Reid Hoffman & Ben Casnocha: The Startup of You

please give them a huge warm welcome come on up guys and then you please always pleasure have fun you guys all right well good morning hello creativeLIVE well we're delighted to be here and we're gonna spend about an hour going through some of the key concepts at the startup of you our book on career strategy that came out about a year ago and what we're going to do is I'm going to start by describing how Reid and I got inspired to do this book what what was happening in the world that caused us to want to develop a new way of thinking about career strategy and then we'll walk through some of the key concepts that from the startup of you so thank you for coming today and thank you for listening on the Internet the key thing that we are trying to do is figure out how to help folks with an understanding of how the new world of work works and part of the I've had this idea for some time because a lot of the kind of career strategies are roughly dependent and we're going to go into this but on the kind of the career ladder or escalator but that that mode has changed and the question is how to help people understand this how to help people understand what is that what is the way to think about how to work how to attack a career we started thinking about this purely as an initially a college thing and then we realize that it actually applies to everyone and I've actually even had folks of mine who are partners at my firm at Greylock and other places say oh actually I was reading your book and actually page 45 was really useful to me so we we hope this is useful to all of you as well indeed okay so so the genesis of the book so you know for the last 40 to 50 years the way careers have worked in America the function kind of like a escalator right the job markets been defined like a well-oiled escalator for many generations in America folks would go to college get a college degree be among the rare elite that would obtain a college degree and upon graduation from one of a handful of predefined career tracks so you'd kind of pick finance or manufacturing or technology and then you'd work hard to land an entry-level job at a goldman sachs or GE or GM or an IBM and upon landing this entry-level job the way it worked is if you worked hard and more particularly unlucky you'd kind of get whisked up the organizational hierarchy right you land an entry-level job at an IBM you work hard you put in your dues and slowly but surely you accumulate increased levels of seniority and experience and over the course of your career you may change jobs a few times may change companies a few times but you're going to stay in that that very stable career track until you and kind of ride this escalator up until you reach the top of the escalator and step off into a government financial social security system or a company financed pension system and that's the way it's worked for a very long time and and the natural gravity of that escalator has really been the underpinnings of the American Dream which is that every generation of Americans enjoys a higher standard of living than the ones that parents had that's been true for many generations but for the first time ever or the first time in many years in America young people today people in their 20s on average will not enjoy a higher standard of living than the one their parents had and that's because this career escalator which has guided the way we think about careers for so long is now jammed at every level so people coming out of college today can't find jobs right youth unemployment in America today is at its highest level since World War two people in the middle of their career in the middle that escalator are finding themselves stuck in promotion 'less limbo Americans today are registering their lowest levels of career satisfaction since the data first started getting recorded and then people at the top of the escalator people in their 50s and 60s who historically have been you know preparing Beach plans and ready to retire in record numbers or having to rejoin the workforce and reinvent themselves and acquire new skills in order to remain competitive and they find their company pension exploded or the government social security net no longer reliable and so this jamming of the career escalator has forced us to all reconsider a lot of basic assumptions about how the world of work works about the economy about the labor market and the causes of this jamming have to do with technology and globalization to create a world for all of us which increasingly resembles the Silicon Valley ecosystem and part of the thing when you look at the kind of career escalator as a model a lot of our strategies a lot of how we think about even you know kind of in the last couple decades about how you manage a career continues to do this well like for example discover your passions when you're you know when you go to college I'm going to know the job will work out you know you just need to figure out what it is you're particularly passionate about because of the jobs for everything there's a question of you know in terms of how the career escalator has gotten jammed is the you know when you say we have well now have longer life spans and industries are changing in ways that are much faster that says alright well what happens when I get to sixty and actually I haven't actually you know fully you know and I need more economics how do I make that happen and because the the career escalator is jamming changing the compact between essentially companies and employees and it used to be that the employees didn't have to think about how to invest in themselves they would basically just kind of go okay you know I'm here there's a there's a pattern that's run by this company and then of course it morph to okay it's not just one company in several but it's still career path by which I'd be trained to do things I would be you know I'd be sent out on a management class or on a training in this technology class but what has changed is that since the industries are changing in a way that that's no longer capable is that no longer functional is that people have to learn how to invest in themselves they have to learn how to essentially drive how it is that I my value as a as a worker as an employee the way that I Drive my career is much more like a business than as an employee in terms of how I think about it now you may do kind of you may still spend your entire career at one company but in doing that you were still thinking about yourself as a business as you go through it and so part of what we had realized and this is part of why Ben and I came together to do this book was that we felt that people didn't have the this the the the mindsets and the skills that were appropriate to this new world because the mindsets and skills are essentially an entrepreneurs mindsets and skills and that there was nothing that kind of that that that kind of made that easily accessible to people who weren't already deeply embedded in entrepreneurial communities and so we did is we sat down we talked about it we said well let's let's take the advice that we give intrapreneurs for their startups and let's then compact it for what is good for individuals you know as a bunch of things like for example how you raise venture finance or other kinds of things which aren't appropriate individuals but there's a bunch of things about how you direct essentially an entrepreneurial company that's the same way that you direct your own work life your own business life and that we then said all right well let's the book is an attempt distill those key concepts those key mindsets and those kind of techniques for how to be entrepreneurial in your work life doesn't it might start a company that's great the advice should work with that you might never start a company the advice is still useful in terms of how you in terms of how you see and so part of the way that that we think is very urgent is how you understand we should move to that yeah the the new world of work is that industries are changing at faster and faster rates so this is John Seely Brown John Hagel have this expression called the topple rate which is the rate at which companies drop out of the S&P 500 that's doubled in the last two decades in terms of the speed at which this is a simple measure of industry transformation you can just look at a whole wide variety of industries in terms of how the modern kind of technological acceleration which globalization is part of is it's transforming like what is viable industry in any particular region of the world you can look at new papers you know you can look at automobiles you can look at a large number of industries and that transformation is happening and so part of how the career escalator got jammed is that businesses could no longer say well I have a you know 50-year 40-year stable path that just works this way because the businesses themselves are changing and they need to adapt and those and those changes are trickled down to the level of the individual yes that's I think a key point that that we're making is that the these tectonic changes of globalization and technology are changing all these industries and all these companies and now that's affecting every individual on every individuals career journey and forcing every individual to be more entrepreneurial and to learn from Silicon Valley and how Silicon Valley entrepreneurs build amazing companies and conditions them uncertainty and change and apply those strategies to their very life their very career will show a quick video that explains a bit more about the idea what happened we're company's supposed to guarantee jobs for life was the government supposed to rescue everyone were Universities supposed to grant degrees that promised unlimited opportunity the world has changed there's plenty of blame to go around but the solution is within you all humans were born entrepreneurs in the case we were all self employed finding food feeding ourselves that's how human history began and that's the entrepreneurial spirit we must rediscover we have it within ourselves to take control of our career build the future we want we do this by looking at the lessons of today's entrepreneurs and applying them to our lives how we adapt how we develop a competitive edge how we take smart risks I will use our networks you see today's challenges actually present enormous opportunity you were made to survive almost anything you can invent yourself and invent the future the startup is you gotta love the hand yes exactly just get goosebumps every time ah all right so that's the backdrop for why we're here that's the problem that we're presenting and the problem that we want to talk about how to solve and for the balance of our talk we're going to get into a few specific strategies for what each of us in the room and on the internet can do to take control of our career and accelerate our career today so we're going to go through a series of ideas look at what entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley do to build amazing companies and then map the idea map the advice to an individual career context so the first the first idea we're going to talk about is competition you want to get this off there yeah so one of the things that's kind of mistake from the old how the world has changed is you now no longer just think oh I discovered my own passions I kind of I sit in a room and I meditate about what I'm good at and I just go do that you have to think about that you are there along with thousands of other people right and so for interesting jobs there's always competition there's a question how you get product market fit relative that competition and so you have to think about what is your competitive edge and the only way you can really describe figure out competitive edge is when you're thinking about the marketing industry around you you're thinking about what the competitors look like in terms of how you essentially kind of say well how am i best at that how am I good at that now there's a lot of ways frequently competition like saying well okay how it might be Olympic athlete how am I the gold medalists at this is is actually not what is generally required that's in a few individuals or a few companies perspective frequently competition is local it's the question of well of the folks that you know this business needs to hire or in in providing this service as a small as a small business what is my competitive set look like and then how do I have a competitive differentiation against that set and what was your differentiation rate starting LinkedIn because entrepreneurs are the best in the world I think that thinking about how do you do something cheaper faster better than other people what was the what was the theory when you were starting like did in terms of a competitive landscape and how you assess that well there was a couple things so one is I and actually buy more than one always useful but the first was in 2002 when I left PayPal I was originally thinking I was going to spend a year taking vacation still would like to do that at some point and what I realized is that the valley had decided that the consumer internet was it was over us now focus on clean tech it was focused on enterprise software and then all the interesting consumer interplays had had been played and I realized that actually one was that wasn't the case and so I knew that in starting a consumer internet business back then in doing that I would be doing that when there wasn't a lot of competition I would have the headway to start to get to get out ahead spent start running before other industries other entrepreneurs realize the consumer internet was back on and started running along the same path the second thing was is I realized that there was going to be this revolution in kind of in networks and networking I had invested in Friendster and I'd seen what was happening with kind of social networking you know myspace came along Facebook and I was like well actually I think that's all awesome I want to invest in those companies and I think those entrepreneurs are very strong but I also want to create a professional network and because I hope that the the context of how we navigate our work life and how we navigate a personal life are actually very different and that that could be an area where you also get differentiation because I specialize specifically in the world of work and with that I kind of then said and then there's there's a whole set of competitive differentiation down the chain because when we started it there were other companies that it said well yes professional networks are relevant but they're relevant for companies they're not relevant for individuals so they were all enterprise sales and these were all essentially a set of choices to hone it so that I essentially created I chose a valuable space and then I focused on it in a way that I could develop competitive advantages the people didn't know and there's one actually other thing I would say on this is that frequently as part of investing are being an entrepreneur at for a high impact high scale business what your being is contrarian and right in terms of how you do this so for example when I went around with LinkedIn one of the reasons people thought because usually at the very early stages of company people think ok like if everyone had that idea then there'll be tons of competition and even if you're very good it'd be very difficult to get through the press and actually break out into something new one of the things that made everyone's Skepta what LinkedIn in the very beginning was this hit well a networked product it's really not valuable one one persons and it's not valuable in two people if they know each other etc so you have to get to when a back-of-the-envelope was five hundred thousand to a million people in order to make LinkedIn to have begin having the value propositions that we now have today and the thing that I knew compared contrarian the right that other people didn't is I knew that people back in 2003 would be curious enough to explore and say hey there's a new site I know it doesn't have a value proposition meet for right now but I'll play with it and I'll see what it is and that I could get to that first million people entirely on that basis and that was another place of competitive differentiation because I made both a an insight that that could happen and also took the risk in the gamble FET and we'll talk more about risks later yeah and so what I love about that story is it wasn't like it wasn't you locked yourself in your your bedroom closed your eyes and thought deeply about what a killer business idea could be it was assessing all these other companies thinking about the differences that exist so there's certainly a focus on the market realities but you kind of quickly said the word PayPal and consumer Internet but I think by starting Lincoln you're also playing to some existing assets that you were building as well right yeah so we as part of how you should think about we outline this in the book is that there's essentially assets market realities aspirations aspirations as goal in terms of what do you want to go market realities is the is the shape of the industry competition the availability of where you can go and the assets or how you get there and part of a you know like for example one piece that bends reminding me of is well having made some money at PayPal even though the 2002 2003 financing market was very difficult for consumer companies I could essentially fund LinkedIn for the first year myself that gave me a competitive differentiation asset but the more important assets aren't the hard assets you know money that sort of thing those are great and you actually absolutely need those in certain kinds of contexts but the soft assets of the networks of who you're connected to what your skill set is what you know and so for example by having done PayPal I understood virality I also happen to have a broad network of folks who understood how to build consumer internet businesses I also had a sense of kind of what was going on generally in the industry and how to call you know who to call order solve which kinds of problems and one of the things that's really important when you when you think about kind of your competitive edge is both are what are your assets now but also how do you evolve those assets and usually the assets you should be most investing in are your soft assets which is a combination of people and skills because those things actually persist and help you get directed and targeted because you say okay well you know what is the for example if you're doing an entrepreneurial like I was doing with LinkedIn what's the key problem to solve because usually in a startup there are your what the metaphor used for startups throws hop off a cliff and you assemble an airplane on the way down basically means you're in a mortal situation and there's lots of fires burning you have to focus on solving a couple of them well your network your soft assets helps you with that because you get this kind of collective intelligence about can I look what are the key problems which ones can you ignore that's really important and then how do you invest in them I want to amplify one thing that Reed was saying so he so there's a PayPal assets that were being built with Zimmer web that you can apply to LinkedIn or the market realities you had an aspiration to build a consumer internet professional network one of the interesting things is we map this to career strategy because again we're we're talking about competition because our thesis is that every individual needs to have a sense of what their competitive edges in the labor market what do you do different or better than the person sitting next to it doesn't mean you're better and an objective whole sense but in a specific professional sense how are you differentiated in the market and entrepreneurs do this brilliantly by thinking about their their existing assets their aspirations and the market realities around them one of the things we learned when doing the startup review and thinking about career strategy is they're actually about there are three really common pieces of advice that people get when they ask the question what should I do with my life which is another way of taking about the competitive advantage question what should I be doing what's my edge there are a set of folks that say play to your strengths right this is a common piece of advice that's come out in the last few years for people Marcus Buckingham and others say think about your strengths and play to your strengths right play to your assets then there are a set of people again very new piece of advice which is follow your passion which in the last few years has become very popular advice very very new phenomenon and in the self-help genre but follow your aspirations think about what your passion is and go do that and then there's a third piece of common wisdom which is kind of what I call it the tiger or a lot of people call the tiger mom approach which is I don't care what you think you're good at or what your passion is go figure out where the market realities are where the market needs are and go do that and so for example in America today there's a nursing a nursing shortage and so that the tiger my advice is hey go become a nurse right go get a nursing degree because that's where all the demand is in the market and there's and so what's with troublesome about the this evolution of career advice is that thinking about any one of those in isolation is wildly insufficient right if you only think about your assets if you would only thought about the PayPal assets that are being developed that's fine but what if there's actually not a market need for what those assets assets translate into or if you only think about your passion what if you can't monetize that passion very well what if you're not very good at that passion if you only think about the market reality sure there's a market need but what if you're not very good at fulfilling that need and if you don't really like it you're not gonna be able to do it very long well or well and so the thing we we try to do in a start-up view is you actually need to think about all three of those things when asking the question what kind of business should I start or what should I do with my life as the entrepreneur of my own life the CEO of my career think about all three of those things in the intersection of your assets aspirations and market realities yeah and putting those three things together are critical because it's a question of you do want to play to your strengths so that's by the way those those things are right to understand them how to amplify them develop them and so forth because that's where you can possibly get a competitive edge but if you don't if you if you just say those strengths like for example I remember talking to one of my family members like well I like playing video games so I'm gonna go become a video game you know designer and you're like okay that no that's insufficient you have to think about like how is it that you can actually do that much better how is what's the market demand for that as a function and then you want you want to integrate those you might be passionate about it but you want to integrate all those into a coherent plan and the plan doesn't just start with like one of the mistakes that people make and we'll we'll get actually I don't know for planning what I guess is an optional section here but one of the things is don't don't think about when you when you're doing the planning don't just think about like okay here's a 40 year plan you do an intense plan for a couple of years with a thought about where that's all going but you have to reevaluate it as you go and you really kind of like your passions can change hopefully your your your strengths your your assets are increasing and the market realities are for sure changing so you have to have a cycle in terms of how you're thinking about this and revisiting it and one of the mistakes I frequently feel that when people are doing this to trying to make well make this decision once and this is gonna be for my rest of my life you're like no no no make an effective decision right now execute on it for a couple years yeah and be paying attention to it as you go so one of the things that I think is interesting is you created LinkedIn to connect people globally and digitally but you guys have both and this just sort of recent intro talked a lot about the physical like being able to pick up a phone and call someone and to me that transcends the digital part how how important for you guys is that the start of a view as it relates to like a personal network of people you can call of mentors people you have like on boots on the ground relationships with real relationships with people who are your allies is essential got it we do have a question here in the audience if you want to stand up they'll be awesome hey Jonathan Howard I'm starting a medical travel company for helping people do medical travel without the risk so if the intersection is strengths passion and demand I think strength some passion or something you can look inward and sort of figure out or ask your friends but it seems like you guys have figured out some good ways to do the market research side I think that's something people have less access to can you talk a little bit more about how you approach that I'll let Reid answer but you also said you're doing a start-up without the risk of medical travel will come in with lower risk the looming risk for the custom lowering risk I thought I heard without right kids yeah be a segue to a later later concept we'll dress we understand Mayans rhythmic never goes to zero actually so well the key thing and some of this will be we're going to do networks in the next section but usually the best form of doing this sort of thing as the go fine likes example when I started LinkedIn I basically went to every smart person I knew and I talked to them about it because one of the things you learn is you get their perspective and frequently you know two-thirds of what said they don't really understand as well as you do and so ever then you'd have to kind of sort through it but you're looking for you go no not that one not that one but you're looking for he incites you take it very seriously everything that the the smart people you know are telling you and by the way they also and then introduce you to other people so it's not just one degrees to Gries and you're saying who else should I talk to again gets the network that that process if you're genuinely open-minded and you have to be one of the phrases I use for intrapreneurship is flexible persistence which is you're both have a vision and a mission and you have a conviction and you're going here you persist you're also flexible about it which is you're really thinking about well is a really customer demand what is the competition look like is a really coherent product here and you have to keep that agility between them as you're talking to people because frequently I find is intrapreneurs go neuro I know I have this idea and yeah yeah I know you guys don't get it and I'm just going to prove it to you in which case you can frequently drive off a cliff not be hearing the signals from talking to people the way that you should be on the other hand it shouldn't be like all right you get that bad idea I should just change what I am because you have a you this vision of this thing other people don't see but it's it's primarily I find talking to people as assumptions not google searching yes to do market research in the market reality so that can be helpful I guess to an extent right how many nursing positions are open that kind of thing but the critical intelligence that informs the most important career decisions almost always come from tapping someone else's brand and it's a combination of people who expertise there and people who have remote expertise not necessarily directly because that will give you some breadth and all of it every individual perspective can be wrong but it's your job as the entrepreneur to integrated actually one more riff on this because we're kind of talking about networked intelligence I think that the there are three kinds of people you talk to you for advice on career life decisions one are people that are domain experts in the area so travel health whatever they're experts in that area then there are people who know you personally really well so for example there's a domain expert then there's your mom and then there are just generally really smart insightful people that may not be an expert in that they may may not know you well but could have a perspective to add and the order in which you you probe your network for advice could be as follows first the domain experts to get a sense of options should I go become a nurse okay what's it like to be a nurse you know what is that day today look like okay should I go to Nevada because there's an unusual shortage in Nevada that kind of thing talk to experts and then go talk to people you know who know you really well hey mom here are my three options which do you which option do you think is best for me all right that requires actually more personal knowledge of who you are as opposed to necessarily the market landscape and then cross-check your decision with a super smart outsider so there can actually be a system and this is I think what entrepreneurs do extremely well and why we highlight them in the book is it's not kind of random hey you're a guy off the street what do you thing about the LinkedIn idea there's actually a process through which you go you go through to collect really the iBall network intelligence yeah all right I've networked and telling of networks let's talk about networks so basically one of the things is you know part of the idea behind LinkedIn is we all live in a networked world whether or not we fully recognize it or not and most people don't realize how deep that is as a function so for example when you think about living in a networked world you think about such concepts of how am I going to be found by the right people right opportunities not just how am I going to go find people but how is it possible for other people to find me now most people kind of say well who'd ever be looking for me and it's like well actually people out there looking to solve problems I mean it could just even be hiring people but looking for you know co-founders for a start-up looking for finance looking for advice all these sorts of things this this this is critical when you think about a networked world is not just you as an agent but also you participate in a network where there's a bunch of people around you who are all acting we're all looking for things who are looking for people and and what's more part of what that happens is as we help each other right we can help each other find the exact right like if you find the right piece of insight on starting a business or the right piece of insight on becoming a nurse that can accept that can change the curve of your business or of your career in terms of how you operate and and so networks are critical amplifiers have key question is saying well how should you think about building your own network how should how do people build networks well and so for them this is actually the thickest section of the book because most people kind of don't that they want to have it go well you know if someone says oh I'm an F some one introduces themselves to you so I'm a networker you kind of go okay great you know take a step back right because it sounds like well I want you to be part of my rolodex and and you could be an asset to me and that's what your value is to me and it's like well okay that's that's not a good relationship a good relationship is where we are allies we are colleagues we are we are we are tackling the world together and so part of what we try to do is say look it's critical to think about being a networks building networks growing networks but you can do it in a very human way this is indeed a really entrepreneurial idea there's a misconception I think that entrepreneurs are these solo heroes right we glorify Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos and these guys as individuals and forget that if they're talented at one thing it's assembling incredible teams around them and and that's why again this is a core idea of the startup review it's let's look at how Silicon Valley entrepreneurs build networks and learn from how they do that because they've truly are world-class and and read there's there are network their networks are complex so many different types of relationships in the book we we zoom in on two specific kinds of relationships allies and acquaintances and you tell a story of your relationship and Mark Pincus do you want to talk about that Alliance and how that's evolved over and actually it's just one of many examples the the part of what's very helpful is when you when you identify the folks that you're essentially going through going through your life with and are your allies and professional context you should actually have kind of explicit conversations about how you help each other and part of what mark and I met when he was think about doing a business and I was at PayPal and the business was related to it so ABC introduced us and you know we we started traveling and we always hey actually we we look at some aspects of how the Internet is changing and and you know creative and interesting ideas let's start getting to know each other we started and we realize that there was a bunch of things we could do to actually help each other and then become good friends as part of that and it's it's it's such for example it's you know we both ended up investing and Friendster together because we both recognized this whole transformation of the of the internet going to a kind of a social platform and transferring we said oh that's right and we should figure out how to pick investments together you should we should identify what the key trends are and and and inform our companies so for example I found a LinkedIn he found a tribe you know he was much more focused on social I was focused on professional but we would talk about like here are the things we're encountering and here's what we're doing and that actually made us learn faster and made us direct companies in much better ways as it how it happens and so the the key thing is is that these kinds of alliances are it's one of the places where one plus one is actually greater than two in terms of being able to add a huge amount of value to have you both navigate in terms of solving problems recruiting talent etc now one of the things I think is important when you think about these kinds of alliances is to that it is it's a very good thing to be somewhat explicit about them so for example with mark and I we said look here it was like we're gonna help each other because we're friends but here's a bunch of things that we're gonna actually specifically do in order to help each other and it isn't a you know a trading compact it's an expression of alliance is an expression of we can make thing big things happen in the world here's how we can work together and so I think that's probably the album I found it Zynga yes hi and you join the board and invest and join the board which all only happened because we were Alice yeah and and it's such a powerful the story of collaboration so powerful and I think you know if you ask a lot of really successful professionals no matter their industry or career they usually identify a handful of these close allies right these professionalize that that are emotionally rich that have a long history they're collaborative help each other over a period of many years one of the interesting things about the topic of networks a lot of people think social networking and the Internet has changed everything as it relates to relationships and I think actually the internet hasn't fundamentally changed the Alliance dynamic Alliance allies require a lot of time a lot of emotional investment you can't have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of allies right you can only have a handful people like Marc in your career and they don't happen automatically they don't happen naturally necessarily you actually have to work at it so that's one kind of relationship we highlight in the book and how to go about building those alliances and that's small and number but then there's another type of relationship that that you can actually of the sort that you can maintain dozens hundreds even thousands of connections and this is an area where I think the internet and social networking has dramatically changed the game in terms of how many people you can know how you stay in touch to them and so on and these are acquaintances these are people who with whom you are friendly but not necessarily full-on friends these are people who you meet at conferences who you meet at an event at an education event or you trade business cards with you see once a year you talk to every so often who you connect with them LinkedIn and see an occasional status update from and maybe like or comment on that update and I think every amazing professional has a small collection of allies but also a large swath of acquaintances people who span industry span geographies and they have both I think the thing that's that's important to remember is that it's not one or the other it's actually having both close emotional allies and professional allies matters and a large swath of acquaintances matter and the reason is that people who were close to like Reid and Mark are very similar in many ways people who were close to tend to resemble us right they tend to work in the same industry to him to think in similar ways that's why we get along right there's no more misleading photos and I think in relationship literature than opposites attract opposites do not necessarily attract or attracted people who think like us and affirm a lot our intuitions so those are our close friends but our acquaintances often look and feel very different right they may work in different industry they may live in different places and because they are different from us they actually are sources of new and different sorts of information right so people who are close to us tend to be reading the same kinds of books tend to know the same kinds of people tend to be going to the same kinds of restaurants meeting the same kinds of companies but people who are more distant from us physically emotionally intellectually tend to run in different social circles tend to be reading different things tend to be exposed to different sorts of information and therefore can be really valuable sources of information when making those career decisions as we talked about or trying to learn about a new trend or learn about what's going on at a different geography so having both close allies and a network of acquaintances is really important and one one other thing we mentioned this in the book I found it such a fascinating study there's a sociologist at Northwestern who went and studied Broadway musicals and tried to understand what it was about the social networks of Broadway productions that made a production successful so he looked at you know Mamma Mia and West Side Story in these other groups and a bunch of failures and tried to understand what it was about the social networks of the cast and crew that made one production successful and one not successful and what he discovered was that the the productions that failed the social networks looked one of two ways either the cast and crew all knew each other from prior performances or productions right so they are all kind of close allies there there's a lot of coherence but there's no fresh blood no new ideas no diversity of opinion that failed another example failure was a production in which the cast and crew had never worked with each other no one knew anybody on the first day everyone is introducing themselves for the first time lots of diversity lots of fresh ideas and people who are thinking differently but no trust right not no alliance bond whereas when he studied the productions that were really successful he noticed it was a blend some of the cast and crew knew each other there are some alliances there are also a lot of acquaintances people who hadn't worked with each other and that blend of close ties and weak ties was really really valuable to produce a show that had a coherent trust dynamic but also plenty of informational diversity and three quick additions that before we get to the questions yeah the network side one is startups in the valley work very similar so that that pattern we had the the data from the Broadway thing but actually the very similar thing works for startups here the second thing is is that it really is about this is an answer to chase this question it really is an answer to look it's people you meet and actually like acquaintances aren't rarely the oh we were in a chat room together right as function it's it's like for example like it's you have a lot of colleagues when you work at a company some of them you're pretty close to a lot of them you're fairly friendly with those ones you're fairly friendly can be life time great acquaintances as you move on in your career there are people who have helped me and I hope that I've helped where for example one guy who I worked with at Apple I literally have not seen him since 1996 I actually helped him get a job about four years ago right on a referral base through LinkedIn as a function and that was because like oh actually I I know the guy he's really good he's dedicated smart you know that's right and that's can be useful information as part of his plays and so it's not like oh do all your acquaintances online as much as the online helps you amplify the acquaintances that you have in the life around you and helps you connect stay connected with them share information respect to be helpful these sorts of things and then the last part of it is to be thoughtful and systemic about how it is you're building these alliances and acquaintances and that doesn't mean manipulative this back to the very first thing that means the ways that you like for example you know when you when you get Pete when you when you're thinking about how you help other people that helps build the relationships and so one of the things that I frequently talk about it's kind of this what I call the theory of small gifts which is actually giving little gifts the people you wear it's something you can do easily that's very valuable them is a very good way of building relationships there's one one last thing we want to talk about because we've talked about the importance of investing in alliances having alliances in your network and having acquaintances that mix but I wanted to take quick show of hands who here has been told that networking and thinking about networks is really really important in their career so I think we all have everyone's hand in the room went up everyone's virtual hand went up I'm sure on the internet the there's no topic that's more talked about in the annals of career literature and one of the things that fascinates bo3 to me is the gap between between knowing and doing right I can't tell you how many people I've met on this topic that nod their heads vigorously on this one hearing about yeah I got it got to build my lines it's gotta build my acquaintances but then don't actually take action to pursue that that what they know they ought to do and in the process of working on the book we came upon someone who had a fascinating solution to this gap he had heard in read through his whole career I got to build networks God had got to be networking but it never quite prioritized it in the way he thought he ought to and so he came up with an idea that he called the interesting people fund and he employed what psychologists call pre commitment strategy in order to do the thing he knew he ought to do so he was a student here at Stanford in the Bay Area studying computer science in college and knew that eventually he wanted to start a tech company in Silicon Valley and while he was a student he built up a really excellent network in the tech industry he had some couple of allies he had met a variety of acquaintances but he had also spent his whole life in the Bay Area and before settling down and beginning the long journey to build a new business he wanted to get away and experience a different geography for a bit before before before kind of settling back into the Bay Area and so he took a job at Microsoft and moved to Seattle to work at Microsoft but as he was preparing to move he was worried that this network that he had built up in the Bay Area was gonna atrophy if he spent time in Seattle for a few years and so by the time he would come back to try to start the business in the valley everyone he knew would have moved on or no very well anymore and so at first he thought he would just moved to Seattle and try to come back regularly and and reconnect with people in his network because that was really important but then he has he's he thought about it he realized that that that wouldn't happen he knew himself that he would you talk a big game about how important it would be doing to maintain the network but it won't actually happen and so he took the money that he was going to save in state income tax by moving to Washington state from California which she's asked us not to disclose because you could reverse-engineer his salary but I'll pick a number four thousand dollars of income tax savings it was ballpark in a few thousand bucks took that money and put it into what he called it interesting people fund which was pre allocated on January 1st the rest of the calendar year to take interesting people out to coffee or lunch not just anywhere people in Silicon Valley so a couple weeks after moving to Seattle and working for Microsoft one of his old Stanford professors called him unaware that he had moved to Seattle and said hey Steve I'm having some people over for dinner tomorrow night some really interesting people professor friend of Mines in from out of town you want to come over and join us and she said absolutely I'm there booked the flight on Southwest flew down showed up at the professor's house with his suitcase in tow and what's so brilliant I think about that example that he told us was if he hadn't had that fun set up what would have happened gone on Southwest 400 bucks hotel it's it really worth it I have to take a day off from work whatever I'll do it later I'll see him on my next trip and of course the next trip never happens so by pre allocating time energy and especially money to invest in his network he was able to maintain these connections he ultimately moved back to Silicon Valley recently and co-founded a company with one of the woman who he met on an interesting people fun visit to the Bay Area all right should we take some questions from the internet or from our fabulous story I love it no but we have a lot of questions coming in I want to check in in the studio wants back all right can we go to the back row make sure you've got a mic and less than who you are I'm Carlo from a dog BFF calm we're doing well the business model is selling Dartford dog lovers but my biggest the biggest thing we're trying to solve is how to get people together in real life right and I think having a dog is a strong bond that you that you can have with somebody if you looked into you know what other factors come into creating a stronger bond with the people with people like a with strangers basically well the in online dating match.com asserts and if the this is a direct quote from them do you laugh at the same is the best proxy for compatibility so sense of humor for comedy show with a bunch of jokes yeah but I think in terms of interpersonal rapport I actually think that matters hugely in terms of building a connection I say I think I assume that was your question what are the factors that that build interpersonal bridges is that right or well basically we're trying to figure out a third dimension right like so based the given is that people have people have dogs and they have that in common what we're finding is that you know we have people who bring in another dimension have a stronger bond so like I started a small group called people and type of small light dogs because I saw these I went to this tech party and everybody had a white dog and all of a sudden we have parties in it you know we go to bars and people are who don't in that race fish they discriminate on the collar that's it we also have the other group that in here isn't just the opposite of people in government jobs big black dogs home but but we uh yeah I mean basically they're I'm we're trying to find you know what other how many dimensions you need to actually like be able to connect with somebody more than more than just superficially have you I mean I'm sure you've read words that the I mean look the deepest way is the quick one is humor that's actually a very good test the deepest thing is where you actually discover bonds that really matter to you so people tend to be like local communities they tend to be folks that you are in with or live with these sorts of things and so that it's how do you build that sense of relationship and it's the depth of we are in this together and there's a whole set of different variables to get there but that's that's essentially what you're and as you've said read it and other philosophical discussions we've had where this together implies an opposite implies an enemy of sorts and opposition like if I were doing a dog thing I'd rather everyone around I yeah who the people that are trying to block our dog parks all right who are they let's hold rallies let's have means to talk about how bad those people are right again on the those types of things that they in group and out over use that but yes I do have questions we have so many questions bring in from the internet and there's a theme about how to get and reach people like the two of you so that you have you don't even have a connection and I wonder if you could both of a one tell us a story about somebody who was successful getting through being networking to one of you who seemingly might not have a lot of time to be in that scenario well for me it's fairly straightforward and it's difficult with one of the things when you become better known and you know involve these companies and all the rest it always it is 99.9 percent a referral from someone I know or trust right and and and the reason is because essentially every meeting every single hour that's on my calendar has at least ten things competing for that slot and so I just can't make a decision without that kind of reference when it's a new person I mean sometimes you can do the like you know you meet someone at a dinner party or something else and then that happens but but that's that that's typical and doesn't have to be use LinkedIn for it now sometimes what happens is for example entrepreneur will write to me and say look I have this interesting business and we'll look at me go okay that's interesting and then I will refer it to someone else who works at Greylock to go and talk with it and if that worthy works out then I get involved as a function and so there are some other patterns for that but at all for me ultimately comes down to reference it comes down to reference I think the other key thing is try to help the person we didn't cover this explicitly in our content in the book it's in the book and the presentation rather sorry the help the other person now it's interesting in that when interacting with people who are you perceive as more powerful than you or more successful and more famous or more wealthy whatever it is people often just check out of the help task they say like there's no way I could possibly help read right and so I'm not even going to like try right instead I'll just ask and that's a huge mistake you can always find a way to help someone and if someone's a richer more famous more powerful there's still one constant error we can always add value which is information and we're living in information age a network age people always a hunk hungry for the latest greatest information new information an article they haven't read that's relevant to one of their interests so always when you when you do the outreach even if you have something on your agenda find a way to help if the person's much higher status it's usually give them information they haven't heard before again there's so many misconceptions about entrepreneurship we talked about on the on the competition slide which a lot of people think entrepreneurs are these you know geniuses who are born and have some amazing change the world idea while sitting in a dark room quietly when in fact they're eager to collect market intelligence and talk to folks we talked about networks and how there's a misconception that entrepreneurs do it all by themselves when in fact they're amazing at building teams and networks and so must we all in our professional life and then finally there's a misconception I think that entrepreneurs are these crazy risk takers who are betting the farm on their business ideas and so it may seem odd to talk about risk in the context of what we can all learn from entrepreneurs but in fact the greatest entrepreneurs are not wild Hesperus takers they're pretty much taker rarely rarely rarely some are and sometimes it works out oftentimes it doesn't add argue but so there is something systemic we can learn about how entrepreneurs think about risk and take rest so part of the thing is has been described it's it's a mistake either to go oh look I just it's a zero risk I know it's a sure bet if any time that for example I'm meeting with intrapreneur and they tell me this is a sure bet I feel that they haven't really thought about it carefully because there's impact risk in it and there's risk in industries and companies and careers and then the other one is where you say well okay since you can't control you just roll the dice and you know the chips fall fall how they may and that's that what is actually there's ways to attack risk and there's ways to take intelligent risk in terms of what you're doing and actually it was I think part of the work that that have been doing and thinking this has actually become one of the six core values for LinkedIn is how do you take intelligent risk in terms of how you drive initiatives from within the company and part of that is beginning to understand that not all risk is the same right so one of the things we talk about is there's mortal risk and not mortal risk more risk is something where it could if it goes badly it's really really painful right in some way it doesn't necessarily have to be death that's obviously quite painful but it's it's it could be something where it's like I don't have to move back in with my parents or you know those kinds of risks and in mortal risk what you do is you try you put in a huge amount of energy you take it as Raley's can you take put in a huge amount of energy to make sure that it goes well because it's a highly adverse suggest situation however many other times there are risks that are not mortal that are actually good to take that can give you a competitive edge one of the ones that we describe in the book that I did personally was I started Apple Computer in the user experience group doing you know kind of user interface designs and I pretty quickly realized I should be in product management and it was very difficult to figure out how to get in product management so ultimately what it is I walked over to James Isaac's who is the director of product management there and I said look I'd like to I think this is what I should be doing and I'd like to do this could I actually kind of draft some product plans that are ideas for things that we could be doing for the 44 Apple Computer Z world and if you like them could we then have a group session on them because then it'll be ways that I start meeting the other product managers they begin collaborating I learned some things and so forth and he said sure because like alright you know you show me things now I was taking risks not just the the time but like say for example I showed him something that was like okay you clearly don't have what it takes thanks anyway right there there's there's ways that that that had you know risk components to it that were real however because of doing that and because putting in a lot of extra work to doing that and taking that risk of both approaching him having him agree doing the work taking the group's time as a function of that you had a day job yes is all on the side here's another wristband weekend are yeah are you are you not doing your job right as a portion of doing this like you know did you did you get the user interface designs to the group and that's an example of taking an intelligent risk because what you want to do is you want to look at because one of the key areas back to the very first concept we were saying is competition frequently a great way to get a competitive edge is that you're willing to take a risk that someone else isn't because you realize how to take that intelligently and how to manage it in terms of what you're doing and so literally almost anything that's really interesting to do any any bold move has some risk to it and so figuring out how to shape that risk intelligently is key okay so a few things to add an amplifier I mean I think the volunteer for extra work at your job is the single easiest best risk that almost anyone can take if there's if there's work going on elsewhere in the company that that interests you try to get try to sit in that meeting try to help out in some way offer your time for free do it on the nights and would do how nights and weekends but it's a very easy thing that everyone can do at argue in your day job now one thing we read said fairly quickly that I want to come back to do you think it's really important is the distinction she immortal and non mortal and it may strike some as simplistic right like that's the way you assess risk but and I think Reid understands it has done this intuitively for so long but one of the things we just we came upon when working on the book was a a study of executives in the real world about how they think about risk and some Israeli professors surveyed a whole bunch of business execs and asked how do you think about risk when making decisions in business and and I think the assumption from a lot of the researchers was at these you know really smart executives would have risk models and and spreadsheets and a calculate expected probabilities and consequences and and really think about risk in the way that Wall Street thinks about risk which is something that can be broken down into million component parts in fact they realize that the they discover that the business execs think about risk in the way that Silicon Valley thinks about risk which is look I'm moving so quickly I have such limited information there's so much uncertainty I can't fill in every variable and assess a situation by plugging stuff into our spreadsheet I have to move quick and so the the thing I think about is whether if the worst case scenario happens can I survive it is the worst case survivable or not if it's survivable I'm going to be open to taking this doesn't mean I take it automatically but I'm gonna go with my instinct I'm going to try to fill in some blanks and then move all right if I feel like the worst case scenario is my company goes under I go bankrupt my reputation is destroyed then a really wary of that risk and so that binary a question is actually I think how many people want operating the conditions of uncertainty with limited information is how people go about assessing risk exactly our company is innovative psychiatric solutions and we're taking a partial hospitalization and teleMed and putting it basically in rule okay in rural areas and really you know but our goal is to is to do way more than that that's just kind of our beginning point and my problem is here okay okay and my problem is that I was a therapist not a business person and so now my company is growing faster than me and I'm keenly aware that there is a little window of opportunity to be a pioneer in this field and at the same time I'm not I don't have the knowledge I need to lead my own company to be bigger I can lead it now but not on a better scale and so on the risk standpoint I'm constantly weighing in my mind um which one did I slow down on is it a higher risk to not grow when I know that this is a it's a train that the world's on that somebody will get there before me or do I take the risk of not being the best leader I could be and figuring it out as I go or do I stop in and get that under control first and then grow which is the bigger risk well it depends a lot on the the specific market circumstances what I don't know like what are the exact competitive circumstances look like is someone why are they any competition yeah well there's if you don't have much competition then you can actually you can take more time right so it's kind of a question of does the does the market opportunity get foreclosed right and if it does then you have to take the risk to make sure it doesn't get foreclosed if you actually have some timing and say well I can I can I can try I can slow down a little bit I can make sure that it's like could I grow to being to the to the to the Chi choir the skills that are necessarily to scale up myself or could I find someone to partner with me you know one of the things we currently do and Silicon Valley as a whole like when do you hire a CEO we wrote an essay on that when do you hire CEO oh no these sorts of things as as way of doing it and it comes down to kind of where which are the mortal risks right right and so and then usually is gonna hurt me in the future that's what I wanted so most often comes down to in this case it sounds like if you don't have any near competition and you don't have for example I go out of business because the finance or anything else then it's like alright well we can be a little bit more deliberate in scale okay any other risk questions take one from the internet this comes from Cleo who says how do you deal with risk when you are not sure or unable to know what the market reality is for example if it is a totally new domain well that's a more often for Entrepreneurship that's more often true than not because of because very rarely is it a pure substitution sometimes it happens that way the key thing and this gets to other parts the risk one is okay we talked about Marc intelligence you know using networks in order to do that getting as much perspective you can the other thing is you also frequently think about two other questions one is okay if this is true what other things would be true that I could go observe right so for example if you said all right do I think that people will have public professional identities well are actually people going and putting up websites already with public Breschel identities they are they comfortable doing that already and okay if they weren't already a group people doing that then okay maybe this LinkedIn concept won't work out so well as an instance so you go and look at other things that aren't your exact product aren't that but are tells for is there a demand here is their participation is there a psychological mindset now frequently the challenge there is there's some but is there enough is it a big enough scale as function and then the last one is a cheap shot try to test it with cheap shots on goal right which is do something small and see if that gives you any more data as a function now the smallest thing is to go talk to someone smart right and that's part of the reason do it cuz a lot of kind of very quick like okay what do you think about this what do you think about this but those are this and then ultimately bringing that corpus together into a decision is one of the things that makes Tripp ownership hard and I think one of the it's a fascinating concept the question of kind of how do you what litmus tests can you construct in order to figure out an answer to a question that can't be addressed head-on right like often if you ask like the most unreliable question in the world I think is an entrepreneur is to ask a prospective customer like show them a quick demo or prototype and say would you buy this alright like that that actually is not very useful or reliable feedback because the customer may say yes or they say no doesn't really no it doesn't actually translate into real market feedback so when demoing something when showing a prototype you're actually looking for other signals body language the types of questions they ask to truly gauge the level of interest it's it's rare I think on a lot of hard questions that you get the answer by asking directly by asking head-on as well I think this is a very broad life concept in fact I have a friend of mine you know his is ultimate litmus test to determine someone's character is how they treat a treat a waiter at a restaurant right you're not going to you're not going to get necessarily insight into the question of someone's character by asking them directly hey talk to me about your you know ethical intuitions but by observing other behavioral dynamics you can often conclude really valuable things about that person had argue the same is true in a business context we've talked so far about three key strategies for navigating a career landscape that's vastly different the ones our parents had we've talked about how to build a competitive advantage by assessing your assets aspirations market realities we've talked about the importance of building networks to a virtual team a company around you and a sense that can help you get farther faster we talked about taking intelligent risk as all things that entrepreneurs do that we can all do in our careers so those are some of the skills and strategies in entrepreneurs employee there's also though and want to finish with by talking about the overarching mindset the approach to life that entrepreneurs have when building a new business that I think we can all apply to our own lives and the approach is something that we call permanent beta and beta obviously is a term that comes from the software industry that has long meant a piece of software or a product that's not quite ready for primetime software that has bugs work in progress maybe unfinished but about a decade ago or seven or eight years ago I think Google forced us all to think more reflectively about what the word beta means when they ship Gmail as a fully functional email product but kept the label beta at the top of the site and I remember when Gmail first came out there are all sorts of blog posts about what does this mean is this product network or their bug it says you know it's a spam thing not going to work like I'm using a product here that's in beta what is this supposed to mean but as people soon found out actually Gmail is fully functional millions of emails are processed millions of people signed up but Google wanted to keep it in beta for a very extended period of time to signal I think internally and externally that the product wasn't finished that there is still work to do that there are always going to be bugs to work out and that if they considered it finished that's when a competitor will lapse them right for I think for entrepreneurs for Google land and for entrepreneurs everywhere finished is its own F word right if they think of something as totally done and shipped to market on to the next thing that product will soon be antiquated and so since Gmail was in beta there's a whole slew of web tool companies that launched in beta and stayed in beta for very long time and kind of created this idea permanent beta there always works in progress and I think if you look at a lot of tremendous entrepreneurs they really think about their companies but also their lives in this sense and we cite in the book the annual shareholder letter from Jeff Bezos which ends every year by saying at amazon.com it's always day one which i think is another expression that idea of permanent beta no matter the successes we've had in a year prior it's day one again at Amazon because the moment we begin to dwell too much on our successes in the past is the moment a competitor will surpass us so permanent beta I think is a foundational entrepreneurial approach and the key things for thinking with this is regards you is that you always need to be investing yourself the world is changing you need to adapt right because part of being in firm beta is like there are things that I need to do in order to continue to evolve and adapt and and and and fit what's going on with the industry what's going on in the company what's going on if I'm an entrepreneur with my company and so part of the reason why we kind of coined a term here in terms of permanent beta was to really get people to all to focus on always be evolving and adapting and these are all techniques whether it's figuring out how to adapt in terms of a competitive edge how to be kind of evolving your connections with your network how to be taking intelligent risk in order to try to get to the next step all of these are essentially ways to think of yourself as in permanent beta and to be evolving and adapting and so that was the reason why we actually we we were pretty choice a lot when we tried to coin terms and this was one of the ones that actually made it in the book and you know one of the greatest entrepreneurs of all time Benjamin Franklin co-founder of one of the greatest entrepreneurial projects of all time wrote in his autobiography that he used to wake up in the morning get out of bed put on his butt get out take off his pajamas put on his clothes and then ask himself the question will I go to bed tonight smarter than I am right now it's a pretty intense an intense question askers oh every morning I go to bed tonight smarter than I am right now I think he that that is such a permanent beta approach and he exemplifies all these ideas better than anyone and I think we I don't think this is actually a default approach by most people there's this professor of entrepreneurship at UC Davis who we quote in the book who said you know for many people when they list on their resume or LinkedIn profile 20 years of marketing experience what they really mean is they've had one year of marketing experience repeated 20 times right most people actually don't every year live in permanent beta and reinvent themselves every single year but we argue that's what we all need to do to remain competitive and entrepreneurs bus to so I think we have time for a couple questions yeah is that is that the conclusion of your guys's slide hey before we take questions give that a round of applause I'm looking at the questions pointing I know Kenna's got them why you guys queue up some here in the Internet one in particular you mentioned and we didn't get a chance to go deep on about that sort of physical interaction part like how about those guys and gals going like hey I'm a networker that is that sort of smarmy feel that we get that we don't like and can you talk a little bit about like how you transcend that but still get to connect in a way that's meaningful well the key thing is actually have a good social context for it so that's part of the reason why referral part of the reason getting getting introduced to people it's always better than like for example when I go to the vet and want to meet someone even though you know there's a bunch of pressure on me I never walk up and say hi I'm Reed Hoffman I want to talk to you I actually look for someone to introduce you because that person who in addition is is oh you know Reed he's a good guy just wants a chat with this coletta that's useful all the time right and as a function the next thing is as is been amplified is is is always being attentive to what you can bring to the to the relationship what you how you can help and so for example one of the amplifications I think we did in the book was say like because we this was a particular this particular page was directed at college kids was actually in fact when you go try to talk to someone like me or someone else like well okay what's going on College currently what like what are the big trend you have a unique experience here that I don't have that could actually be useful and so when and in everyone thinking about that for themselves in terms of how do they build that connection and the last thing is to be really careful about what you're doing doesn't just sound like an ask right right like I feel like this from you please and you're like okay thanks you ever met here's an email that this long of what you can do for me yes terrible approach don't what do you guys think one of the things that I believe in is introducing other people if say I wanted to get to know you and I have another friend that I think is equal social status and influence and interest yet interest yeah through that in their interest and connecting the two of you as sort of a gift like I know you I know you I think you guys would you know at some point when you cross paths do you find that valuable you have to do it intelligently and directly yes but it's another thing that fits in the theory of small gifts got it because if I I know someone to be really really basically the the model that I use when I introduce to people is I expect the two people not expect as an expected but I'm modeling I hope that both people would thank me for the introduction yeah at the end of the day they say well think I was cool I took a bunch of value out of that mission yeah ideally it's double often yeah yeah you ask first hey do you were you the opening meeting Reed Reed are you open to meeting chase yeah okay great now I'll do the yeah that's a great that's a great tip and one of the things I wanted to do is also given the sort of LinkedIn connection that we would go to LinkedIn because I know there's a bunch of questions coming in there so Kenna can you bring us one from absolutely which I think is so fun to connect these platforms here we are at workers right that's right all right even in a network world that's right though if you didn't know so this is a question from Eric s who is the VP of operations at Colorado Technical University and his question is I would like to know how Reed could say LinkedIn changing how prospective students select a college or university in the future specifically could perspective college students use LinkedIn to help shape their selection of which college to attend and if so how there's a group working on this exact problem and part of the thing would be to bring essentially part of what LinkedIn does is it makes that the the network and ability to have more more actionable more information more clearer more transparent and so the kinds of things are all right where you can find out for example what do people generally from this college graduate to go do what kinds of skill sets are there are their alumni that I can go find and talk to about what the experience was when I was there and all this stuff is actually by the way largely doable now we're building one CH of products to make it better and easier but you can answer all these questions and there's some products underway that are specifically oriented towards the like okay I want to make a college decision how do i how do i leverage my network and and the linkedin network of information in order to make that decision is thank you and i just want to build upon that because we have Blatz who asked this earlier but he is in high school and as a high school entrepreneur and is wondering how what advice do you have high school entrepreneurs because we receive very little attention recognition and that would be the same people there who are looking for colleges well there's a lot of good bit there's a national foundation for teaching entrepreneurship there's an organization called build there's a number of organizations at Vogue to focus on high school entrepreneurs it's awesome and cool usually all the same things that apply to entrepreneurs later in life apply to high school entrepreneurs with the exception of you kind of have to get through high school as a function and so you know you kind of look at market opportunities you look at what you can scale to do medevacked actually I'm gonna pass a section a bed in a part given that yeah so I think so I started my first company high school the thing I most I think it actually is very true is that there are a lot of young people starting companies and so the thing that I regret not doing was finding my age similar peers there art I mean I get emails all the time from people who are in their teens starting companies so you're not alone find other people who are doing the thing you're doing and make them part of your network certainly find mentors and stuff that's really important but find other people who are in high school other people who are in college trying to start a business talk to them about how they're dealing with things that can be super super valuable great I went into those the live studio audience here let's make sure you guys have a microphone we got a question in the front row here tell us who you are and what do you want to ask these good thanks guys I really appreciate all the advice specifically with networking I'm Neal David I'm a lifestyle photographer based here in San Francisco and kind of have goals and aspirations someday you know of you know chase you know co-founded something like this you know with the photography create a background so like this guy's a limit pretty much for everyone and let all the stories you're sharing or you know they seem of this wonderful outlier greatness you know looking back so when folks are starting out you know when they're kind of at that like Garage Band stage of growing a business or starting an idea in the garage or you think Raj bass yeah either way okay you know really kind of like bootstrapping you know completely hustling a business what are some of the top like sage advice kind of things or even a short story of you know some of your experience of what to really focus on and you know nailing going through learning from others mistakes too you know 9sy fast-track and skip steps but you know move through things in a really efficient way and be starting out well the key one key difference is if you can do a financing and a venture out or not financing that's financing then part of the advice that give interpreters is that each time you do around the financing to be thinking with the next round of financing because what you're trying to do is you're trying to essentially make the next round of financing possible preferably at higher valuations that because that's indication of progress and you frequently thinking about that as island-hopping because without that you basically die or get into serious trouble now so that's on the kind of the investment side of it and that's one of the real key things to think about is kind of what's my investment thesis what will what card what turn over what do I then prove that make me have a broader range of investors willing to put in more money at the next you know at the next juncture and then to manage the relationships and process and also in order to do that if you're not doing an investment oriented business but it's like for example it's kind of a lot of small businesses and it's then I think the key question usually comes down to is how do you where are you getting the best possible data on accelerating customers right usually the biggest problems in terms of businesses is is what is your customer flow look like and are you are you figuring out how to to get a broader stable of customers how to acquire them in a in a in a better quality more numbers etc and in an efficient way because if you don't solve that problem that's part of where the mortal risk comes in as a function and so to keep coming back to that no matter what what else you're solving in the business is key and on the hustle point in the opportunities chapter which we didn't talk about today then it's basically an idea that careers don't work as a series of jobs remarkable careers are punctuated by breakout opportunities a couple key opportunities usually dramatically accelerate someone's progress we have a section on Hustle because it is such an entrepreneurial idea we profile the founders of Pandora which of just is like unbelievably heroic story of you know going bankrupt 500 times getting sued a million times profile the founders of Airbnb who reads work closely with as an investor who've had to reinvent themselves and survive multiple near-death experiences selling Obama o's cereal in order to make yet it's selling cereal to finance the business and I think to me what what and we kind of just include the stories on the premise that sometimes the best way to get inspired to hustle or do more with less is just to hear the stories to interact with people who have that and kind of through osmosis absorb that instinct I know and I when I was first reading the Pandora story it made me reflect gosh if that guy can survive all of those hardships I certainly should be able to try or if he can go through all that the least I can do is get through this one obstacle and so I do think kind of routine exposure and preferably relationships with people that are hustling them out of their field can be really really inspiring for your own journey yeah stay garage you know that's one of the things that we like to do here creativeLIVE is we want to feel like we're always in the permanent beta where you're always sort of keeping everything as lean as possible with your eye on the prize of trying to make this thing the best at as much value as you can that's the way we think of it there's a couple other questions I'd say we've got time for maybe one more let's go all the way to the back and we need to get you a mic the gentleman standing there in the gray shirt you look like you got something real smart to ask right here no pressure no pressure yeah my name is Cody kandi I'm a product manager for Intuit my question for you is now that you are a big shot investor and are kind of on the other side of the table what are some of the biggest things you've realized that you wish you would have known as an entrepreneur to do things differently see I told you that was good yes one of the key things that I tell entrepreneurs to do and I actually only began to realize this when I started doing an investor as opposed to intrapreneur was that an investment relationship is rather like a marriage and it's it's an odd marriage because it's frequently you get married after like two PowerPoint presentations and a dinner right which which which is which is strange and so the key thing is is how to build a really good relationship past and one part of that goes back to what you're specifically doing in a pitch which is one of the things I realized little the third pitch I heard it was like okay this gets back to the risk thing tell me what the risks are and how you were trying to manage them because what I found was that and my business my instincts when I was an entrepreneur too is like well if I should if I share any of these risks then then it looks like I don't have confidence or I'm weak or something else so I'm not going to do that well the problem is from the investor side it's like either when I'm looking at entrepreneur and who isn't presenting me risks they either don't see those risks in which case they're blind right or foolish or something else because there are risks in these businesses or they're lying to me either of which because they're they have risk but it's not telling them you know they're not they're not bringing out the kind of things that would be like we're dealing with this as two partners looking at something to do and so one of the the things that I quickly added in my corpus of the advice that gave to entrepreneurs is when you're talking to investors one part of it is to identify what you think the key risks are and what you're doing about it because that helps build relationship and Trust where they work with you you end for example hopefully you're right but you're smart about those risks you know what you're doing about them that builds confidence as well fantastic great great question so I've got to wrap up I got one question take a selfish little bitter I've always been focused on content as an artist myself and been as an author probably this resonates with you you guys have shifted and are doing a lot of content now at LinkedIn and I know a lot of the folks out there and the Internet audience are they're not necessarily focused on raising venture capital they're their individual makers they're freelancers there are people that are trying to change their so how can you talk to us a little bit about for a second making content as an individual is that a gift is that one of those small gifts that you can give out into the world or how does that tie into your strategy LinkedIn well so well there's what visional should do this what LinkedIn is doing so what individuals do if you have an ability to to create content that then shapes part of the corpus of your identity that can be very valuable in network world because that allows people to find you and to understand you and go oh this is maybe somebody that I want to do business with somebody I want to hire somebody I want to follow in terms of what they're doing and so part of what we've been doing it LinkedIn has been realizing that to have a business focused content with people who aren't journalists but who are actually practitioners who who have solved these problems who are solving these problems to share that information and insight both in how they solve the problems and also the industry so that we as business people can actually solve those problems faster and that's we we have this program with LinkedIn influencer as we have a bunch of other things going on in order to do that and part of that is because in this kind of accelerating competitive world the new world of work you have it's really really critical to find this to solve the problems faster and the right information the right people help you do that great anything to add to that then the guy said it all right awesome well please join me in giving a huge round

Channel: CreativeLive

Views: 32,632

Rating: 4.8612719 out of 5

Keywords: Ben Casnocha, Reid Hoffman (Author), startup of you, linkedin, creativeLIVE

Id: e2X54ALRkZg

Length: 83min 17sec (4997 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 15 2013