most popular comedian in the world.
There is no doubt he’s got enormous talent, but his brilliance also comes from the fact that he’s an experimental innovator. The jokes he rolls out on his global tours are actually the output of thousands of small experiments - some of which worked, but many of which did not.
First, he picks small venues where he can do rapid, low-risk experiments with new material. In gearing up for his latest global tour, he made between 40 and 50 appearances at a small venue called the Stress Factory in New Brunswick, New Jersey, not far from where he lives. Rock told the Orange Country Register, “It’s like boxing training camp. I always pick a comedy club to work out in.”
In front of audiences of say 30 to 40 people, Rock will bring a yellow legal note pad with lots of joke ideas scribbled on it, according to fellow comedian Matt Ruby. In sets that run say 45 minutes, many of the jokes will fall flat, but according to Ruby, “There were 5-10 lines during the night that were just ridiculously good. Like lightning bolts. My sense is that he starts with these bolts and then writes around them.”
It’s all part of a process. When the material falls flat, Rock will even pause to say things like, “This needs to be fleshed out more if it’s gonna make it.”
Experimental innovators don’t overanalyze or put all of their hopes into one big bet - they quickly, creatively, and inexpensively use experiments to learn, gather insights, and identify unique opportunities - they then rapidly iterate, relearn, and refine to achieve success.
What’s your boxing training camp? How do you test your ideas? How do you know what will work? When entrepreneurs generate ideas, I think it’s extremely important to test your ideas and get feedback on them as well. Here’s some ideas on how to screen through your ideas.
Create a list. Capture all of your ideas and write a one-sentence blurb about them.
Share your ideas. Show the list to your friends, advisors, mentors, etc. Publish the list on your blog.
Resonate. Ask your friends to pick their favorite ones and flush out the ideas that resonate.
Repeat. Take the short list back to your friends and ask them to poke holes in your idea.
Execute. Take action on the ones that make it through the ringer. Throw the rest out or add them to your backburner.
After watching Notorious last weekend, I got inspired to make a mixtape for the “Greatest Rapper of All Time” - Notorious B.I.G aka the Black Frank White aka Biggie Smalls aka Christopher Wallace. Maybe I’ll make a mixtape bi-monthly? Tracklist below and download by visiting http://www.zshare.net/download/5436936198bcacef/
Speaking of Biggie, does anyone want to hit up the Frank White Cafe in Brooklyn?
The legendary rapper Notorious B.I.G. took on the alias Frank White after the mob boss played by Christopher Walken in Abel Ferrara’s film, King of New York. Frank White is located at St. James and Atlantic in Brooklyn, the block where Notorious B.I.G. (considered the rap King of New York) was born and raised. Naming the café Frank White was in honor to his legacy as an artist that came from the neighborhood.
Place looks dope. Rather than having small, medium, and large; they have Lil Kim, Diddy, and Biggie. Awesome!
The “Biggie” Apple - Mixed by MK
Nas - N.Y. State of Mind
Jay-Z - Dead Presidents
Notorious B.I.G. featuring Method Man - The What
Craig Mack featuring Notorious B.I.G. - Flava In Your Ear Remix
It’s kind of crazy that entrepreneurs think that their vision and their idea is the “right” one. What qualifies them to know what will work? Why don’t digital and tech entrepreneurs test their ideas before they waste money and countless hours building a product that’s not needed? I call this the “me too” syndrome that is so prevalent on the west coast <cough> Silicon Valley…
This article from the Financial Times talks about a new business model for development. “With such tales in mind, some entrepreneurs factor the unexpected into their business models, eschewing business plans that rely on a single big idea. Instead, they set up companies in which small teams of engineers work on several ideas simultaneously. The hope is that one or two will take off - a “shotgun” rather than a “sniper” strategy.”
Wouldn’t it make sense to develop 5 or 10 alpha sites and test them to gauge interest? This blog post from Eric Ries talks about using Google Adwords to find out whether customers are “interested in your product by offering to give (or even sell) it to them, and then failing to deliver on that promise.” Genius! He even gives a step-by-step process on how to do it.
Taking what Eric talks about in his post, I thought I would add some of my own insights to create a framework for testing digital ideas.
Develop 5-10 digital ideas and launch alpha sites. This would consist of basic brand identity - logo, blurb about site, and email subscription. For the alpha sites, I suggest putting the email subscription on the front page. There’s no point in sending the potential customer to another page to sign-up.
Drive traffic to the site. Use Google Adwords, PR, etc. Test it within a 1-2 month period. If your site gets between 500-1000 email registrations during that time period, you have a viable business idea. For simplicity, let’s say each email registration is worth 2 points. Let’s say each unique visitor to the website is worth 1 point.
Add other elements for scoring. Add a fake “we’re hiring” page. If people actually apply to work at the fake company, that should be worth 10 points. Also, if a blog writes about your fake site, that would be worth 5 points.
Tally up the score. (This is really rough)
0 - 100 points (your idea sucks, not worth pursuing)
100 - 500 points (might have an idea, flush it out more)
500 - 1000 points (idea is worth pursuing)
1000+ points (quit your job and put resources behind the site to launch it)
This a very, very, very simple model that I put together in 15 minutes. This framework is to only test your digital ideas to see which one you should spend time to focus on and developing. There’s no reason to develop a site that no one will find value in. Obviously, there are other reasons to test your sites - financial projections for a business plan, proof of concept for investors, confidence in your idea, testing different price structures, etc. Seems like a win-win situation to me.
Would love to hear everyone’s thoughts on this framework? And if you have any input on the “points”, feel free to add that in the comments section as well. Thanks!
As Arthur Rock, a venture capital legend associated with the formation of such companies as Apple, Intel, and Teledyne, states, “I invest in people, not ideas. If you can find good people, if they’re wrong about the product, they’ll make a switch, so what good is it to understand the product that they’re talking about in the first place?” And to quote Thomas Edison, “genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.”
So, does the idea really matter? Are business plans even relevant today? Are ideas worthless?
Quite simply… YES.
We believe that investors and companies should invest in talent, and not ideas, especially those ideas laced with greed and profit. There are companies already out there like Ooga Labs who “gives you the best of a start-up and a venture capital firm. You get the excitement, responsibility and learning of a startup plus the safety of having a portfolio of ventures. In terms of learning, you’ll probably see about eight “company starts” in four years, compared to seeing one at a traditional start-up, or zero if you work for a big company.” The teams at Ooga Labs are allowed to work on more than one idea at a time. The idea is NOT the King.
So, imagine a business model where you could incubate talent, and not ideas. It’s not a new concept. This essay from 1998 reiterates, “the best venture-capital organizations now incubate people, not ideas. These people work as venture capitalists until they see an idea they like, and then they go run it with financing from their erstwhile employer.”
And to close, the rules are different today. It’s no longer enough to be “productive” or “hard-working.” This article I read about work ethic makes some amazing points. “When the “information age” started replacing the “industrial age,” hard work seemed more important than ever… Silicon Valley corporate culture, from tiny startups to the massive Googleplex, emphasizes long hours and feverish work. But since the turn of the new millennium, the nature of work has evolved to the point where hard work is becoming less important to a successful work ethic than another, more useful value: attention.”
The secret to creative entrepreneurship?
Invest in talent and make sure they don’t have ADD. Yep!
After having 5,000+ unread posts and never logging into my Google Reader, I decided to clean up my feeds after reading this excellent post by Eric. As you can see, I’ve tiered off my folders with “tier 1″ being the blogs I enjoy reading. After deleted some blogs off my list and organizing the ones that made the cut, I noticed that all the blogs I put in Tier 1 were blogs of my friends or people that I know personally. And blogs that updated 920589407549 times a day were grouped into Tier 3 or the “news” folder. So, here’s an idea for a tech entrepreneur to steal - create a service that gives me the best blog posts from all the blogs I read, and cut out the garbage. There’s nothing worse than having thousands of unread blog posts. So, now that I cleaned up my Google Reader, and my “Tier 1″ folders is sitting pretty at ZERO, are there any feeds that you guys think I should add to my list?
Year after year, New Year’s Eve fails to live up to the hype.
Who likes useless tickets, long lines, overpriced drinks,
forced countdowns, or awkward midnight kisses anyway?
This year, preempt the disappointment and party it up the
night after the second to last day before the evening of the
last day of the year (that’s Tuesday the 30th).
No bullshit. Just good friends, booze, dancing, and art.
