Of dreams, not nightmares

” you might as well dream big, since it’s a dream. It doesn’t cost you any more to own a Lamborghini in the dream than it costs to own a Bicycle” – Unknown.

There once lived two boys in a small township. Boy A, growing up, had always been told how much money the the local cheese sellers made and how great it would be if someone from the family made that much money. As expected, the young boy set his sights on that goal and whenever he went to bed, he had dreams of being the top cheese seller in the town. Several blocks away form Boy A’s home was Boy B. Boy B never felt comfortable in this town, he always thought people were too cautious and the standard of living could be better. He started visiting other towns, reading books and learning about things other people did. He found that there were several other things he could do to make him be who he truly wanted to be. He started dreaming of making money and having people work for him, doing things people really wanted to see! Truth is, people always work toward their goal and you get what you work for…most of the time. Fast forward 40-something years, Boy A is the top cheese seller in Blackheath, England and Boy B is Founder/Chairman of the Virgin Group with an estimated net worth of £2.6 Billion.

When you dream, you open yourself to a whole new world of possibilities. You find that it is possible to imagine things and attempt to live them out. This ability to not only dream, but dream big is a common trait of the most successful Entrepreneurs of our time. When Mark Zuckerberg sat down with some of the board members of Facebook and told them he saw their numbers doubling in 6 months time to over 300million users and refused to back down on his decision to change the Homepage and not carry banner ads, things got heated. Some employees who were starting to see a decline in the rate of pageviews and signups at the time even started to panic, resign and take other positions. Today, the evidence is there for all to see, Zuckerberg did make the right decision.

There’s so much talk in Silicon Valley about the importance of Lean startups and why Investors are looking to invest only in Entrepreneurs who know how to make the most out of a little change. The gospel has spread like wildfire and Entrepreneurs have started cutting back on their goals and asking for less money in a bid to look like they can be “lean”. If you have built a prototype and you’ve shown without a doubt that there is a market for your product, it IS time to take over that market and scale up accordingly. Don’t target the west coast only and ask for 1/4 of the money you need because you want to appear lean, knowing fully well that scaling up and reaching out to the entire country will yield the best rewards. When you work on your startup, how about put it all on the line, dream of the best your company can do and go for that.

“…at Inter Milan  we are a blood team not a skin team. When we play, we leave it all on the pitch. You don’t see skin on there, you see blood. As long as we win, it doesn’t matter.” – Jose Mourinho (Manager of Inter Milan FC after beating Barcelona in the semi finals of the 2010 UEFA champions league)

Innovation comes in handy

Innovation is something you either have or you don’t. Some people will make good Entrepreneurs and some wouldn’t. Simple. The ability to envision something most people don’t even know they need and then make it really happen is what makes a true Entrepreneur. For the life of me I didn’t know why anyone would care about Twitter when I first heard the idea. Evan Williams (@ev), co-founder of Twitter was addressing a room full of Entrepreneurs, geeks and a handful of investors a few years back right after releasing the product to the public. He said “we had this idea of letting people express themselves and share what they are doing with friends in 140 characters or less.” At this time, Facebook was still rather bare and didn’t have the “status” feature it has now, but still a good number of people found the idea totally unnecessary and didn’t see the point behind it. They believed that bit of social interaction where you can tell you friends what you are doing was already available on Facebook, so why tweet?

The founders of Twitter obviously had several other ideas in mind as to what Twitter can be used for. They saw beyond the typical 140 character blab and anticipated celebrities building a following and keeping these “eager fans” updated. They saw Businesses taking advantage of the opportunity to share and showcase their products. They were innovative. The rest is history.

Take a risk

“…he’s gonna have a hard time explaining to Hayley and Laney, these food stamps and this weak sh*t, coz he never risked sh*t. He hoped and he wished it, but it didn’t fall in his lap, so he ain’t even here” – Eminem

Two months ago in donwtown NYC, I overheard some fresh-faced, college students talking about how “awesome” they thought the site textsfromlastnight was. Apparently, one of them had sent in a text he got from his ex-girlfriend two nights prior and luckily it made its way to the site’s homepage. The conversation slowly drifted into a discussion about their own little project they had been working on for a few months. One of them mentioned how it would be absolutely impossible to take on Foursquare, which happened to be their major competitor. He gave several reasons in his attempt to convince his partner to give up on this project and look in a different direction. He said “I am certainly not willing to put all that 10 grand seed money into something that will just fail dude, let’s find something else to do. If someone chooses to invest in us though, then sure, as long as we are not wasting our own money.”. But for the very beautiful girl I was entertaining on the day, I would have turned around, bounce my head around in disgust and told them to “grow some balls”…well maybe not, but you get my point.

If every one starts thinking this way and running away at the first sign of competition, the world we know now will be much different. There’s no way guys like that will make it 2yrs at the helm of any company, if they are even lucky enough to start one. Willingness to take risks has to be a driving force for Entrepreneurs. You have to be prepared to fail in order to succeed. We don’t need to start talking about posthumous stories of Thomas Edison and his lightbulbs, but it is common place, if someone like Ron Conway doesn’t take the risks he takes in investment, he won’t be the man he is today.

So Tolu, what are you saying? Dream big, think deep and lose the fear. What is failure anyway? if it isn’t merely 2 blocks down the road from victory…or so they say.

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I have been unable to really blog as much as I would have liked to lately, but there’s a good reason. I have been quite busy with some consulting work I am doing for this amazing start-up called Gaucho and my own new venture: Videfy. The most important feature of these two startups is the real time capabilities they have both incorporated. If you have been paying attention to the developing trends in web2.0 these days, you’ll understand why. Everyone is starting to use the internet for everything: Moms who are looking to save and find coupons in stores can now find awesome deals by looking at the live savings stream specific to their location on Gaucho. Professionals who are looking to meet up with their friends for a couple after hour drinks can now look on loopt or foursquare to find out their location and prior movements. With videfy, Brands/companies will be able to keep a realtime interaction going with their many fans, update them on developments at the company via the most effective means of information dissemination…Video. With all the information being placed on the web, it’s no wonder everyone is looking to scrutinize them, get only those that matter to them and get them as soon as they are released.

Investors are also embracing this new trend. Ron Conway has been a big fan of startups that incorporate realtime features in their operations and it’s been evident on the two occasions I’ve heard him speak: TechCrunch50 and most recently Crunchup held in San Francisco a few days ago. Little advise to Entrepreneurs: Include Real Time in your startup. This is the time to do so!

Like i mentioned earlier, I am currently working on two innovative start-ups and I received couple of emails after a tweet I sent out some days back asking me about Videfy. I will write a detailed blog post about it soon, but in the meantime, I can tell you we are about 10 days from a beta release. Anyone, brand and studio is welcome to signup for invites and test it out.

On the other hand, happy thanksgiving to everyone! If you are looking for ways to save on black friday, there’s going to be a bunch of deals, coupons and stuff here.

Parting notes: Remember that Entrepreneurs are in it to come up with innovative ways to change the world, build something that makes people’s lives easier first and you will be rewarded for that.

Every start-up shares the same primary objective: Get lots of people to join my service/use my product. It’s always the same regardless of what industry you are in and the Entrepreneurs with the best networking skills are the ones who have the best ride. Networking is all about finding people who could be of help to you and reaching out to them. It’s really an art and if done early and effectively, your start-up might actually have a chance. Research shows that 80% of startups fail and shut shop within their first 6-12 months, as a new Entrepreneur you must find like minded people to interact with and learn from so your startup can perhaps be in that 20% that survives.

Networking for your start-up requires you as an Entrepreneur to be confident, vocal and able to relate with people. It’s about being able to convince people that you are good at what you do, that what you do is great and they should be interested in what you have to offer. Picking who to network with is a whole different subject and that depends on you and your business, but it’s important that you start networking early on and do it right. It raises awareness for your venture, it helps you build up a potential customer base, mentors and even potential investors.

Here are some idea on how you can network early and effectively

1.) Set up a temporary welcome page on the internet while building. Here’s an idea that alot of start-up have employed recently and it works like a charm. Instead on being offline and completely behind the scenes while building your start-up, how about letting people know about you during this time? how about giving people the gist behind your business and getting them excited about it? The trick is to set up your domain name, put up a page that welcomes people, tell them what you are building, when you will go live and offer an opt-in e-mailing list if they want to be updated with news about the startup. It will surprise you how many people sign-up, boosting your potential customer pool even before you launch.

2.) Go to the After parties of events you can’t afford. I watched a recent presentation by Kevin Rose at the FOWA ‘09 in London and this was one of the points he made that I could totally relate to. Kevin is a guy I completely respect, he’s very daring, does things people consider against the norm and it always works out for him. For those who don’t know him, Kevin is founder of Digg and wefollow. Like me, many young entrepreneur know that we should be interacting with the likes of Chris Sacca, Ashton Kutcher, Dave McClure, Ron Conway etc… but the only way we could get to reach and pitch these people is at start-up events or investor conferences. The problem is though, it could cost up to $5,000 to get in. Step up After party. They are cheaper, easier to get in (you can volunteer to help on the night) and are more relaxed. Just remember to have a demo of your startup handy. Visuals work better than words, ask Aaron Patzer.  After spending several hours per day for 6 months building Mint.com, he embarked on a networking campaign. He got turned down by virtually everyone until he pitched a partner at First Round Capital outside a Networking event in 2006.  “I had a server running on a laptop in the trunk of my car,” Patzer says. “He waited a couple of minutes. I ran out and got the laptop and fired up a demo.” The rest is history.

3.) Exploit the Social Media channels. With Twitter, Facebook, Vimeo and other social networks available these days, it’s easy to build a brand and build a following for it. Find people who can help you realize your start-up dreams and start connecting with them. Share information about your business, tell the world what’s new and what’s going on in your community. Follow/friend/interact with VCs, potential mentors, other entrepreneurs or anyone who indicates interest in your niche. In time, you will have a substantial network of people for your start-up. The means when you launch, you will lauch with lots of users versus no one if you are quiet during your building period.

4.) Foster relationships with Journalists and Media. Take the opportunity to build relationships with people that can put your start-up in the public eye. A lot of journalists and press people have blogs these days, are on twitter and it doesn’t harm to leave a comment here, retweet there and interact all over. By building a relationship with them you are improving your chances of getting a positive response when you ask for a favor. Take advantage of whatever you get; if you don’t shoot, you will not score.

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